This is a poem that sort of tells how my illness begand, as I remember it. I wrote this yesterday.

Claudia

How It Began

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Sweet music.

I would play on the baby grand piano-

Music from my soul that I hardly knew-

I was only six years old-

Notes inscribed across the page, as were the

Bass and treble clefs…

I would dance in my bedroom at twilight and as I

Listened to the waves crashing against the shore of

Rio de Janeiro-

Summer or winter,

It was always the same-

The laughter of the people and

 My father’s abuse

Miserably clashing and I would

Ride my wooden rocking horse into the darkness

Wind blowing my long, dirty blond hair about,

 Into the dead of night only until

My mother would tuck me into my queen-sized bed

Promptly  at eight o’clock-

The sound of the macumba on the beach did not frighten me as

Did the snakes lying at the foot of my bed or upon the

Kerry blue scatter rug, rumpled by my open closet door-

Sweet music played in the back of my mind

My own tunes I had brilliantly composed

Couldn’t overpower the terrors of the darkness and the

Echoing sounds of the wild animals that

Dumped more snakes around my bed-

I rode upon a merry- go- round of horror every night and

My screams summoned my mother to my room and

Only the voices that were not even real could

Deter the insanity of the midnight hour-

Finding myself next to my mother in her bed,

Displacing my father, all I could see

Was that snake wrapped around a severed woman’s hand

Floating and hovering before my eyes-

In some other place I hardly recognized,

Maybe twenty years later, though it was the same bed

I was too frightened to arise from at dawn only because

 The rotting bodies beneath my bed would

Devour me and consume me if I did-

Voices, silent but eerily frightening would scream out my name and

It was then they took me away and locked me in that place-

Going back nearly fifty years now I never would have believed that

I would live my own macumba

Losing touch with reality,

Listening to none but bittersweet music of my

Tormented soul,

Snakes could never be as frightening as

Hearing voices that would tell me

They wanted to kill me and

Whether it was

Summer or winter-

It would always be the same,

Mounting my own proud stallion,

Though imaginary,

I would ride into the depths of futility

Only coming outside on occasions to visit

A world that still terrifies me and

Dance beneath the full moon at twilight

Wishing that I could only hear the sounds of waves

Crashing against the shore again,

Only because they would drown out

The sounds of those voices, and

I would still write my own song, though a sad one,

The poetry of my heart-

Whether summer or winter-

I know that

Things shall always

Be the same- although

I just keep on dancing as I recall

The sweetness of that music and the innocence of my soul

As I would still mount my wooden horse in my fondest dreams and

Gallop away