"You cannot run from your own action, erase the experience of a hurtful past by pretending it never happened, nor escape the silent screams of a tortured soul. Whenever I look at this painting (The Scream) in pastels by the Norwegian Expressionist artist Edvard Munch which he did between 1893 and 1910, I can imagine the short distance a human barely travels between sound health and mental breakdown, between sanity and madness.
Munch's painting reminds me very much of that great painter Vincent Van Gogh who was a much misunderstood and troubled soul who lived in a whirlpool of deep depression and suicidal thoughts for much of the latter half of his life, before he took it in a moment of utter despair and insanity.
About fifteen years before my dear mother died at the early age of 64 years, there was a six month-one year period when she had a complete breakdown and was mentally ill; to the point that she was in danger of harming herself. During the start of this period, she genuinely feared that she was being followed by the I.R.A. and she went to extreme lengths to avoid capture by them. She left home for weeks and months at a time without any notice and spent the bulk of that crazy year travelling from Leeds Railway Station to Kings Cross station in London. When the train arrived in London, she would travel back up North and then either phone me in the middle of the night and ask to be picked up in Leeds, Sheffield or York Railway Station. Often when I got to the stated spot to collect her and bring her back to my house, she would have travelled back down to London and re-started her cycle of back and forth all over again. Eventually, only a number of E.C.T. courses slowed her down enough to prevent her harming herself. Thankfully, her health returned to some semblance of normality for the last fiteen years of her life, and apart from smoking too much and putting on too much weight, she lived the next fifteen years as her usual happy self.
One of the best things that our current Government has done since coming into Office has been to place Mental Health on a par with Physical Health as statistics show that a significant number of citizens in Great Britain will experience one episode of mental health breakdown during their lifetime.
I include a song that I only heard a few months ago that I intend to learn after my European holiday. It is called, 'Vicent' and is sang by Don Mclean; a beatiful song about such a sad soul." William Forde: April 29th, 2018.
https://youtu.be/oxHnRfhDmrk