Redoutable – written by Sophie Jupillat

My mom and I didn’t have much in common by the time I reached my teens, but our love of French music remained. I loved Véronique Sanson’s music and some of her darkest saddest songs resonated with me the most as I endured my mom’s emotional abuse, fueled by her undiagnosed narcissism and paranoid personality disorders. My journey through my mom’s mental illnesses forged me into who I am today: without music and without writing I truly would have been rendered “redoubtable” by a person I never would have imagined to be dangerously redoubtable herself.

“Si tu me vois les toucher de mon regard Leur donner le goût de l’art, avoir un sale goût de larmes Dans mon fou rire, ne m’en veux pas Tu m’as rendue redoutable mais je suis si vulnerable C’est si facile de faire mal, faire mal, faire mal, faire
mal, faire mal….” (Véronique Sanson, Redoutable)

When I was a little girl, I felt I had the best mother. In my pink bedroom with its Minnie Mouse wallpaper and handpainted cloud design by my mom, I felt like a princess. She read to me, hugged me, and taught me as much as she could about everything: she was the woman who tickled me to tears when she read Little Red Riding Hood to me, and she was the woman who gave me advice about dealing with bullies at school. She talked to me about her life and about Dad’s life while he worked at the office for hours on end. Our conversations took place with her sitting in her comfy black armchair, and me sitting on the cold, red, metal chair diagonally from her. We were a team and I thought our relationship would only become more beautiful as we grew older. But there were blemishes in the fairy tale tableau, troublesome spots that in hindsight should have warned me of what would come.

As early as 7 years old, I realized it was best not to make her angry. She didn’t exactly scare me at the time, but she hurt my feelings when she got angry over things like if I forgot to put something in its right place, or if she thought I was acting insolent. If I didn’t agree with her about something, even back then, I got slapped in the face or given the cold shoulder for an entire day, regardless of my apologies. Sometimes, when she’d felt I’d been particularly impertinent, she threw me under a cold shower to “jolt me back to my senses”. Back then though, my dad was an ally and when she went too far, he demanded she apologize to me and make amends. The rare times my mother ever apologized were in my pre-teen years, thanks to my dad. When she screamed that I was unworthy of a Terrific Kid certificate I’d received at school, and reduced me to a violent sobbing fit, my dad comforted me and confronted her on her needlessly virulent behavior. By the time I was 11, I was used to her hysterics, and I constantly braced myself for the sudden switch from a smiling benevolent mother to a dark, bitter being angry at her husband and her child.

When I turned 11 years old, my mom had stage one breast cancer that bordered on stage 2. I tried taking care of her as best as I could, helping her with housework, comforting her when she was sure she would die. I reassured her that dad wouldn’t leave her when she had a mastectomy, and I reassured her that “friends” who made fun of the situation were unworthy of her time anyway and she shouldn’t let them affect her. Any time something went wrong around the house she blamed me. Her stress, her pains, her fits of anger, she neatly pinned on me, through her hours long vociferations and black stares. Sometimes, she grabbed my hair and jerked my head back and forth violently when she thought I wasn’t paying attention to what she said. When she yelled at me, I felt like I’d been ground under a tractor: she yelled how stupid I was, how uncaring I was of her situation, how vicious I was to her, how ungrateful I was that she adopted me and gave me an education. One of the longest arguments I can recall lasted 3 solid hours and went until 1am. As if that weren’t enough, she called my dad at work when she felt I was acting out, and had him lecture me on the phone, and again in the evening when he came home. One time, she called me a bitch, and when I burst into tears, she called my dad and he screamed on the phone about how ashamed I should be to be disrespecting my mother so much.

