(This is my digital painting illustrating my psychosis during the year of 2009.)
“I am going to rule the world. I am the queen of Rome. Everybody here on Earth will be destroyed by God and I will be the only one left…” After I gave birth, I became the queen of Rome (this is why I use Rome Loyola as my pen name) – that is what I believed for many passing days and months.
During my “mysterious days,” I have experienced both auditory and visual hallucinations. I have heard the voice of Mother Mary speaking to me. I have heard that God is talking to me about the end of the world, that I am the only one who will be left and that God is going to kill everyone and start a new world. I have seen Jesus Christ wearing royal blue cloth, sleeping in the middle of the universe; I have felt I have been in the middle of the universe with him. I would often talk to Jesus Christ at night before I slept under a tree on the street. There have been times when I would see murder happening in my house and ghosts all around the street, hunting me.
Even with all of these experiences, one has been the most vivid in my memory: when I believed and considered myself the queen of Rome. My brother, who has been very mad at me for being ill, even took a video of me while I spoke like the queen of Rome, humiliating me by posting it to social media. By that time, I was calling him “Prince Henry.” I would often look in the mirror and see myself as a very beautiful queen with bright, fair skin. In the height of my hallucination and psychosis, I would often angrily discuss the war between the worlds, saying that Rome would be victorious. Afterwards, with a mind out of control, believing that God was killing my enemies for me, I would walk around cemeteries in different areas of Rizal to look at the graves. I have visited lots of cemeteries and graves to see the death of the “enemies” of Rome.
Up to this day, I still wonder what had happened to me then. In times I begin to feel that way again, but as far as I am concerned, it has been two years since I have experienced these hallucinations (except for nightmares at around two in the morning). Recently I visited a faith healer; according to her, an old lady is doing me harm by practicing some witchcraft and sorcery. Thinking that it could possibly help me in addition to my medication, I go to her for spiritual healing as well. Whether psychosis, hallucination, or sorcery, I am determined to cope with what I am feeling. It could be a medical condition or some bad doings of other people, but what I have to get me through is the faith that this illness will never win and that I am going to survive, day by day and night by night.
Read the rest of Rome’s posts here.