INSANITY. MADNESS.
These are words that make people flinch, shy away, divert their eyes, and say "but....don't you think....everyone sometimes...lots of people..."
But these are words that need to be said. In the saying, if there is enough of it, the fear is reduced, the mystery, black and white pictures of people chained to walls, hair long and greasy, hanging in hanks, the sounds of screaming, open distorted mouths, archaic machines, cold baths. Sybil. Horror films. Places none of us want to visit. There is no colour there, just dusty shafts of light, cold concrete, and the screams, the echos, the Nurse Ratchetts, and all of those people who are flawed, and have gone wrong, so wrong that we cannot bear to even imagine it. For these are minds, after all, that have taken a wrong turn, broken. And how do we know that maybe each of us, each one of us won't fall into that pit. Ah yes, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Snake Pit. The pit of maddness, of mental labryinths that we cannot escape. What is there to save us from that fate? And so we look away, and we say, "yes, but...."
Yes, but...it may be your neighbor who is living with a person, perhaps a person they once knew and loved, who has gone, frankly, quite mad. And the problem of the mad, of the insane, is that, yes, just as we all fear, they have an amazing need to take others with them, and are quite good, particularly if they are truly insane, at doing so. So, the trick is to not go down into that pit, to not trip, to not begin to think that the world the insane person constructs, however reasonable it seems (even if distasteful or abhorrent), is real, and to not think that is a world you belong in.
These are words that make people flinch, shy away, divert their eyes, and say "but....don't you think....everyone sometimes...lots of people..."
But these are words that need to be said. In the saying, if there is enough of it, the fear is reduced, the mystery, black and white pictures of people chained to walls, hair long and greasy, hanging in hanks, the sounds of screaming, open distorted mouths, archaic machines, cold baths. Sybil. Horror films. Places none of us want to visit. There is no colour there, just dusty shafts of light, cold concrete, and the screams, the echos, the Nurse Ratchetts, and all of those people who are flawed, and have gone wrong, so wrong that we cannot bear to even imagine it. For these are minds, after all, that have taken a wrong turn, broken. And how do we know that maybe each of us, each one of us won't fall into that pit. Ah yes, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Snake Pit. The pit of maddness, of mental labryinths that we cannot escape. What is there to save us from that fate? And so we look away, and we say, "yes, but...."
Yes, but...it may be your neighbor who is living with a person, perhaps a person they once knew and loved, who has gone, frankly, quite mad. And the problem of the mad, of the insane, is that, yes, just as we all fear, they have an amazing need to take others with them, and are quite good, particularly if they are truly insane, at doing so. So, the trick is to not go down into that pit, to not trip, to not begin to think that the world the insane person constructs, however reasonable it seems (even if distasteful or abhorrent), is real, and to not think that is a world you belong in.
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