It’s a very, very mad world

While perusing deviantart the other week, I happened upon this piece by a Hungarian artist working under the username KA-113. I found the photograph so haunting and well done that I decided to check out the rest of her work.

When I came upon this piece, I immediately loved it. I kept the window open while I worked on something else, and kept returning to it, wanting to comment, but being unsure of what to say, exactly.

Then it finally hit me. I was drawn to it so much because the creature looked so much like the most dominant group of creatures I’d feared during my psychotic break (and at times outside of the break, but their presence was the most severe during that period).

I commented to the artist, not sure if she’d understand what I had to say, but needing to say it, anyway. I summarized my disorder and explained how I’d finally realized why I liked the piece so much and what it meant to me.

I received a reply comment the next day informing me that the artist herself was diagnosed with schizophrenia last year as well, and “these demons” had “hunted [her] year by year.”

I was taken by complete surprise at her comment because I hadn’t expected her to understand much of what I meant (regarding my disorder, not my English), let alone apparently share the same hallucinations as me! It was utterly bizarre, but also quite “nice” in a way. When it comes to hearing voices, having various delusions, and hallucinating, it’s very difficult to communicate what it’s like to anyone who doesn’t deal with the same thing, and even when one is able to find another who understands, everything rarely matches up exactly the same. There are similar stories of what people experience (delusions of being persecuted by the government / other people in general / the devil probably being amongst the top “popular” categories), but it’s rare to find someone who shares your experience completely. This woman is the only person I’ve come across so far who has apparently seen the same things I’ve seen, and it’s a “relief” in an odd way. I’d obviously prefer that nobody deal with anything like this, but it’s nice to stumble across someone who can understad more than others about what my world is made up of at times. I think the biggest frustration in this all is that it’s near impossible for other people to truly understand anything about my experiences, and it’s unsettling for me to realize that this whole other world only exists to me, so it’s nice to find someone else who can understand better than most about where I’m coming from.