The
Modus Operandi of Madness
The world broke into a million shards, versicolor
fragments of people, places, and states of being falling into oblivion. Every
last shred of hope binding it together dissipated into nothingness, the
evanescence sending its stability into collapse. All around me, reality lost
form. There was only the grief left in the maelstrom, tethering me to existence
in the absence of happiness. And that was how I found myself adrift, unable to
place reason in this void without structure. My mind unraveled, the fibers
regressing to the fight or flight mania I’ve found myself embracing many a
time. The ticking of the clock remained in the distance, never ceasing to
accommodate the death of sanity. Tick. Tick. Tick. One constant thrum shoving
me further down an ink-black tunnel. This time there were no stars to burn
through the murk, only the ashen shroud obscuring nebulas and myriad planets
untouched. “Call me Wisteria,” I said to no one, just desperate to hear a voice
disturb the silence. This is the modus operandi of madness, the telltale makeup
of an entirely unclassifiable beast. Nothing ascribes to sense. Fervent pain is
the only constant. The sky shifts from day to night in the flutter of a bat’s
wing and sometimes no one can understand why. Unlike the physical body, the
consciousness of the mind has different parameters. Those of us afflicted can
only wade through the deepening mire in search of stability to bring us back to
the real world. Alas, stability doesn’t want to be found, not here in the dark.
Sometimes people can find us in this unstable labyrinth and lead us out into
the waiting sunlight. At others, we despair and spend days trying to reach
anything resembling normality. Death follows us like our own shadow, invisible
when we collapse back into the darkness. We weep. We scream. We throw ourselves
into the nearest object of our interest to stave off returning to these endless
depths of uncertainty. It’s never enough. Distraction doesn’t extend itself
into permanence. The cycle may be interrupted, but it never truly ends. Chained
to our own minds, we remain helpless and afraid of the many sunrises to come. A
world under the lens of madness is as tremulous as mist. Once your mind falls
prey to the harsh reality of it, you’re branded with a mark that finds its way
into the depths of your being. This is insanity as it speaks to the addled. It
will be the language our minds speak until the earth stops spinning on its
axis. Like travelers lost in the wilderness, we will keep on searching the
universe for our refuge, never to reach the solace that doesn’t wait for us.
