What is your most prized possession? Is it your house? Your car? No,
your most precious possession is much more valuable than that. As humans, we
take things for granted. With so much
stuff all around us, what we really value the most is a given, always there. We
always worry about other things, things that don’t really matter. By the time
you realise what you prize most, it has already been taken away.
My mum was a scientist – a marine biologist. She travelled the
world, studying fascinating creatures of distant oceans. The doctors don’t know
where she got it. I suppose it doesn’t really matter anymore.
It started with the paranoia. I told myself that it was just a midlife
crisis, that she’d snap out of it. I should have known better. My mum has
always been a rock in my life – constant, reliable and unchanging. I tried to
help her, tried to persuade myself that her increasingly erratic behaviour
could be explained by anything – any small, easily fixable thing. I kept
thinking she would get better on her own – after all, she’s never been sick a
day in her life.
By the time she wouldn’t go out of the house for fear of the
neighbours spying on her, wouldn’t eat as she was sure Woolworths was poisoning
her food, I knew something had to be done.
The doctors were completely baffled. They tried everything they
knew, but it just kept getting worse. My mother was going insane and nobody
could stop it. No drug, no surgery could get back for her that which she had
always valued beyond anything else.
I remember worrying about not getting the dress I wanted for a
party, worrying about which neighbourhood I live in and which type of car I
drive. I laugh scornfully at myself. What I wouldn’t give to have those worries
back now, for the most pressing things on my mind to be so trivial. Day after
day, I sit in my room, surrounded by the useless stuff that I used to prize so
much, but not one thing can help me get back what really matters.
Now the woman who used to be my mother is in a locked ward, heavily
sedated for her own safety. I stopped visiting a while ago. I may as well be
visiting a stranger. A stranger who doesn’t know she has a daughter.
Yesterday, I started experiencing symptoms of paranoia.
I haven’t told anyone yet. I don’t want to see the looks of horror
on their faces when they realise that whatever my mum has is catchy. I spend my
days with friends and family, but it becomes harder to hide the growing symptoms.
One by one, I tell them that I love them, then bid them a silent goodbye.
Finally, only I am left. I can feel the insanity creeping up on me,
stalking the dark edges of my mind. Soon, it will be too strong, and I will be
carried away on the whirlwind, just like my mother. A tear falls down my cheek
as I fully realise what I am losing. Before all this, I would have thought it
was the end of the world to lose my brand new car. Now, I would trade
everything I have just not to lose myself.
I fight it for a long time, but eventually, I know it is time. Time
to go gracefully. Time to let go. I get up and look in the mirror, looking at
myself. The next thing I see will probably be the walls of a padded room. No,
the next thing these eyes see. I won’t be there. I take some small comfort
that, even if insanity is stealing my mind from me, at least I won’t be there
to see it.
I stifle a sob and tell myself that it is the not worst thing. I
have had a good life, short as it was. I only wish I had appreciated what I had
before it was almost gone. I stare at the brown eyes in the mirror, and they
stare back at me. I can feel the madness surging, ready for my surrender,
waiting to take me like it did my mum.
Maybe I will see her, wherever I am going. Is there some place that
lost minds go to?
I take the snippet of hope, telling myself that I will see her
again. Then I address the face in the mirror for the last time.
“Goodbye,” I whisper.
The swirling madness rears upwards, and I am gone.
Your most prized possession is your mind. Like all humans, you don’t
really appreciate what you have until it is gone. By then it is too late. What
you have taken for granted has already been lost.
