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Description
It's almost as if this song was written specifically for me (I know it wasn't, but it just describes me so well). Some of you might recognize these lyrics to be the end title song from the 2004 film adaptation of "The Phantom of the Opera"...a very delightful movie, and I've always identified quite strongly with the Phantom. We share similar plights. The only difference is his bane was his outward appearance; mine is the chaotic abnormal nature of my mind.

For as long as I can remember, solitude and loneliness have made up a significant part of my life. In fact, I have been alone for so long until even the potential prospect of ending my loneliness has become an untouchable fantasy, for I have been rendered psychologically incapable of exhibiting the empathetic characteristics necessary to truly honor any manner of extrovertive relationship. I am bipolar, schizophrenic, borderline autistic, and have split personalities. Simply put, I am emotionally-impotent. I derive no value or mirth from life, and I question my own existence as my day-to-day life feels like little more than a dreary dream...and of course since I my own existence is in question, it stands to reason that everyone else appears little different than a mirage. As far as I'm concerned, the people I talk to on a day-to-day basis are no different than the phantoms of my tortured mind.

I've always been alone, ever since early childhood. I was abused and neglected; mostly ignored at school and at home my tyrannical father scared off any potential playmates with his racism and intolerable temper. I was a very awkward youth, and as such people felt more inclined to mock me than to be my friend, and the few friends I would make would eventually go on to make new friends and leave me behind in the shadows. I was like an imaginary friend; there when people needed me and forgotten once they didn't. As I grew older I seemed to become more and more invisible, and in high school I might as well have been a ghost for how little people noticed me. Those who did noticed me knew very little about me; they all seemed more fascinated by what I could do and my bizarre mannerisms. I guess I was more of a passing fancy to most of them; something to be seen and entertained but too weird to ever really get to know, but I suppose I can't blame them for that; for how can you get to know someone whose very personality was stitched together from a collection of fictional characters. Much of the foundation for my mind was built up and around cartoons...I even learned to talk from them; hence the reason why my voice sounds like that of a toon.

For years, the voices in my head have been my closest companions. In reality, the stories that I write and the characters in them are the direct byproduct of my Schizophrenia. So many hours of my isolated childhood, was spent locked inside my own head until I created a whole other world and identity there to replace the lack of substance I found in the Waking World, and even now that I am almost 30 I still find myself preferring my delusional fantasy world and imaginary friends to this earthly world and my off-and-on distant friends. Not to speak ill of the few real friends I do have in this world, but so out-of-place and alien do I feel amongst them until I am just as alone with them as I am without them. Love and romance are completely out of the question, for the only way to reach my heart now would be to enter my fantasy world and allow yourself to be assimilated by it, and this task would only leave you surrounded by the opposing sides of my psyche who are so developed in their own right until it is though I have five heads in place of one. I am no longer a person. I am a living book; a compendium of strange stories, unearthly thoughts, and peculiar characters. I am a mad artist, but I am in love with my madness. It makes me myself into a unique and original living art piece, but what good is it to be a living work of fiction in a world where dreams shrivel up and die?

My mind and soul has been claimed by fantasy. It is my muse...but it is also my warden and master, and no worldly heart may ever come between it and I, thus I am forever alone.

Description
It's almost as if this song was written specifically for me (I know it wasn't, but it just describes me so well). Some of you might recognize these lyrics to be the end title song from the 2004 film adaptation of "The Phantom of the Opera"...a very delightful movie, and I've always identified quite strongly with the Phantom. We share similar plights. The only difference is his bane was his outward appearance; mine is the chaotic abnormal nature of my mind.

For as long as I can remember, solitude and loneliness have made up a significant part of my life. In fact, I have been alone for so long until even the potential prospect of ending my loneliness has become an untouchable fantasy, for I have been rendered psychologically incapable of exhibiting the empathetic characteristics necessary to truly honor any manner of extrovertive relationship. I am bipolar, schizophrenic, borderline autistic, and have split personalities. Simply put, I am emotionally-impotent. I derive no value or mirth from life, and I question my own existence as my day-to-day life feels like little more than a dreary dream...and of course since I my own existence is in question, it stands to reason that everyone else appears little different than a mirage. As far as I'm concerned, the people I talk to on a day-to-day basis are no different than the phantoms of my tortured mind.

I've always been alone, ever since early childhood. I was abused and neglected; mostly ignored at school and at home my tyrannical father scared off any potential playmates with his racism and intolerable temper. I was a very awkward youth, and as such people felt more inclined to mock me than to be my friend, and the few friends I would make would eventually go on to make new friends and leave me behind in the shadows. I was like an imaginary friend; there when people needed me and forgotten once they didn't. As I grew older I seemed to become more and more invisible, and in high school I might as well have been a ghost for how little people noticed me. Those who did noticed me knew very little about me; they all seemed more fascinated by what I could do and my bizarre mannerisms. I guess I was more of a passing fancy to most of them; something to be seen and entertained but too weird to ever really get to know, but I suppose I can't blame them for that; for how can you get to know someone whose very personality was stitched together from a collection of fictional characters. Much of the foundation for my mind was built up and around cartoons...I even learned to talk from them; hence the reason why my voice sounds like that of a toon.

For years, the voices in my head have been my closest companions. In reality, the stories that I write and the characters in them are the direct byproduct of my Schizophrenia. So many hours of my isolated childhood, was spent locked inside my own head until I created a whole other world and identity there to replace the lack of substance I found in the Waking World, and even now that I am almost 30 I still find myself preferring my delusional fantasy world and imaginary friends to this earthly world and my off-and-on distant friends. Not to speak ill of the few real friends I do have in this world, but so out-of-place and alien do I feel amongst them until I am just as alone with them as I am without them. Love and romance are completely out of the question, for the only way to reach my heart now would be to enter my fantasy world and allow yourself to be assimilated by it, and this task would only leave you surrounded by the opposing sides of my psyche who are so developed in their own right until it is though I have five heads in place of one. I am no longer a person. I am a living book; a compendium of strange stories, unearthly thoughts, and peculiar characters. I am a mad artist, but I am in love with my madness. It makes me myself into a unique and original living art piece, but what good is it to be a living work of fiction in a world where dreams shrivel up and die?

My mind and soul has been claimed by fantasy. It is my muse...but it is also my warden and master, and no worldly heart may ever come between it and I, thus I am forever alone.