The Shattered Mirror

A Window into my Mind

Welcome.

Well, my website has once again undergone another change. It's new form is that of a release for all the emotions bouncing around inside me. You'll find poems, both by me and others, and long texts revealing my thoughts. It may seem rather depressing, but that's the way life is, and there's no changing it.

When I first thought about doing this, I was worried about whether or not if I should put my name to this. In the end, I decided that I might as well, since theres really no reason I shouldn't. The net is a vast place, and the only anyone would ever come upon this page is by chance, or if I give them the link. So, the chances of someone I don't want seeing this page seeing this page is next to none.

If you are viewing this page, I hope you find it an interesting read.

Jeffrey Arthur Healy

The Shattered Mirror

When I look inside me I
find a mirror that once reflected
all that I was, and all that I could be.
But cruel, cruel faye has cast its stone,
and I am left to pick through the pieces
and wonder if I will ever find a way
to fix the shattered mirror of my life.

Nobody seems to understand the fact that all the fancy pills and techniques in the world cannot help me if I cannot find it in myself to want that help. And while I may indeed need that help, I can not currently find it in myself to want that help. And that makes all the difference in the world. You see, as far as I can tell, there is no reason in my life that makes it worth the effort to continue on.

Alone

Edgar Allen Poe
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Back in the seventies, a political scientist proposed a reason as to why so many of the homeless people out there stayed homeless. He said that about half of the homeless people were that way because they had a radically present-oriented outlook on life. No matter how much money they were given, they would always remain homeless because they placed no value on work, sacrifice, self-improvement, or service. Regardless of whether or not he was right about that being the reason for their homelessness, I believe he was correct in that there are people like that in the world. I know this because I am one of those people. I have no hopes, no dreams, no goals, no desires, no ambitions, no nothing. I have never thought about anything more than the now. I am empty inside.

The Edge

I stand at the brink of nothingness,
looking out at the void.
I long for its final embrace,
the darkness closing around me,
holding me for eternity.
I wish, so hard, to take that last step.
But I cannot bring myself to it,
And yet I cannot walk away.
So I walk along the edge of oblivion,
step by step, day by day.
I live upon the edge of oblivion,
step by step, day by day.

Today, out of sheer boredom, I watched Being John Malkovich. It's a movie about a guy who finds a portal that allows him to be John Malkovich for 15 minutes. It was quite an interesting watch, and it also embodied one of my deepest wishes: to be able to be someone else, even if for only a little while. For me, it wouldn't even have to be someone famous, or powerful, or anything. Hell, I wouldn't give a damn who i could be as long as for that short amount of time, I wouldn't have to be me.

Admonitions to a Special Person

Anne Sexton
Watch out for power, 
for its avalanche can bury you, 
snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain. 

Watch out for hate, 
it can open its mouth and you’ll fling yourself out 
to eat off your leg, an instant leper. 

Watch out for friends, 
because when you betray them, 
as you will, 
they will bury their heads in the toilet 
and flush themselves away. 

Watch out for intellect, 
because it knows so much it knows nothing 
and leaves you hanging upside down, 
mouthing knowledge as your heart 
falls out of your mouth. 

Watch out for games, the actor’s part, 
the speech planned, known, given, 
for they will give you away 
and you will stand like a naked little boy, 
pissing on your own child-bed. 

Watch out for love 
(unless it is true, 
and every part of you says yes including the toes), 
it will wrap you up like a mummy, 
and your scream won’t be heard 
and none of your running will end. 

Love? Be it man. Be it woman. 
It must be a wave you want to glide in on, 
give your body to it, give your laugh to it, 
give, when the gravelly sand takes you, 
your tears to the land. To love another is something 
like prayer and can’t be planned, you just fall 
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief. 

Special person, 
if I were you I’d pay no attention 
to admonitions from me, 
made somewhat out of your words 
and somewhat out of mine. 
A collaboration. 
I do not believe a word I have said, 
except some, except I think of you like a young tree 
with pasted-on leaves and know you’ll root 
and the real green thing will come. 

Let go. Let go. 
Oh special person, 
possible leaves, 
this typewriter likes you on the way to them, 
but wants to break crystal glasses 
in celebration, 
for you, 
when the dark crust is thrown off 
and you float all around 
like a happened balloon.

Religion

Run and hide, folks. This topic is one of my sore spots.

I am an atheist. Deep down, I believe I've always been one, but I did participate in my parent's religion until about a year ago. My parents are Roman Catholic, although to tell the truth, they're kinda slacking off theologically themselves as of late.

I honesty can see no way that there exists a God like the one talked about in a Bible. There are a lot of reasons for this. For example, the consensus is that if you commit suicide, you're going straight to Hell. Look at the logic of this. You've had a life chock-full of sorrow and pain, and you commit suicide as a way out. But because you committed suicide, your soul is going to spend eternity of suffering in Hell. What kind of God would let this happen?