As I grew older, it got worse and worse, and I wondered if her cancer hadn’t unhinged a part of her. I made excuses for her for as long as I could. I told myself “she’s always had a bad temper, and I should know what triggers her.” Alas, by the time I turned 16 years old, my confidence had plunged into an abyss, and I feared the times when she would slip from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. I could sense the tension, sense the shift in her when she became angry. I felt the hate radiating from her as soon as I walked in the room. I tried talking with her and telling her how I felt, but talking to her felt like talking at a wall. To combat my feeling of worthlessness, I went on fanfiction sites and created accounts. I found friends who shared an interest with me. As a homeschooler since 6th grade this foray was paradise for me. I hadn’t had one on one time with anyone my age since I was fourteen, that one time my parents acquiesced to such a situation. I’d never had a sleep over. I hadn’t had a birthday party alone with friends since I was eight years old. I asked some of the friends on fanfiction I felt closest to for advice on my family situation. I’d been driven at my wits’ end, but I wanted a solution to repair my fractured relationship with my mom. For the first time, people told me that something might be seriously wrong with my family dynamics, and suggested that my mother’s mental health was skewed. For the first time, I thought that my mom might have bipolar disorder, which was hard to believe because my mom told me her sister had had it. I remembered the few times my mom’s family doctor tried giving her anti-depressants, she’d refused to take them, claiming they gave her nightmares. I hadn’t told my family I’d made accounts online for fear they’d react badly. But, unused to lying, I got caught three months in, and things fell apart.

If I thought this would enlighten my mom to the fact that there lay a big problem and it should be fixed, I was sorely mistaken. She reacted hysterically, to the point that she didn’t sleep for three straight days. She screamed at me about how I had destroyed the family, how I had painted her as a monster, and how I was sorely deluded if I thought she had problems. She told me I made things up, and that from now on, she would call me out and criticize me any time she felt I was slipping into negativity. In her mind, she’d diagnosed me: to her, I was bipolar, I was possibly schizophrenic, I was the one with delusions, I was the one who had to be fixed. So my family made the decision to bring me to a therapist, claiming I was trying to destroy myself and that I should be stopped.

Session 1- 8/17/2010

Current Concerns: Met initially with mother and patient. Reviewed psychiatric entrance evaluation. Mother brought this 16 year old adopted female due to concerns about dangerous “disturbing” internet communications w/ someone who would encourage negative feelings and thoughts towards her parents. Patient appeared naive initially as she contacted literary website w/ someone who had written a story allegedly in Europe and had posted it. After patient made comments about the story author communicated what mother describes as horrible things about hurting people w/ sexual connotations. Patient seems remorseful and guilty about what she did and how she was feeling/thinking about her parents. Mother also concerned that patient takes very long to eat her meals….[].

 

During that first session, my mother seemed fairly put together although she said she felt “imbalanced” about what I’d done, and later chastised herself for having used that word. The “disturbing” things she’d described to the therapist were distorted though. The female person I’d been communicating with from France had never told me to hurt people. That person had responded to negative thoughts and feelings I’d had about my parents, specifically my mom for years. That person granted occasionally wrote smutty fanfiction but nothing horrendous. All that person had done was be supportive of me. But my mom had brainwashed me thoroughly, making me feel like I was in the wrong for complaining about the family. A month prior to the therapy session, she’d burst into my room and searched through all my drawers, all my personal belongings, “knowing” that I was hiding things and still communicating with those fanfiction people. She and my dad confiscated all my electronics in May 2010, three months before my first session. But no matter how much I told her it was impossible for me to be in contact with anybody, she kept searching, even at one point mistaking letters written by a deceased family friend from France, as correspondence with unsavory people. My mom also confiscated some of my drawings I’d done at summer camp a couple years before as well, because she felt they were psychologically disturbing. She never mentioned the searches or letters and drawings to the therapist.

Session 3- 9/21/2010

Current concerns: Met w/ mother and patient initially. Things going relatively well. Mother still having a difficult time dealing w/ trust and hurt felt when she read what patient wrote about her to other people. Mother believes she is ready to forgive her but doesn’t feel comfortable yet letting her do her work on computer without her or husband watching her….[].

 

By then, I’d been without a phone or a computer for four months. I did homeschooling with Florida Virtual School and needed access to a computer to do my homework. I was always a little behind in my schoolwork, because I worked under my parents’ schedules. They watched me while I worked and when their time was up, I had to wrap up whether I was ready or not. My mother loved telling me that this was all my fault and that she and dad hated doing it. She said that I enjoyed having them watch me, and that that desire was sick. Though she presented a forgiving face to the therapist, we had countless arguments in which she told me she might one day understand me, but she couldn’t ever forgive me. She blamed it on my potential mental health problem, and that I was a cruel person to not control my disease. She said I was weak in every aspect, because I wasn’t controlling my problem. My own mom said that I had fucked up in a way few people can: that she had nothing on her conscience and that I would have the weight of this family crisis on my shoulders for the rest of my life.

