Sunday, March 27, 2005

Prester Bane

It's been over a week, and I've said nothing of our friend Prester Bane. He is the King in Void: the psychotic wasteland I inhabit in my darkest hours. I don't write much about him for fear of strengthening his hold on me and his realm. When I'm lucid, I can reason with myself as you do, and see Prester Bane and his Void for what they are. It might seem easy to ignore Prester Bane or deny his existence to most of you, but you must understand: I cannot. It doesn't matter how much therapy I go through, how much or what I'm taking for the psychosis, I see him. None of you have ever been in the tomb with me, keeping the Many Armed Knight barely in view as a faceless king tells me accurately how my life will turn, and why. I've heard him for eleven years last Friday. He dominates the Void, and part of the reason why I've not posted about him or written much of him is to keep his power in check. To me, when I speak of him, or let someone else in on his predictions, the result just hits me five times worse. He told me how, why, and to a month, when Jaime would discard me. He's easy to deny from the outside, but he is very real to me, especially when he's right. I wrote the poem at the end of this post in 2002 on Prester Bane. I thought I could break him. I was obviously wrong.

I'm tired of hearing lectures on how Prester Bane isn't real and how the Void doesn't exist. I'm sick of people telling me how false his predictions are, and telling me to just ignore them. If this world really wants to help me, perhaps you should all stop hurting me. I ingest your pills, I go to your therapy sessions, but in the end I'm just another crazy person worthy of pity at best. None of you have ever been inside with me; you don't know a dammned thing about how I feel, and I'm tired of hearing how much you care when all you do is hurt me repeatedly.

The worst part of it is not your fault, it's still mine. I put myself in painful situations, and expect this burden I carry to lighten with shared effort from you. We all have moments in our life that hurt. The difference between you and me is that it happens to you once. I live my moments again and again. My involuntary memories never permit me to forget my pain. If I have even one second without meaningful sensory input, the memories flood back to fill the gaps. Gaps in my memory fill with psychosis to the point of constant, dramatic change. Every time the memories replay, they change. I'm unsure of all events; my memories contradict my notes and the expressed memories of others. Still, my father didn't scourge my back with an extension cord, leaving a welt for a week once. He's done it three to five times per day every day since. I didn't win my game of russian roulette once, I win it every day. Jaime didn't prove Prester bane right once; she proves it several times per day, every day. Memory is the twin of experience, and mine won't let go or fade.

This is why schizophrenics commit suicide; I am sure of it. It isn't a cry for help, or an evaluation of depressing circumstance. It's freedom. I want to keep my good memories, and leave while I'm still a semblance of what I was eleven years ago. Fear of hell keeps me alive, and precious little else.



PILLS AND PROMISES, BOTH BROKEN

With intellect in exile
And hobbled by a dream,
The always present Madness
Is shackled to a king

Whose name is Prester Bane.
He promised so much more
Than ordinary rule
Dispensed upon a sword.

This dynasty of Void
Succumbed to decadence.
Regalia consumed
The pride the Void became.

Transfixed upon the past,
The king remains within,
Dispensing regal edicts
Upon indifferent ears.

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