Saturday 16 April 2011

troubled

His mother strode along the corridor, "oh quieten will you, nobody's after you," something she's said for 30 years or so. Thirty years caring for her son. And now we're at a loss. He's been to many facilities; turned away from many, not coped in many. And here we are again, rejections and options running thin. He shouts, shouts louder, paces, hands failing. The uncertainty is too much. These voices have troubled him from youth, from those early teen years. When the shouting settles, a shell of a man remains, apologising profusely, unable to control these outbursts. A personality somehow evades this chap, destroyed even before it had a chance to blossom. The voices, the thoughts too much for a child to handle. And now a grown man, lost, fumbling, child like in the midst of the harsh adult world. But his mother is still with me, his father hobbles along propped up by a stick. The father is quiet and full of thanks but with a look of defeat, of regret, of a hard life. His mother is tearful, wanting the best for her boy. A boy who is long since a man, yet troubled with the affliction of illness. Illness that has halted a personality, distroyed hopes of a life expected as the norm at birth. Illness that society all too quickly rejects or ignores, frightened of what lies beneath, frightened of the possibility. Even the highest does of the best medicines do not seem to help, the illness runs too deep, too entrenched. This is medicine.

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