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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2031374-Schizophrenic-and-Atheist
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by jason Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E · Article · Biographical · #2031374
some of my experiences of my conflict between my reason and my hallucinations
I'll start out by giving a brief history of my life.  I grew up in Northeastern Arkansas and went to a good school.  It was good because there was a military base across from the small town where B-52's took off and landed in huge rushes of black smoke and sound.  There were some real geniuses in my class which I didn't know at the time.  My parents insisted on me being a genius too and put me in the gifted and talented classes.  I found out later that I had an average IQ, which in my present estimation is the main reason I am at where I am at presently, which is in an assisted living facility, being a paraplegic and schizophrenic.  Anyway, I did well in school, even in college, up until the age of about 19 when I had a complete meltdown perhaps egged on by some drug use and slipped uneasily and unknowingly into schizophrenia.  My life since then has been, forgive my hubris, if that applies here, a living hell.  I have had many, probably millions by this date, auditory hallucinations and quiet some fewer visual ones.  I would like to talk about one visual hallucination I had about 2 years ago when I was living alone in a government apartment in Trumann AR.  To preface the story I will say that I had smoked some marijuana a few days prior.  I have always been one to push the envelope, so to speak, although I never went as far as heroin use or meth or anything really really bad.  Anyway, I had woken up and spent the day doing little of anything.  I didn't have a television and my concentration was too crippled to be any use in reading.  So, it was a sunny day and there was a wooden fence about 8 feet tall around the apartments, sort of a privacy fence.  I was perfectly sober.  The high from the marijuana had left my system some days earlier.  I was sitting in my living room on my couch being bored when I happened to look out the back window at the fence.  I saw some shadow like material moving in between the slats of the fence.  At first I thought perhaps someone was passing on the other side of the fence or a the shadows were being produced by the effect you get when you look through a slat and the shadow kind of moves up and down with your own movement.  I quickly realized this was not the case.  I kept my head perfectly still to rule out the possibility previously described after waiting to rule out someone passing by.  The black material or whatever it was was moving on its own in between the slats.  I watched becoming fascinated by this as I surely believe anyone would.  I looked up at the top crossbeam of the fence, a four by four board that ran the length of the fence and there propped up sideways on the rail was a white cross about maybe 9 inches long and 4 wide.  I couldn't quite make out what the cross was made of, but if I had to guess, I would say metal because it looked like it had gold trim around it.  This was all about ten maybe fifteen feet away.  My first thought was that the cross was preventing the black stuff from coming through the fence.  I don't know why I thought this but it was the first thing that crossed my mind.  I had the feeling I was looking at something very otherworldly.  I watched the black stuff and the cross for about twenty minutes when I became restless all of a sudden and went into the other room.  When I came back in several minutes later, the black stuff and the cross were gone. 
The reason I am telling you this is because I have always had a great conflict within me as to whether to believe in God or not.  I told a Christian friend about the episode and she said it was Jesus drawing me to the cross, but then I watch Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris on YouTube and ah-ha you have the conflict.  There have been many more of these types of incidents in my life and it is my intention to relate as many as I can remember to whomever may read this, not for any feedback, for ones decisions on such matters certainly are not solicited by normal people and my life has been a long struggle to get back to normal, whatever that means.  I mean there's the old cliché, well no one is really normal, but the things I have seen have not been reported by other people and I am diagnosed schizophrenic for it, but I digress.....  Hope you have a nice day!
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