Session 5 – 11/9/2010

Current Concerns: Met w/ mother and patient initially. We discussed mother’s concerns about falling behind in school work… I then explored above issue with patient and then discussed w/mother need to give some privileges back (phone, computer) even w/ time frames and breaks.

 

It had been six months I’d been in isolation from all electronics: I wasn’t allowed to visit my neighbors and I couldn’t e-mail, call or talk to anybody without being in the presence of my parents.  The solitude became the worst punishment I ever could have gotten. I even had a ban on science fiction books, the only things that made the time pass for me. My mother claimed I was obsessed with Harry Potter and fantasy books, and that living in such a world skewed my sense of reality. I wondered when the punishment would end. I roamed around the house like a wraith in the early mornings before anyone woke up, running my hands over the dormant computers, hoping it was all just a nightmare, hoping that for once I could open a computer and look at the news, or listen to some videos on youtube, or e-mail a friend. My mother pretended to listen to my therapist when he told her she should give some of my stuff back. After the session we went to the mall. As we walked, she glared at me and muttered how I had tried manipulating the therapist to get my electronics back. She hissed that he could see right through me. She told me he told her that punishing me like this was like jailing me. She whined to me it hurt her to hear that, and it was all my fault. She raised her voice as much as she dared to in public and said that I should be ashamed of myself and that she would not give me my stuff back until she was ready.

Session 9- 2/15/2011

Current Concerns: Met w/ mother initially. Reported being concerned again. Patient told her she was jealous of her. Mother’s success as a painter may be upsetting patient. Mother also worried about possibilities of either dissociative or antisocial. Mother took picture recently and when she handed camera back to patient and turned around, camera fell and broke. Mother believes she did it intentionally. Patient denied it and then patient stated that mother accuses her of things she did not do and this makes her angry….[].

 

My mother always had a talent of twisting people’s words, and with me, she did it without impunity. I told her I sometimes grew jealous of her, because she was strong and had survived things few people had. But at the time, almost every day she told me how I should be like her, and stop being my pitiful self. I never mentioned I was jealous of her art because I wasn’t. I wrote stories and composed music, which were the only things that kept me going. By that point, I’d been 9 months without free access to electronics. The camera incident happened at Lake Eola, and I was the one who had taken a picture and handed the camera back to her. But the camera slipped and fell. It had been my very first camera and this incident broke my heart. My mom swore that I dropped it on purpose, to be pitied. I told her I loathed being pitied. She replied that everything I did pointed out that I was a masochist. When I told her to stop accusing me of stuff I’ve never done, she yelled at me until I ran to the bathroom with a pounding headache, dry heaving all the way.

Session 11- 3/1/2011

Current Concerns: Met w/ both parents initially…. They still wonder sometimes about discrepancies between sometimes appearing extremely intelligent and other times where she seems to forget about simple things she has been able to do on prior occasions. They still worry about possibilities that something may go wrong even though father doesn’t believe she had anything to do w/ burning of fishnet as mother still has doubts about it.

 

Living in my home felt like a bug under a microscope. Any lapses of judgement or tiny mistakes I made in my schoolwork or in the daily household chores got me chewed out for hours. My dad scoffed one day that I could remember insignificant stuff like the track numbers of songs by heart, and yet I couldn’t clean a kitchen properly. My mom wheedled with that detestable little girl voice she adopted sometimes that either I was a dumbass or I was a cunning manipulator. Most of these arguments turned into degenerative logic loops in which she tried forcing me to confess to being guilty of some invisible crime. But I refused to play those games, explaining that maybe giving me more leeway would help with my being distracted. As for the fishnet incident, one day my mom bought an old fishnet at Michael’s for an art project of hers. Later that day, she commented on how worn it looked. I said that it appeared like that in the store. That night, my mom exploded and accused me of tampering with her net. No matter how many times I told her I hadn’t done anything to it, what the hell did I care about some fishnet, she yelled at me. The argument then turned into one of the infamous Why-did-you-try-destroying-the-family tirades, in which both she and my dad unloaded their anger and frustrations at me for hours. They cornered me in a hole they had conjured all by themselves. My mom ended the argument by saying she would check the store the next day and that if the nets looked different, I would be in big trouble. At that moment, her motivations revealed themselves to me: she wasn’t concerned or worried about my ‘hurting her’ or messing with her stuff, her face glowed with what seemed like triumph. She seemed happy that there was a possibility I had tampered with her stuff and she could regale the therapist with “evidence” of my supposed mental disorder. My mother insisted so much that I was out of control, that I grew afraid she would pressure the therapist into giving me medications I didn’t need. I saw the psychiatrist for potential anti-social and dissociative disorders, but I wasn’t diagnosed with anything. Not for the first time, I felt scared of what my mom could do in her reckless pursuit of ignoring sound logical proof.

