Shadow

I’d never been so scared in my life. I had been in risk situations many times due to my job as a reporter, even in life threatening situations. But this was very different. For the first time in my life I found myself  with an internment in a psychiatric ward of a hospital to get treatment for a severe depression. I was scared because I’d had the experience of losing control of myself. the shadow of madness was haunting me and I was terrified. The admission had been very traumatic. They searched my belongings and took away many things with which I supposedly could hurt myself. They assumed that I was a danger for myself. I felt like in a prison. My mind was already a prison for me. From that moment I had two jails: an inner one in my brain and an external one in that hostile place. The light  colours in rooms and aisles, the smiling faces of doctors and nurses didn’t help me at all at the beginning. My world was dark. My soul was crying. With my imagination I ran away a thousand times to find a hiding place where nobody would find me. But in real life I had no strength to move an inch of my body without help. I would liked  spend days sitting under the shadow of the garden’s tree, immobile, my mind empty. I was longing for solitude. But with solitude came desperation. Fear of myself. I’d never been so scared in my life.

Shadow