OK, here's an account of my first fully fledged psychotic break. It's edited from something I wrote, back when I was trying to make sense of it through... I don't know, magical realism or something. I've removed some details, since the original account is so specific that you could probably find me on google earth otherwise. There are some little notes in the text, I've added these so my readers on PC can understand a bit more about the context.

So, bear in mind that when I wrote the following account I was still psychotic, though obviously coherent enough to string a narrative together, and my views don't necessarily reflect what I believe now. I think the account probably gives you a good idea what an "episode" is like.

"When I was sixteen I spent some time in Sligo. My mother was living at Rosses Point, which called itself a village, even though it was just a straggly long string of houses that faced across the water, looking to Knocknarea. Queen Mab is said to be buried up there. Locally it's known as the "witch's tit", amongst other honorifics, because the cairn on top of the mountain does bear an unfortunate resemblance to a nipple. Also, it's bloody cold as a witch's tit up there. For centuries folks have been making regular trips up the mountain, and laying a stone on top of the cairn. They really REALLY want to make sure she stays buried. *(note... Mab was a mad Irish queen, sometimes considered a vampire or demon, and of very ill repute.) You'll hear people talk of "Sligo Time," because time often moves differently there. Part of this can be explained scientifically. When the sun goes down, there is no land mass in the way, the ocean stretches unbroken all the way to America, and so you get an extra half hour or so of dusk at the end of the day. And when the sun comes up in the morning you can sit and watch a ghost sunrise as the light bounces off the water at far distances, shining on the West, a pale reflection of the day break.

Despite these scientific explanations though, time does indeed do weird things there, that have no easy rational.

The house my mother lived in at the time was one of the old "cotter" houses with a corridor down the middle, so you could open front and back in an emergency and let any troop through. *(a troop is another term for the wild hunt, or the Slua Dubh, spiritual beings considered either faeries or demons, that ride the night and can drive people mad... that's the legend anyway.) That didn't happen when I was there. Sometimes a troop might pass overhead, but you'd just keep your head down and keep walking, if you were caught out in it, all the while praying under your breath, if you had any sense.

It seems there are a lot of such troops in the area, it's been mentioned in poetry through the centuries. The locals have learned to live with it, even to the design of their cottages. That's why the houses face the sea... so that the doors face in the right direction when the Sidhe *(Irish for the Old or Ancient... the idea being that these were the "people" who lived in Ireland before humans came.) come through, flowing over the mountain and the sea. Nobody would think of excorcising them... these beings have been there a lot longer than we have, and God put them there. We're fellow tennants of the land. If we had any complaints about our ancient neighbours, the only solution was to take them up with the Landlord.

One evening, coming back from the last day of the school, I got distracted talking to someone (folks are friendly in Ireland, and you can have conversations with random strangers that go on far longer than they would over here.) I realised it was heading towards dusk, so I made my apologies, and started to walk as briskly as I could the rest of the way from Sligo town to Rosses' Point. By the time I could see the string of houses I realised it was dark. It gets very dark there. You can feel it.

The sea is to the left of me, the fields to the right, and the little street facing the water across from Mab's tomb seems to be getting further and further away. There's an increasing weight to the darkness, like Something is pushing to come through. I don't want to start running, in case the Something notices me, and starts to chase me... but I'm walking increasingly swiftly, and my heart's beating like a hammer in my chest.

Then, with a real sense of relief, I see a young woman walking towards me, head down, her features hidden by her long hair. I don't recognise her, but I think I'll just pass words with her, to take the edge of my fear.

Then, too suddenly, she is so close I can see her clearly. She lifts her head, and the hair blows back. I look into my own face.

At which point the weight behind the darkness breaks through, and the image shatters, and I can't remember anything. It doesn't want to be remembered.

The next thing I know, I'm back home, in bed, my mother's sitting next to me, she's been praying. When she sees I'm awake, she leans over and kisses me, starts talking, but I can't understand a word she's saying. In fact, I can't understand a word anyone's saying, and apparently I don't speak a word anyone else can understand either.

Various different people come in praying over me, sprinkling holy water. The old grannies are sitting in the living room praying the rosary, and I just lie there like a log. In the end it's my mother who gets through to me. She didn't leave me for longer than to visit the bathroom. She holds me up and makes me sup soup. She gets water down me. She prays quietly, non stop. One day (I think three days later) I simply woke up knowing I was hungry and sat up in bed. The world made sense again. I could speak to people, and whatever happened in the darkness on the road, I forgot about enough that I could live with it."

There's more to that story, but that's as much as I can share. Hopefully it will help someone realise what an incident feels like, how real it is, and how much part of our "real" lives the psychosis can be. It's imbedded in your experience... it's not just a bad dream you can shake off or forget. It really happened... On the one hand, I know that the Sidhe, and and the Host are not real... on the other hand, I know too well that they are.