Session 14 – 4/26/2011

 

Current Concerns: Met w/ mother and patient initially…. still needs to complete math and science projects and w/ one month to go mother has been worried and frustrated. Also read a letter patient wrote asking for parents’ trust back to use internet and phone. Mother became angry but now is worried because Rollins College is allowing students to use Facebook as a communication tool.

 

It had been 11 months I was doing my schoolwork with one of my parents watching me, and still no personal access to electronics. I felt so alone and misunderstood that once or twice I considered killing myself with a kitchen knife. Nobody would miss me, I didn’t have any friends, my parents had driven them away. And at least I’d be free of my parents’ anger. But my acceptance into college stopped those thoughts quickly. I wrote a letter to my parents explaining how I felt, how I’d changed, and how I should get some freedom back. I wanted to show the letter to my therapist first before showing it to my parents. I knew any awkward word or assertive statement would anger them. However, a few days before the therapy session, my mom entered my room and wouldn’t leave, wanting to wring a confession of guilt out of me. Everything about how I felt and why I’d reached out to people were explained in the letter and I made the mistake of mentioning it to her. She pushed and cried and screamed so much that just to get her off my back, I showed the letter to her. When she finally did read it, she called me an idiot. She said I didn’t understand anything and that I deserved my punishment.

Session 16 – 6/14/2011

Comments/Plans: Mother reports concerns about patient’s change of “attitude”. stare @ times. wants to explore her intellectual level and functioning and is interested in a psychological evaluation for daughter (patient).

 

I suggested I wanted to have a psychological evaluation done. I was sick of having my sanity doubted and having absurd accusations thrown at me. I thought if I truly did have a mental disorder, my mother’s attitude and scorn would have sent any other person with a legitimate disorder in a spiral of destruction. And my mother claimed that when I walked into a room she could tell I was going to act badly and that I’d stare at her strangely. I told her that the times she told me I stared strangely at her, it stemmed from when she yelled at me and I was about to cry. She never believed me, and dubbed my stare as unfeeling and cold. I wanted to finally have proof one way or the other to settle the matter of my sanity. Alas, somehow it was never the right time to go see a professional psychiatrist, so I never got an evaluation done.

Session 18- 7/12/2011

Current Concerns: Met w/ patient and mother. Mother concerned about 1 phone call that came in at 11:30pm to patient’s phone. No word from other line, just breathing for a few seconds. Mother now worried about patient not telling the truth…[].

My mom still had my phone after 14 months. I hadn’t seen or heard a human voice since my electronic ban— the only people I saw occasionally were people my mom associated with at her art shows, when she dragged me along to help her. The morning after one of her art shows, she dragged me to the living room to confront me about somebody who had called at 11:30pm. I had no idea how to respond. She always had my phone on her, and when it wasn’t on her, she hid it somewhere in her bedroom where I could never find it. I knew where this was going. She was sure that the caller was someone from fanfiction and that they were after me. I told her it was impossible for anybody to contact me, because I had given my number only to one person, and why would they call after so long? Then she accused me of calling unsavory people, and I defended myself with no success. It was adding insult to injury, when all I wanted was to be able to call a friend if the means had been possible. Even the visit to the therapist didn’t assuage her panic.

Session 23 – 11/15/2011

Current Concerns: …Mother still believes patient can be vulnerable and can be taken advantage of. Mother wants her to be more careful in trusting other people.

For the first time in many years I finally felt comfortable and the source of it all was  Rollins College. My therapist was astounded by how easily I was adjusting, how easily I talked to people. I met people from many departments, and made close friends with people in my major and minors. My mom grudgingly let me have Facebook, but she monitored anybody I friended, and if she didn’t like them, she blocked them, and tore them down so much that I felt I couldn’t associate with them anymore. Some of my black friends she called “demons” or vacant people who had no personality. She and my dad also had a heavy hand in my studies. They drove me crazy with anxiety for 6 semesters, insisting I major in computer science despite my less than stellar grades in math. “We’re paying for college, so you’ll major in something profitable or else.” And yet, when she talked to friends and family she said “I am so proud of my daughter!”

