top of page
Truth
Soveriegnty
Unconditional
Love
A visual memoir of psychosis, recovery, memory, and meaning.
The First Crack...
Centurion parade
book one
only good children
A bright white room filled with antiques and polished furniture. I was told to touch nothing. I was a child being “rehabilitated” for bad behavior.
They gave me a turtle suit with nothing beneath it, thin scraps to keep my parts barely covered. I had to roll in it, somersault-like, to move from one place to the next. The white light burned my skin. Each time I failed, I was sent back to the beginning to redo the assignment.
At some point, I ended up in a puddle, my face pressed beneath a metal toilet. My head only fit if I turned it at an angle. I was instructed to twist and pull myself free. I gritted my teeth as the metal dug into my collarbone.
“Only good children,” they said. My hands cuffed to the pipe.
“Only good children get out of here.”
I repeated it after them, through clenched teeth.
“Only good children…”
I thrashed, wet hair whipping into my eyes, as they quickly grew impatient.
green coat
Imagine being a schoolgirl trapped in a single room. Outside the narrow window in the door, the scenes shifted and changed, but I could never leave. I whispered to myself, pacing, circling, searching for a way out.
I wore a bright green vintage coat with a hood. Sometimes someone would enter, and I’d try to catch their attention — but they ignored me, like I wasn’t there.
Once, a man came to the window. His eyes locked on mine.
“Can you see me?” I asked.
His smile stretched wide, sinister, his eyes twinkling with hunger.
I begged him:
“Tell my family I’m here. Get help.”
He didn’t move. He just stared, salivating from his eyes. Finally, he turned and joined a crowd passing through. My heart broke — and yet I felt a strange relief.
The crowd was part of a haunted house tour.
After what felt like eternities, I turned and saw my green coat crumpled on the cement floor. It was lumped in places, as though a small body was rotting beneath it. The realization hit me: a spirit who had become aware of her own death.
I floated upward, weightless, carried into the sky. And in the distance, the finishing chorus of “Breezeblocks” by Alt-J:
Please don’t go, please don’t go, I love you so, I love you so.
Finally, I felt peace.
hugs need to happen
My husband’s mother and I were saving babies whose arms had been taken from them. Armless and cherub-like, they were thrown overboard — their white christening gowns floating above them like ghost sails.
It felt like another century, early last or late the one before, on a massive steam liner with round nautical windows.
We confronted those in charge of this savage custom. We insisted the babies must keep their arms. One day they would need to hug each other.
Because hugs need to happen.
dictator
The slate-grey metal door had a picture on it. Curious, I leaned closer.
The detail was astounding. A large, menacing figure with white skin and sunken eyes stared back at me. A ruler. A dictator. He barked orders to smaller figures who worked with vintage mechanical parts.
They noticed me. I tried to interact with them, but the dictator warned me to leave them alone.
Then I heard screaming behind the door.
Ben.
I pounded the metal. Through the small rectangular window, I saw him dragged into a cell, tortured. I shouted for his release. The dictator in the picture hissed: "Stop screaming. You’re making it worse for him."
But I couldn’t stop. His screams went on and on. Every protest, every plea I made — the voice repeated: You’re making it worse.
After what felt like millennia, Ben was released. But he wouldn’t speak to me. Wouldn’t look at me. As if it were my fault.
Then something slithered from behind.
I turned — and saw Death. A green hood over a skeletal figure sprawled like a run-over animal. He moved only when I looked away, creeping toward me. If I turned my eyes back, he froze. This cycle repeated. On and on. Ad nauseam. Until eventually, Death stopped being a threat — or I no longer knew the difference.
At the top of the dictator’s picture was a smaller figure with pointed ears, sharp as a cat’s. He clutched a number.
The number counted down. And each time it dropped, the picture on the door changed.
The small figure grew frantic. I knew the countdown was bad. Very bad.
Zero arrived. Something in me faltered. I made a mistake — horrible, maybe fatal.
And then the numbers turned negative.
That was when I entered hell.
hell
The cement floor was crude and rough against my bare ass.
I sat cross-legged, knees bent, one leg tucked over the other. Indian style.
A voice told me I was stuck here forever.
Because of all the cursing I did.
The more pissed I got, the more I cursed.
The more I cursed, the longer my sentence stretched.
XVDM.
It flashed in my mind like Roman numerals. Each letter meant more time.
Fuck! Another lifetime.
Motherfucker! Another eternity.
I felt sick.
I tried to stop, but cursing was sewn into me. I couldn’t tear it out.
A whisper slid across my ear: You don’t have to stay forever. You can leave soon.
Then louder: No. That’s wrong. You are here forever. Forever times. And then another forever stacked on top. And another. And another.
Forever multiplied into itself, folding until infinity was a single tick of the clock.
Each eternity dragged past like a long, dull hour to a bored child.
And still I remained, rotting in this Godforsaken cement rectangle.
cholesterol world
I woke up on a space vessel. Everything was stained with a margarine-yellow hue.
The pilot wasn’t human. He looked at me and asked if I was okay.
Then it began — a barrage of images, flooding into me faster than I could take them. Histories of extraterrestrials, human wars, our slice of the galaxy.
I begged for them to slow down.
Instead, they accelerated.
The flood became unbearable, like being strapped to a ride spinning out of control. My head pounded. I tried to steady myself, to breathe, to center — but the tide overtook me.
Then it happened. My mind broke. A snap inside me, sharp as bone.
And then again.
And again.
Each break was sickening. I begged for death, but still the snapping went on — maybe ten times before I lost count.
And then nothing.
I was gone.
I don’t remember what finally brought relief. Maybe it was being sealed in a cement room again, with no one to talk to and nowhere to go.
centurion parade
A beautiful cacophony of costumed figures — colorful artists and musicians — paraded through my cement room. Each segment had their own friends, their own themes.
Every time a jovial group passed, they asked me to get dressed and join them. A hole opened in the ground, stretching wide so they could pass through.
I always declined, excusing myself with the promise that I had to help repair costumes. Disappointed, they would move on — until the next group arrived with another invitation.
“I’ll join later,” I reassured.
But later came, and disappointment set in. The parade was ending, and I was still in the cement room, unable to join the procession.
The gorgeous parade-goers called themselves Centurions. They managed time from different eras. I loved every one of them — and, somehow, it was reciprocated.
The parade could have lasted forever, and I would infinitely be enamored.
bottom of page