This post is the first in my photo/story series on my journey of healing and recovery. See the introduction and complete series at My Healing Journey.

Barbed Wire Barrier © 2012 Bo Mackison
“Your life with its immensity and fear . . . is alternately stone in you and star.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, from the poem Evening
Before there was a beginning, before the crisis and a diagnosis, there was a dream.
I see the world. It is there. When I reach up, I reach into the cool air. When I look up, I see a bright blue, cloud scattered skies. Yet the world is beyond my reach. In this dream I have repeatedly, I’m trapped in a tiny enclosure, an enclosure tall on four sides, but open to the sky. I struggle to unlock the gate. When I try to move forward, I’m blocked by a cold steel fence and chain-link wire. Barbed wire adds an extra degree of isolation.
Barbed wire – a common fence, a stereo-typical barrier.
And then I am no longer dreaming. I am living my life in slow-motion, denying there is a problem.
I know I am in a separate place. I cannot reach out to my family and friends, I cannot communicate with them. They are on the other side of the barrier, and even if I managed a whisper, no one can hear me.
I am cast in fear, held down by a weighted stone. My only relief is a connection, however slight, to the natural world. When I look out the window, it is snowy and cold, but I do look up at the sky. I can always see the sky.
The human spirit focuses on that which is beyond vision.
— based on journal entries, October 1990.
Part 2: Boarded Window.