Session 28 – 6/20/2013

Current Concerns: Met w/ patient and mother who reported concerns about patient following her and still not being honest w/ her.

Interventions: Met w/both and we discussed importance of honesty and her mother to not be so critical so patient feels more comfortable being this way.

Diagnosis: Axis I: Anxiety Disorder NOS / Parent – Child Relational problem

 

At this point, I am 19 years old. My mother found out the previous month that I had begun a romantic relationship with a classmate from several of my English classes. He was 24 years older than me. She snooped through my phone, and saw our communications. She had never met him, but assumed that he was a sex-slaver, or a pervert, or possibly even a married man, willing to have an affair with a naive younger girl— me. She thought he might be running a sex and drug ring at Rollins with a few professors she’d met, but didn’t like, and she thought he’d gone to college simply to conquer as many women as he could. She called me a slut, and a whore, and said that in the future, a man would deserve to beat me because I was a cheating bitch. She dragged me to the therapist, whom I hadn’t seen in a year. She was sobbing and hyperventilating, so much so that when she went out of the room, the therapist asked me if she was ok. I told him that she’d been like that for a month, going from sobbing to raging anger from day to day. He asked me if I feared my mom. I told him “Honestly, I don’t like saying it, but I am scared of her.”

Session 30 – 7/11/2013

Current concerns: Met w/ patient who seems better overall w/less anxiety about things. Still however tends to become anxious and overwhelmed.

Intervention: We discussed relationship between anxiety and perfectionism and ways to cope w/ proper cognition.

Diagnosis: Axis I: Anxiety Disorder NOS / Parent – Child Relational problem

 

By this point, I hated going to the therapist.  I had knots in my belly whenever we went to his office. I never knew what my mom would say, what things she’d make up. One time she told the therapist “I don’t think Sophie loves me. I feel squashed against a wall all the time because she is so demanding and refuses to grow up!” When we came back from a therapy session, and I thought it had gone well, my anxiety slightly less acute, she said “Good job on manipulating the therapist. So you have anxiety and depression, boohoo!” At home, any mistake I made, she yelled at me, and she started gas lighting me. Whether she did it intentionally or not, she tried to make me believe I’d done things I didn’t remember. I felt like I suffocated every day, and a part of me died everyday as she kept screaming at me. And my dad supported her, telling me it was no wonder I had no friends in school, and that I’d brought all this sorrow and drama down on myself. My mom said if I put one more toe out of line, she would cast me out of her life, like she’d done with her bipolar sister years before. I lost weight during that summer and I walked more silently than I’d ever done before. As soon as my mom woke up, she yelled at me. Sometimes, it went on for four days in a row. She sent e-mails to my friends through my accounts, saying everything was fine. To friends she didn’t like, she sent rude e-mails in my name. Again, like in before, I had no access to electronics. I knew there was no hope I’d get my electronics back all summer.  

Session 32- 7/23/2013

Current Concerns: Mother and father concerned about patient’s possible anger and bizarre behavior. Patient seemed anxious during one on one session but otherwise ever pleasant.

Intervention: Discussed w/ parents need to remain vigilant/observant about patient’s behavior due to concerns about possible delusional thinking.

Diagnosis: Parent Child Relational Problem / R/D Delusional Disorder

 

By this point, I almost hated my parents. Once again I was confined within the house, with all dignity and privacy stripped away from me. My parents went through all my accounts, including my banking accounts and my own personal computer. They interrogated me about every purchase, every contact, and every single little thing. When I told them I was an adult, and they had no right to do this, they said I was mentally fragile, and that I needed their help. I replied that I didn’t want nor need their help. My pleas fell on deaf ears. Sometimes, during a session, my mom pulled up past e-mails I’d written, or pictures I’d saved, “proving” that there was something wrong with me. She tried telling family that I lied chronically. At that moment I realized it was impossible to be honest with her. She deformed all my truths and refused to understand who I was, without her delusions about me distorting the situation. I resolved to do what I wanted next semester: to drop computer science and resume my relationship with my boyfriend, but in secret. I’d been hurt too much, and by the people I’d loved. I decided to trust my gut instinct and do what I felt was right. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, but I lied through my teeth to achieve my freedom.

