Patches

Have you ever heard the word patches lately? Patches are pieces of material used to mend or repair a hole or open seam. There are quilt patches to create designs, there are patches that iron-on denim and various other types of cloth to repair holes and rips in the fabrics, there are even different construction material for building that are used for patches and there are transdermal delivery systems used to apply drugs to the human body; they are patches.
The children in grade school used to call me patches; only because I wore hand-me-down clothes with holes and tears in them. My life was lived in this manner, second handedly. I thought I would cover-up, overlay my emotions and fears, even the shame I felt of being a second-hand kind of guy in my teenage years by first drinking-that’s not transdermal. I tried smoking-that’s not quilting. I tried eventually to overdose my fears; my ability to construct was finally placed in a professional’s hand, not a preachers, my mind saw that they could only give me prayers and dissertations’ for my sins, and they wanted me to take off the sunglasses in order to see the light.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I was so covered over that the psychiatrist had to peel off the patches which covered so many parts of my mind of which I had sewn over with patches which re-designed the emotions and covered the fears by causing me to question only what I could answer, and helping me to accept choices which would help me to overcome the ignorance I lived within.
Trust develops with time; it’s not only a patch, its part of the wonder of miracles. Yet we still have to understand as people with a “mental illness” that we have to relearn or learn to deal with society and the social situations which arise—without drugs, alcohol, and questionable behaviors, not to mention recklessness. There will be a day with no more patches, yet someone else might carry on the name and that’s when you or I might be the one to help them through those rough times with our learned understanding of how we may achieve freedom through redesign.
By Donald Sammons