When I Lost My Mind

Three weeks ago I lost my mind. I don’t know where it went. Perhaps it grew legs and went for a stroll along Palace Green, maybe it jumped on a plane to Mexico wearing a sombrero and being an obnoxious nuisance to the other passengers, possibly it sprouted wings and drifted off to greet the sun.

I walked to the end of the Earth to find it. I swam through oceans, waded through lakes, swung from vines over quicksand. I was driven by the certainty that at the end of my journey it would be there, hopeful and shining, like a beacon. But I got to the end of the world, I looked over the edge, and there was no lighthouse of my mind shedding light over the void beyond, there was just nothing. No life. No light. No future.

I gazed into this destitute vacuum, looking for something. I didn’t know what it was but I knew it should be there. If I imagined hard enough it would be there. But exhaustion was my mistress; she stole the last grains of hope from my body, she made me forget the world, where I had come, what I was looking for.

I wanted to jump into the nothingness, be consumed by the void. The collision of nothing and something, matter and antimatter, annihilation. But beings can’t dive into nothing, not without causing something. All I wanted was to find my mind or to disappear.

Maybe I had travelled to the wrong end of the world.

The journey to the other side would be characterised with remorse and self hatred. How could I travel through dense forests and baron lands when even the creases on my hands sickened me?

I had heard a rumour on the breeze. One of a simple solution. 10 tramadol, 20 codeine. Peace, tranquility, an all expenses paid trip to the other side of the universe. It was too good to be true.

I peered into the blankness; let the essence of nothing seep into my lungs. The darkness burnt onto my corneas. There were no stars anymore; the sky had run out, the earth was slipping away underneath my toes. I puzzled: I take the drugs, I might just get my mind back – signed, sealed and delivered, complete with a note telling me how to look after my mind better in the future.

The land shifted below me. I slipped towards the edge. Fingers clung to rocks and plants and tablets fell from my open fingers into the void. Now I had to make the journey myself. I turned on my heels and walked towards the other side of the world. And I knew that I couldn’t do this alone anymore. I needed all the help I could get.