After that session, there were more, but they were not relevant anymore. When I came back to Rollins College for the fall semester, I resumed my relationship with my boyfriend. Slowly, I divorced myself from my mom’s drama even as her anger got worse, even as she kept trying to find things to get me in trouble. Things culminated in December 2013 with my parents keeping me from going to school, lying to the professors, the family doctor and the therapist. Yet, my mom dragged me to her monthly art show so I could help her. I smiled to my parents’ face, pretended I didn’t care, pretended everything was fine. When we came back from the art show, I opened my bedroom window a smidgen, in preparation for a plan I was afraid of attempting the next morning. On the morning of December 7th I opened my bedroom window all the way and cut through the screen with scissors.  I didn’t dare take any of my personal possessions. I went to my neighbors’ house, called my boyfriend and he drove me away from my prison. My parents called the police, and fed them a bunch of lies that even the neighbors, who were watching, recognized as such. My dad told the police the following, which is now immortalized in the report: “Mr. Jupillat stated that Sophie Jupillat has been going to a therapist in reference to a possible split personality and a schizophrenic disorder, however she has not been diagnosed with these symptoms at this time. Mr. Jupillat stated that just last week Sophie Jupillat had a schizophrenic incident. When I asked Mr. Jupillat what had happened, he stated that Sophie Jupillat had lied to him about her boyfriend Mr. Posey, and had left to go see him.”

My parents had tried very hard to make me believe that I would be institutionalized under the Baker Act rights. The ironic thing is that my mother was almost Baker Acted herself. The amount of misperceptions surrounding my family life, from my therapist who didn’t really know what was going on, mainly because my mom dominated my sessions, and my mother’s own delusions about my perceived illnesses, when she had issues, left me with a sour taste in my mouth in regards to treatment vis à vis mental health. Now, I suspect that she has a conglomeration of disorders that became worse as she aged, and the more she refused to treat them, the worse she got. Our relationship is beyond repair, and I think I found the culprit: a rotting pot pourri of narcissistic and paranoid personality disorders, if not bipolarism as well. Her adamant refusal to acknowledge that anything might be wrong with her points out that she got that stigma from somewhere: her own illness, and society’s own unkind view of people with mental illnesses. If she had gotten treated for herself, I would have considered staying and helping, but instead she drove me away.

To be able to survive those years, I wrote and composed music to alleviate my heavy soul. These extracts are from poems I wrote directly after harrowing scenes in my household, between 2009 and 2013.

Silent Walker – Oct. 2009

Hush. The quiet, unmoving fog-wreathed eve,

Softly expels its bitter chilly breath, in the watchful

Sharp sickle of the moon’s waxing solitude.

The shadows meld and fuse with the thin slivers of light,

Ghostly, pale tombs twining with the supplicant arms of the

Unspoken beyond.

Hush. Here, she walks, the silent walker,

Gossamer white hands mere webs of mortality, pallid supple ridges of flesh,

Grasping the diaphanous delicate skeins of death.

Half moon crescents of her polished nails,

Gleaming in tranquil polished waters of grief,

Hope, anguish and expectation, in a cycle,

Of waxing ends and waning beginnings….[]

 

Icebergs of a Dream – June 2010

…The sun’s ire burning and blackening a heart to a quiet scab of repentance,

To brood and toil in its own forsaken melancholy,

Alone, so alone, cold in its crystallized pain and remorse,

Sharp stabs and jabs of lucidity, swords honed and sharpened from

The stars’ impervious breath of glacial calm, the calm of everything destroyed.

Calm christened of impetuous scorn, calm weeping a requiem of dreams shattered,

Dreams of shadow, dreams of the wispy clouds of night, clouds of ink of hazy fancy,

Ink spilled and diluted in the heavens of a soul’s broken harmony, discordant seas

Of black, indigo icy white auroras, shrouds of the icebergs of a dream.

Icebergs floating, rupturing, fracturing, drifting, alone, alone in an ocean of shattered hope.

Hope repudiated, hope scorned, hope forgotten and mocked from the pallid moon above,

Livid and pale from its weary vigil, and it gazed down, down, with the painful indifference of the

blind…[]

 

The Last Standing Dec. 2010

 

The vestiges of fury ebb away, ebb away in a muted hiss,

Hiss turning into sigh, sigh turning into the moan of the tide,

Broken peals of betrayed chimes tinkling in forgotten rancour of the storm

The watery light pierces among the cloudy ruins of Troy, ebony, dark blue sculptures majestically standing in the firmament,

Fading away to the tune of the low melody of the waves.

