“A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
When I first became schizophrenic at age 12, I was introduced to this fantasy world. Or it may be more accurate to say fantasy universe. Universes? Multiverse? Well, whatever.
I didn’t really choose to go there. I would just be minding my own business, walking around, or laying in bed, or in church. And suddenly I would be in an entirely different place.
When I first went there, it was a safe place. I could play and talk to people and interact with the environment. But then things got bad. They got dangerous.
As time went by, sometimes I would be sucked into the middle of a battlefield. Sometimes I would be pulled into a dark, windowless cell with only the scratching of rats for company. Or I would open my eyes in the fantasy world and find myself tied to a stake while people muddled about setting up wood to burn me alive.
People I knew in this fantasy world began to die in horrifying ways. People I was close to. People I had grown to love.
Everything about this world felt real. It was tactile, olfactory, visual…I could even feel the pain.
I never knew when I would be dragged into this alternate world, so I was always on guard. As I grew older, I developed terms for this fantasy world and the actual world, to be able to describe them. I call the fantasy world the Otherworld and call our world the Primary World.
Post 44 in Socially Unacceptable: The Daily Life of a Queer Schizophrenic Wreck (2022)
This is an autobiographical series about my life, something I have wanted to do for a long time. I intend to add new content daily.
For the whole series, follow this link.
The Queer Schizophrenic 