Regina's Song by David & Leigh Eddings

How I Spent My Vacation

By Twinkie

I spent my vacation in the bughouse, listening to the other buggies screaming and laughing just to pass the time away. Normal people can't seem to understand how nice it is to be nuts sometimes, and that's very sad. People out there in the world of normal have to face reality every day, and reality is usually flat and grey and ugly, and time only runs in one direction, and doorknobs can't talk. A true nutso doesn't have to put with that. We can make our world as beautiful as we want it to be, since it has to do what we tell it to do. 

   Isn't that neat?

   In the world of nuts, nothing is real, so we can change anything we don't like. If a day is beautiful we can make it last for a thousand years; if it's ugly, we can just throw it away. If the sun is too bright, we can send it to its room, and if the stars are too dim, we can tell them to burn more brightly, and they will, just to make us happy.

  That's what makes the world of nuts so much nicer than the world or normies. Our truth wags its tail and licks our fingers; their truth snarls, and it bites. 

  Sometimes, sometimes, those of us in the world of nuts think about the world of the normies, and we've pretty much decided that it might be sort of fun to visit it once in a while, but we certainly wouldn't want to live there. It's just too desperate and ugly, and the normies never seem to get the things they want, no matter how hard they try, and that's very sad. 

  People from the world of the normies used to visit us in the bughouse now and then, but they weren't really very much fun. They always looked so serious and worried and they almost never laughed. Normies just can't seem to see the world the way we buggies see it, so they can't even begin to see how funny it is. They couldn't seem to relax, and their eyes got all wild when the nutso down the hall started to practice screaming. Don't they know that screaming is a fine art? In the Olympic games of the world of nuts, a perfect ten scream wins the gold medal every time. 

  I've moved back to the world of the normies now, and I know that I'm supposed to be serious and never laugh, but sometimes -- sometimes -- I scream a little bit, just for old times' sake. I make it a point to scream politely, though. It's not nice to wake the neighbours in the grey world of the normies. A few quiet little screams aren't really all that disturbing, though, and I always seem to sleep better after I scream.

  And when I sleep, I sometimes dream of the world of nuts, and my doorknob sings to me, and my walls hold me tight, and I drift above the sky and look down at the desperate, grubby, ugly world of the normies where everybody is serious and worried, and never, never, ever smiles. 

  And I laugh.

Renee's Note: This is the best description I have ever read of mental illness. It's the most accurate, most heartfelt and, definitely, the most intuitive piece of work I have come across since being in the "bughouse".

I felt I had to share this as it truly captures how I feel most of the time. I am one of you, yet I am nothing like you.