The wipe away, sweep away with their cleansing ultramarine blue depths sprinkled with silver and gold,

The tragedy written in the sands, the darkness once inhabiting the damp remains of seashells, smoothing the invader’s tracks,

In the unblemished tableau of what can be created again, more beautiful and invincibly wiser than what once was…[]

 

Silent Chaos – Aug. 2012

 

I waited for death and it took its time.

The waters of the lake weakly lapping at my feet, dirty brown and tar black,

They were like refuse on the asphalt-colored sand.

I looked up at the sky above me,

It was livid, jaundiced, it was silent.

They were wrong, all the prophets and religious decrees,

The end of the world would not be consumed in fire and brimstone,

But by the crushing weight of a yellow sky ,

The suffocating burden of an unnatural silence, the world gagged,

The quiet Cancer of the indigo clouds, their dark pincers drifting slowly in the skies,

Invading the body of a world already doomed…[]

 

Flirting with Darkness – Sep. 2012

 

….There is no utility in trying to find the why of it anymore,

Just observe the brutality and strength of those blows, as terrifying as they are formidable.

Waves acting like hated enemies when they are part of the same entity,

If nature can be so senseless, then how can one demand more of mankind?

I narrowed my eyes and stepped closer to the sea, keeping my footing, almost dancing,

For to keep your sanity you must smile and play the game,

Flirt with the darkness as readily as the rain flirts with the earth and the sea,

Mingling and twining with the foam splashing over the jagged tar black rocks,

Imitate its language of fans, and here was beauty with the brutality,

The water twirling in the sea in a left diagonal “We are being watched”,

Or the water suddenly accelerating its cadence downwards, “I am engaged”

Or the water twirling in the sea in a right diagonal “I love another”

Yes, I loved another, but I was engaged and I could not disengage myself from the odor

Of the brine, the musky scent of the rain and the sand, the tangy salt of the ocean,

Which had ceased to sting my wounds, opened too much over and over again….

 

Ghost – Jan. 2013

I was fog, translucent and wispy

Ghostly. I was a phantom and no one could see me, nor would I let them.

I was a ghost in that early morning, as I walked out in the old street where I used

to be driven to school.

I was a wraith as I walked past the silent houses, imposing and immovable,

Past the blurry gagged silhouettes of pines and oaks and rounded curves of

valleys,….

The morning fog wrapped around me, not suffocating, embalming me,

And I let it, feeling its cold touch seep into my pores, goosebumps rising on flesh.

A white coffin surrounding me, protecting me from the pain, from the mocking,

Veiling me from eyes that would never see who I truly was, just distort me,

Like a fractured mirror. Why the ever sanctified mirror? Transparent, they say.

Transparent to those who wish, those who let rationality temper their emotions,

Otherwise, just another instrument of torture, to beat with again and again….

Prayers unheard.

Skin pasty white, eyes as dark as night, lips cherry red fleeing from the envious

mother, the distorted mirror, I was fairest perhaps of this world I’d created

Was forced to create, as my own shrine, whose god was only my will, whose

pastor was only my heart, whose bible was only my voice singing a requiem and

psalm of things

I wished I could forget, things I wanted to recall, joyous things,..

Mirror, mirror who is fairest of them all? The fog and I, my prince, my embalming

protector, my knight

In ghostly armor, blunt wispy sword, with a slow unshapen white horse, mute.

His arm in mine, and mine in his, both inverse entities with the same core:

Suspension. Suspended from reality, suspended from irrationality, suspended

from hurt and anger and despair,…

And I watched with no sadness. Farewell. No imprisonment for anyone outside of

the realms they belong in.

He had to go, as did I. Now I walked, with my eyes absorbing the blue sky,

maybe my black stare would become blue, blue ink of joyful memory tainting

mine,

As I would sing of them, beyond the crushing grasp of the mirror mother, my

embalming prince,

As I would sing farewell chains, farewell silence, farewell anger. Farewell to my

doomed Trinity, not mine to choose, mine to accept or repel.

Farewell.

 

 

Find Out More about Sophie Jupillat by following her Blog:

Narcissistic Personality disorder – The Invisible Torture

ALSO

read her interview with ASLI by clicking HERE