Living with the Pieces of My Shattered Mind
The shadows felt alive. Dark and sharply defined, I could feel them breathe as we walked our dog in the dark evening. The shadows were nonthreatening, but the longer this internal war goes on, the more my world seems to come alive. It began with voices in the distance – a scream, whispers, conversation far off in the distance, always too far to be heard clearly. We turned them up and down in therapy, inspecting from all angles. But the only thing that came of our initial investigation was that I felt that their conversation had something to do with me.
At some point in my past, my mind fractured and shattered, jagged shards of it lying on the floor in my head.
I’ve spent much of my life frantically trying to make the pieces fit back together. But no glue, tape, or thread can unify these polarized thoughts. They aren’t voices that I hear, but rather thoughts that crowd my mind, becoming unbearably loud without uttering a word. The many parts of me are all telling me different things, and I don’t know what to do. Every time I think I’ve chosen a direction, a different side reaches out with an argument that drags me back. In some cases, even simple decisions can pull me apart at the seams, and the grip of indecisiveness is cold.
It’s difficult for me to resolve the differences within myself.
The contradicting pieces of myself make figuring out who I am at my core or what I want to do complicated. I police myself, wanting to be confident but telling myself that I can’t. I want to feel proud of my accomplishments, but I tell myself that that’s vain. I’ve spent so many years criticizing myself. Every word that I say and move that I make is accompanied by internal judgement by a panel. It’s praise, anxiety, acceptance, and disapproval all at the same time. I pick apart everything I do, wasting time focusing on the past while avoiding making even minor decisions for my present and future. I’m paralyzed by the fear of being wrong because there is always a piece of me that assures me I will be.
Over the last few months, the voices have come closer, but I still can’t make out what they’re saying.
I hear muffled voices from the next room, but they stop when I try to find them. The sound of a news broadcast emanates from nowhere, but sounds like it’s under water. Two women talk outside, voices hushed just enough for me to struggle to make out their words. I felt the gentle shift of the floorboards under a man’s feet walking up behind my desk chair at home. He paused, but when I turned around, he was gone. I was convinced he had some kind of news to deliver, just like the voices. Restlessness crawled under my skin because I know this is about me. I know they know something.
As we try to decode the hallucinations in therapy, my dialogue always seems to wander towards my shattered mind lately. I tell my psychiatrist that reconciling the pieces feels nearly impossible at times. It’s amazing to think how many different opinions someone can have on one simple topic. Sometimes it’s just two, I tell her, sort of an angel and demon type of thing – the part of me that believes in myself, and the part that is always convinced I will fail. On other topics I may see many sides all at once.
All I want is for this to be black and white, but life is a landscape coated in endless shades of grey.
The more I look inside myself the more I see that I am uncomfortable with these shades of grey. I am afraid of the consequences of the wrong choice, so I freeze. Panic rising inside of me, I will frantically review my options, inevitably finding flaws in each choice. There are times where I just want to hide under my desk, eyes closed tight, waiting for all of this struggle to go away.
I wanted so badly to believe that the hallucinations would deliver whatever answer or solution I had thought they were discussing. I was waiting for the day I could make out their words and breathe a sigh of relief that I had the answer. But that’s not how this works. I realized the answer could only come from me. Choosing a side when opinions are coming from different people is hard enough. But to choose a side within myself is more difficult for me. Not only do I have to live with the consequences of my actions, I also have to live with the response of all the other pieces of my mind.
The past two days, my world has been quieter.
I haven’t overheard conversations coming from invisible lips as often the last few days. And my thoughts have been bogged down in my head. Physically, I’ve been weaker than usual. This internal war has been so draining. So, hesitantly, quietly, I have taken a side, at least on one topic. I’m sure the many pieces of me will be revived and ready for battle again soon though. But, while the hallucinations couldn’t give me an answer, they had an important message – you can’t stand still any longer or you’ll drown. It just took me a while to truly listen.
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