After I published my first “Why I Write” essay here last month, a clinical psychologist in Romania wrote to me and asked if she might put me in touch with one of her patients—a young man, 18 years old, who was undergoing severe struggles but who was finding some degree of solace in writing. My essay gave her the courage to write me, she said, in the hope that I could be helpful in some way.
She put the two of us in touch. When I read some of what he shared with me, my heart was moved. I experienced a tremendous amount of sorrow knowing how many people, many whom I will never know, suffer in silence, or feel unheard or unseen, misunderstood, or forgotten.
With
’s permission, I am now publishing a few selected pieces of his writing (he referred to them at one point as “ramblings”…but you will surely find much more than that).We live in a world in which the intellect—and now, the artificial intellects all around us—are threatening to overtake the heart and our emotional lives in general. But no amount of intellect can dig someone out of a hole of despair.
I said at the very outside of launching this publication in late 2020, that it was to be a newsletter of hope. True to that mission, I am sharing this writing here (and I hope you’ll follow
, in case he ever chooses to share more of his work on this platform).I want this to be a place where I can lift others up, to communicate hope in some small way, and to join those who are suffering in solidarity.
Let them have their Dissident Dialogues. I am here for something else.
[3/25, 5:34 PM] +[Number Redacted]:
Not so long ago,
There was a young adult,
Living lonely with his thoughts,
In a sea of depression.
He sat high above his brain,
Watching the emotions play,
And wishing he had someone too.
And from the tip of his tongue,
Came this song of hope that he sang,
Day and day for years.
(I have a dream!,
I hope will come true!,
That emotions come to me too!,
I wish that the earth, sea, and sky up above!,
Will send me an emotion,
To cherish.)
Years of singing all alone,
Turned his emotions into stone,
Until he was on the brink of suicide.
But little did he know,
That living in his heart below,
Another emotion was listening to his song.
Everyday it heard his tune,
The emotion grew and grew,
Because it believed,
In the song above.
Now it was ready,
To meet him above the brain,
As he sang his song of hope,
One last time.
(I have a dream!,
I hope will come true!,
That emotions come to me too!,
I wish that the earth, sea, and sky up above!,
Will send me an emotion,
To cherish.)
Rising from the heart below,
Stood a lonely emotion,
Looking all around,
But it could not see him.
He tried to sing his song,
To let it know it was not alone,
Yet with naught but stone,
His song could not be heard.
He filled his heart below,
With tears that overflowed,
As it remember what his song,
Meant to all.
(I have a dream!,
I hope will come true!,
That emotions come to me too!,
I wish that the earth, sea, and sky up above!,
Will send me an emotion,
To cherish.)
Oh they were so happy!
To finally meet above the brain!
All together now,
His emotions now grew and grew.
No longer are they all alone,
With happiness as their new home,
And when you meet him,
Two voices will sing.
I have a dream!,
I hope will come true!,
That I'll grow old with you!,
And you'll grow old with me!,
I thank the earth, sea, and sky up above!,
God sent me an emotion,
To cherish.
Emotions. We all have them.
So let's talk about it.
Emotions have wormed their way into society since it was invented. Money, power, hierarchy, man, woman, nothing can defeat emotions.
My emotions are a hotpot and mixed bag. It's a cauldron of different sentiments and feelings, different needs and wantons and desires.
I want the need to be happy. I want the wanton of hope. I want the desire to create my own fate.
But I have lost the way. Greed has swollen into my heart. Has taken the reins. My liberties and freedoms.
Don't give yourselves to these kinds of emotions. Who drill you, diet you, tell you what to think and what to do. Goosestepping us into submission. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural emotions, with machine minds, machine hearts.
We are emotional. We have the love of everything in our hearts. We don't hate. Only the unloved emotions hate. The unloved, and unnatural.
My emotions are dead. Replaced by stone, like a dying volcano. They are replaced by logic which contradicts itself, facts which are halftrue.
I see through these things and I am alarmed. I would have the names of these which I have in my sights, but they are without form and speech.
Hate is another emotion that wormed its way into my heart. I hate too much, and feel too little.
I am lost.
[2/14, 11:46 AM] +[Number Redacted]: Yesterday, at 17:48, my cat, named Tigretu, died due to a head injury.
He was 4 kilos, as hard as a giant's fist, and could knock you off balance.
I loved that cat like he was my own son. He would push his head into the palm of your hand or in your forehead.
His meows and trills were music, angelic, to my ears. He cured my depression and suicidal thoughts for so long.
And now that he's gone, they've come back.
