as a psychosis survivor or patient, i found myself in a pretty dark lonely place. i started writing in my insolation, a kind of a getaway. started with small things ended up with a published compilation! the story starts goes like this.
The inability to mentally tell the difference between fantasy and reality; being unaware of time, space, and events around me as we define them in our daily routine, our way of living in this world.
This is what the psychiatrist told me in April 2007. This was after nights of intense sadness, moments of unrelenting anger, days of drug addiction, and the chance of meeting the devil in the desert. This was after I was convinced, for many reasons and no reason at all, that I was actually in touch with many worlds, many realms. Collapsing among the many emotional and academic failures, I found myself swimming in tears among the torrent of a nervous breakdown.
The use of drugs and a genetic disposition triggered this mental condition. The psychiatrist told me this in April 2007. He prescribed some medicine and I struggled through the rest of the college year. Yet the next few years were a constant struggle, a school year of failure and complete possession of medication. Returning to my home, my family, I was a shell of a man. I was lifeless, indifferent, emotionally drained yet a well spring of intensity. I was no longer a slave to the drugs that triggered this, yet now I was a slave to what was supposed to be the cure.
In 2010 I decided to face my mental illness and start some treatment. For the next three years I traveled a long, arduous road to some kind of balance, some form of recovery. I had to wrap my mind around the reality what I would be on some kind of drug for this condition, for the rest of my life.
But I’m still here, fighting for my life! It is a long fight, and I promise to cheat death every way possible, and win with life in every way possible. I promise to be an example for drug addicts and psychosis patients. There is hope. We must stay strong. Medicine and writing give me balance, give me reason, and instill in me an abundance of hope.
Yet the struggle continues.
Hamza Matar
a sample of my work
Salvation. I see it in the far horizon
I am extending my hands to reach
and am no savior
not even to myself
what I seek is wings
to fly there
but when you reach the horizon
another one will appear
as earth is round like a sphere
