This quarter, I read Neal Schusterman's "Challenger Deep" for my young-adult literature course. The story was inspiring and daunting at the same time. It taught me a lot about mental illness and really made me think a lot about how someone with mental illness perceives their reality. This poem is a reflection of that and told from the main character's perspective, Caden, who is a young boy with schizophrenia. The verses that are italicized are another reality that Caden sees. The lines that have quotations are supposed to be both realities. A lot of these lines are taken from the novel, which I highly recommend.
My reality is this:
Sometimes I am in a hospital
And my reality is this:
Sometimes I am sewn to the billowing sails of a ship
Sometimes a girl with blue hair will give me a puzzle piece
Sometimes a parrot will conspire with me to kill the captain
"and sometimes"
A cardboard fort is the realest thing to hold onto
"but"
It's a tough thing to do, even when the sea is calm
And therapists
And doctors will tell you "anger isn't a productive emotion right now"
but I think, "how do you trust a therapist when even the plant in his waiting room is a lie?"
"The thing is, you don't"
Because they are trying to hurt me
But is it true?
But are you sure?
Just as sure as we are on this train
You see, sometimes you realize you're on a bed in a hospital
Sometimes you're convinced it's the white plastic kitchen
"and other times you're certain that you've been sewn to the billowing sails of a ship."
