Antonio Matta reads from his novelette Destiny Stereo, a first-person account of forced psychiatric detention at Cerberus Mental Ward. The monologue exposes the psychological torment and legal manipulation of involuntary hospitalization, then calls for ending forced psychiatry and building community-based support instead.
Days erased from the calendar, feeling as long as months. The magistrate has decided to keep Sapphia Holmes as a residential patient in Cerberus's mental ward. Sapphia sits silently. He doesn't want his friends to see him in this pathetic state. Nothing feels right to him anymore. It even feels strange sitting across from two of the most familiar faces. Sapphias Holmes is very quiet as he sits, but his fear is heard as clearly as the horror is seen in his eyes.
Warranted for arraignment. A defendant is asked for a plea. I tried to bargain, but it was with a false outlook. I was already misled on what it meant to be free. Stifled shamelessly by a prosecutor's vindictive use of righteous bills. Awaiting a unanimously swayed verdict, already prepared to appeal. Schizophrenically a suspect and a victim.— a premeditated target of preemptory stigmatism. Told that I was special, only to be taught remedial. Raised to believe in standards of higher learning, it only left me spiritually yearning. Forced to watch a Pentagon and vertical parallels burning. It's well known that mathematics is the study of relationships. Symbolically using numbers. Took notes all about it in fall, forgot them all in summer. Forced to refer to myself as a minority, incessantly judged by the title's suggestion of incapability rather than ability. A victim of social persuasion with the intent to excite. The oppressed have been forced to unite. You look at me as if that's all. It's been written in blood that united we stand, but it's labels that divide us. It is then that we fall. Incarcerated in this cell, sentenced to life without parole. Could this cell be hell? Heard stories about it, never been there and back to tell. Hell, a deep and dark abyss of deception, larceny, disloyalty, and hate. Where beauty is stripped to a core, sweltering with shame, regret, and disgrace. Perched nowhere now, even a sparrow to praise the dawning of a fresh morning dew. A sound once taken for granted, now replaced with desperate cries for just a song or Or two reminiscing destructively of how it used to be, living miserably in the reality of what now will never be. I'm thirsty for just another sip of the future's bitter nectar. I'm hungry for just another bite from the bread of life. My cup once was running over, now I weep a glutton fool, for the glass is neither half empty nor a hatful. Rotting from the inside out, was my face stricken by jaded weariness? I lived a life full of untamed desires that prepared these concrete walls and barbed wire. My bed of current dwellings streaked with blue and orange fire, now swelling from the infectious results of discomfort and fear. The yellow part of any flame is the coolest by far, yet the hope of feeling even That sensation quickly falls on deaf ears, 'cause right here, where I've allowed myself to end, not even a first or last name could separate the faces, bodies, and various tones of skin. The tears once wasted and shed before, as I complained, still in complete control, evaporated my tear ducts before they can trickle, burn, and flow, carving hash marks into my wrist, being removed I'm reminded daily of all the serpents that tempted me, cursing every day I gave in to their trickery. I became fearful, accepting their lies as truth and law to live by as I die, trapped like an animal in a zoo without others to point fingers to and hold accountable. Solitude has erased all my misconceptions on life, and I admit I was a bit irrational. I sit as an outcast In the mess hall, staring intensely into a bowl of poisonous self-blame. Resentment and regrets eat my flesh. Now this cell makes my name. I'm imprisoned by letting everyone else decide who I'm supposed to be. Believing while running the whole race that they loved me, not realizing the race was rigged so that if I did win, it would absolutely never happen again. Letting people tell me I'm uneducated and unworthy. Letting people tell me I am the 1 out of 3 men to be dead by the age 30. I am imprisoned by letting myself get tired, by letting myself get worn. I am imprisoned by my own choices. There was no time in life, not even a second, to stop being true or smell the roses. For everyone in the world to be equal, who on earth can possibly be the best. Besides, the score is written in red by my name alone for any test. To die here may be in order to gain. However, to have lived without at least knowing love my whole life and death would be in vain.
Thank you for joining me for this reading from my novelette, Destiny Stereo. What you've just experienced is not only a lyrical descent into the mind of a man fractured by stigma and silence, but a mirror held up to the harsh realities of forced psychiatry. Sapiens Holmes is more than a character; he is an embodiment of the too-often-forgotten—those struggling with emotional distress, silenced by the system and institutionalized against their will. His incarceration in Cerberus Mental Ward is not treatment. It is trauma under the mask of care. This Mental Health Month, let's move beyond awareness into advocacy. That's why we're standing in solidarity with Abolish Forced Psychiatry Their guiding principles remind us: no more involuntary interventions, no more legal discrimination based on diagnosis, yes to community-based non-coercive supports, yes to justice, housing, and dignity for all. Forced hospitalization didn't save Sapphires Holmes. It stripped him of his dignity. Let his story be the sound check before a louder revolution in how we treat the emotionally distressed. Let love, not coercion, be the beginning of care. Until all are free, none are truly healed.
