By the Author / Source: abuaram.site
For six months now, I have been wearing a surgical mask whenever I go out to buy alcohol. I feel immense anxiety when people stare at me, which causes my face to twitch involuntarily. I smile, I am on the verge of tears, I constantly bite my lips, and a horrific fear takes hold of me. Yet, the moment I reach my destination and drink heavily, the cloud of this misery lifts off my shoulders. When I return home, I take off the mask, as though alcohol has granted me healing. It really does feel like an effective cure that fully relieves my condition, even if it is only temporary.
Strangely enough, the illness hasn’t left me alone; it has metastasized into other parts of my body. I find it difficult to walk, and I feel as though it has concentrated in my eyes and the tone of my voice. I have to cough just to pronounce words clearly, like a broken radio or a stalled engine. I need to cough psychologically to reorder my inner self—as if this illness were a living entity: you manage to suppress it in one part, only for it to flare up in another.
No treatment has helped me get rid of this illness. For years, I underwent various therapies with specialists and psychiatrists, yet none of them succeeded in finding the right cure for me. I take antipsychotics, antidepressants, and mood stabilizers, all without any noticeable improvement. I believe I need a tailored dose of schizophrenia medication suited to my state, but these fools fail to provide appropriate therapeutic solutions.
Regardless, I am sick of seeking treatment, and I have no desire to start anything new. I just coexist with the condition, barely tolerating these damned medications. I drink weekly, staying cooped up at home and going out just once to buy alcohol. My entire life is dominated by this illness; I have no existence outside of its identity and demands. I work in tech and computer-related jobs—mostly because it is the only kind of work I can actually manage. I cannot function in the real world with its social demands.
I don’t care anymore; all of these things have come to feel completely trivial, and there is nothing left for me to do. The illness has entrenched itself in my mind—it forms a massive part of who I am and has inhabited me for far too long. Curing it is difficult; I gave it numerous attempts, but failed. I am exhausted from trying, and I no longer care to try. I simply live my life around it and try to enjoy my time as best I can.
Going back to the surgical mask: I often feel the urge to wear full face masks, along with dark sunglasses. However, a surgical mask is the only socially acceptable, non-conspicuous option in this backward, primitive society. If I were in Europe or Israel, I would wear whatever I wanted without a second thought. But this society is profoundly regressive and intellectually decayed; people obsess over the most trivial details of clothing, privacy is non-existent, and everyone monitors each other. Even so, the surgical mask still draws glances—in these crowded streets, I hardly see anyone else wearing one right now, knowing my reasons are purely psychological. Still, I don’t care about their opinions; I wear it simply because it makes stepping outside far more bearable.
How can it be, in a world boasting such immense human advancement and modern psychiatry, that these incompetent Palestinian doctors—who have detained me dozens of times—remain completely incapable of treating me? Are they not utterly foolish and wrong? They have committed me repeatedly, locking me away in their hospitals time after time, yet they failed to offer me any real cure.
At any rate, this is the point I have reached in my life’s journey. I have ceased to care. I simply live within the bounds of my limited energy and according to the immediate demands of my psychological state—nothing more.