Here's another example of how badly religion is screwed over. According to the Bible and widespread belief, God is omnicognant, so he knows all. Wouldn't that mean that when he created humanity, he'd known all that was going to happen to us, yet he made us anyways? Not very nice coming from the being that is supposed to be our protector and guide. For a tangent on this thread: by the same reasoning, wouldn't he have known of the treachery of Lucifer, and therefore could have prevented it? Not much of a God to let something like that happen in his organization.

However, my biggest supporter of why I think God does not exist is this: Look at the condition of our world. Terrible things happen every day; wars, famine, disease. The purpose of having a God is so that he can intervene upon our behalf. If all he does is sit and watch, what good is he? Why bother worshipping him if we don't get anything out of it?

Alright, just to add some variety, here are some non-depressing, and even in some cases inspirational, poems. People may wonder why someone feeling like I am has poems like these on the page. Just because I am depressed doesn't mean I don't appreciate beauty. Even in sadness one can find beauty, and sometimes the beauty found in sadness is the most beautiful of all.

The Road not Taken

Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
               
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Frost has always been one of my favorite poets. His poems have always touched something inside me. I think he is one of the few poets out there whose poems really call to my emotions.

The Light Within

When the light outside is gone,
And the darkness closes in,
Be strong, and remember that
Nothing can quench the light within.

Other People

Here we go again.

I have a feeling that my entire problem with life right now comes from dealing with other people. When I was growing up, I had maybe 2 or 3 friends. I was always one of those people who was left out, and I pretty much grew up just another guy in the corner, overlooked and ignored.

Now, this wouldn't really be a bad thing, except for the fact that something inside me is driving me to fit in. I mean, if you gave me a good long book and a nice, quiet area, I'd be fine. I really don't mind being alone that much anymore: it's peaceful, and quiet, and it gives you time to think. But deep inside, there's this voice driving me to fit in, to get people to like me and be my friend. It's annoying, but I just can't make it go away.

Further enhancing the problem is the fact that, for some inexplicable reason, people seem to take great pleasure in using me as a punching bag, physically and verbally. I've never been one to fight back, or really fight at all, so I guess I'm just a prime target.

War

Mildred Velie
Is there no end of war? The skies are bright
While smoke of battle dooms the enenomed fields
With mimic lightnings hurled across the night,
And back to savagery the sad earth reels;
But hope of death the gruesome day reveals:
No more does peace her snowy banner wave;
The wreck of youth, the god of war conceals,
As, bearing a many noble heart and brave,
Proud crafts descend to doom beneath the shattered wave.

O tempora! O mores! While the fray
Resounds across the seas, from shore to shore,
We scan the far horizon; Lo! Today,
A nation is; tomorrow, is no more,
And love is but a legend fair of yore.
Behold the dizzy monarch of the skies,
His radiance darkened, as his throne before,
The souls from many a battlefield arise,
And tyrant's word the law of man and God defies.

Foretold, O prophet of the Apocalypse,
Earth's direful doom approaching! Worn with time,
An ominous sun into the ocean dips;
The stars, encircling, chant in tone sublime,
Our mystic woes, in universal rhyme.
Famine has kissed the land, with livid lips;
Destructions shrouds full many a sunny chime;
Each trembling heart the demon, Terror, grips;
The light of Hope is dim in unforseen eclipse.

Yesterday was my first day of group therapy. It might help, except for the fundamental issue that all my problems have come from my interactions with groups of people. Don't get me wrong, the people in the group are nice and all, but I am just inherently nervous about talking about this stuff in front of other people. I have a hard enough time talking to the therapist I see once a week when it's just me and him, let alone when there are 3 therapists and 6 other kids in the room. I just kinda subconsciously clam up.

Music

Hazel McConnell
Too beautiful music,
A haunting refrain
Makes me sad-
Lonely on a hilltop
In the rain.
Makes me feel
I have not done
That which I
Was sent to do,
Makes me long
And hunger to know
All things true.
Too beautiful music,
A haunting refrain,
Are you, perhaps,
The echoing grandeur
Of some celestial pain?

Today, I had a startling insight. I realized that the real reason, the true reason for me writing all this down on my webpage. When I first started this, I kept thinking to myself I was doing it so that I could let other people know how I felt, and maybe get them to take pity on me. Now I realize that I have done all this because, when I look at it and read it, I can treat t like any other book, and think of it all as someone else's problem. As long as I'm reading it, I can feel like I'm just reading a tragic book, and my life on the other side of that book is all hunky-dory.

The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot
I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V 

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow 

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Y'know, the more time I spend in therapy, the more I think it's not not for me. Contrary to the popular opinion, therapy isn't really doing anything to help me. As a matter of fact, it's making me feel worse because the therapists are making me look inside myself and answer a bunch of questions that I've avoided so that I could be reasonably happy. I am taking a look at the truth about me, and it is making suicide look better and better. I've even began thinking about that very subject more and more lately. I just hope I can find a solution, any solution, to this whole thing quick before the pain gets any worse.

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