I wish all cat owners suffering the same tragedy good luck in overcoming this emotional obstacle. I even fainted for a while out of shock.
I cried. For three hours. Tigretu, loving cat, forever and ever, until the bitter end, amen.
[2/5, 9:49 PM] +[Number Redacted]: The dark spots..
I could go on about them for hours. Everytime it gets harder to climb out of them. To escape them.
Somehow they always find you. I wouldn't have survived this long to type this without my pets. They stopped me many times from doing bad things to myself.
Other times I feel like I can't get out. That I'm suffocating. Burning alive, drowning, losing oxygen, all at the same time. Losing blood.
Losing myself in a maze made of my own misery. Chasing delusions made by my insanity.
I wouldn't consider myself sane. No. Not after all the things I've done. Not after all the things I've been through.
[1/26, 8:33 PM] +[Number Redacted]: Family..
On the topic of family, let's take a look at two examples of family catastrophe in history.
Hamilcar Barca and Philip of Macedon.
Hamilcar took his son, the renowned general Hannibal, to a temple of the Carthaginian God Bhaal to swear an oath that he would never be a friend of Rome, then morphed and molded him into a fighting leader and general who would later on fight in the Second Punic War.
Now the second example, Philip, father of Alexander the Great.
He too molded and shaped his son to be a warrior king. He set it all up for his son. A functioning army, a competent governance system, and all the tools and toys of war and expansion.
Notice something similar? Both cases had unsupervised fathers who took advantage of their sons. Parentage, parenthood, the entire idea of raising a child is thrown out the window if not supervised.
A more modern example might be a drunk dad or mom who can't teach their child that alcohol is bad simply because they themselves are addicted.
Uncles and aunts are a necessity in family. They are what keeps the parents in check and in turn our parents keep the parenthood of our uncles and nieces in check. It's a harmonious symbiotic relationship and status that can fracture from the slightest touch.
It can start from an uncle or aunt teaching bad words harmlessly, and can devolve into the child becoming addicted to a screen, much like I am. Obviously because I am addicted not all fault lies with parents and adults. Some children, like me, were just too curious for their own good.
[7/10/2023, 4:39 PM] +[Number Redacted]: I often ponder suicide. I don't go through with it nowadays of course. It's the greatest sin one can commit, right up there with treason.
Just like Brutus is eternally chewed upon by Satan for betraying Caesar, so would I be eternally enflamed and engulfed in magma and torture for daring to take the soul God gave me and diminishing its light.
But moving on.
I feel like a miserable sack of shit. I can't handle it. It feels like everything around me is withering and dying, slowly spinning and weaving all motions of life and happiness out of every environment I'm in.
I often ponder why someone can't just spin and weave all my sorrow and pain.
So, let me recite a prayer I often ponder. I don't know if God can hear me. I don't know if he even is there. And I would not know nor can I know if he'd listen to a sinner such as I, who lied and broke promises. But God help the outcasts.
God save the epileptics.
God save the schizophrenics.
God save the autists.
Because try as doctors might, they cannot. These three diseases respectively even if miraculously cured will still haunt the afflicted for life up until death as a mental scar that will not fade and will constantly torment them.
Show them some mercy they won't find here on earth. God save these people, because like me they're becoming desolate and downtrod, even if some don't look to you still.
Are they not still the children of God? Your children? Help them.
I wish them wealth for treatment.
I wish them fame to raise awareness.
I wish for pity to shine on their name.
I wish them love that they could posses.
And I wish for God and his angels to bless them.
But I ask for nothing. I can get by, even with this tremendous pain. Even with 2434 days of unstoppable headaches, I still know so many less lucky than I.
And I have realised it's human nature to seek out comfort in a time of tragedy, not a sign of weakness.
It is infact a sign of strength, to admit one's faults and to have the courage to place your emotional distress in the hands of others.
Inevitably many will fault others or the religions they follow for their misfortune.
With some luck, maybe they'll foster this hatred into something that they can use to better themselves or to understand the world around them with greater observation rather than succumb to blind and childish tantrums and disdain. But ultimately, it was epilepsy, not some deity, who caused me such pain and suffering, and to pray, all with a single strike to my brain with its hammer.
This is deeply moving and very much true. It says a lot about life whilst in depression, I am so thankful I overcame it. Not all those who are wandering should ever, ever feel lost. This is really a nice gesture, Luke. And to the young man who wrote this, comes whatever may in life, know that one day, even a cat turns into a lion. We are defined not by our circumstances, no, we never are. We are defined, rather, intimately by how rise above them.