I have lived my life in a way, where I drowned in shame until psychosis made it possible to be liberated so to speak. And I liberate each day as I am getting better. My Psychologist has said to me that there is nothing more scary to the world than a healed mad person. Having reached the very edge of the world in my travels, you bring certain things back with you. If you survive this, nothing really scares you anymore. I am not ashamed of being mentally ill. I feel that the normal world has not tried to understand my world or my world view and it wanted a complacent, submissive clone who would not bridle at being harmed. The 'normal' world probably won't try to understand. Why would they? But I have learned, their is a very fine line between sanity and madness and I wonder how cause and effect will play out? With the healing comes the last vestiges of shame as they burn up in my madness. My gifts are in my sensitivity. To use a metaphor of a tree so to speak; my tree is different, not exactly like everyone else's: Its leaves not so easily formed, not so shiny from the outside and the limbs may look different. But I have seen some amazingly beautiful trees; their shapes may be different, but they photograph beautifully in black and white. I am always going to be different. How could I not be? I have lived through years of abuse, emotional and psychological and I am carrying the misplaced shame of everyone who knew and did nothing. This is their shame, not mine. I struggle with this, thinking that some part of me asked for it or that it was my fault. What is their excuse for being brutal, sociopathic and cruel? You see, they don't have any, but it seemed fun at the time. And now I carry the stigma of being mentally ill as a result of this abuse. But what is the stigma? Is the stigma the world's view of someone who appeared not to be able to cope, or who was enduring things that have no name but exist in the far reaches of abuse and violence? Or is it the guilt of everyone who looked the other way? There are gifts in my madness and I feel quite relieved that I was sent a psychosis. I have seen and heard poverty of spirit and emotion and find that is far sadder.