Invictus

The title of the poem by British poet William Ernest Henley is Latin for "unconquered". Invictus at one time encapsulated my son's feeling about his own life. The final two lines of the poem read, "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul".

The odd, horribly ironic take upon that can only be completely realized in a scene where Brandon painted the word on a wooden toy truck in a psyche hospital day/craft room in foam slippers and pajamas. He had nothing to do but sit at a table with other patients and color, paint or put together puzzles. He had tried to take his life and so spent the first weeks before his arrest in First Hospital on a floor which required an escort to reach. So there he was, with a beautiful young woman afflicted by post-partem depression so badly she had tried to take her life as well, a teenaged boy with scars and fresh cuts wrists to armpits, and those so medicated there was not much registration of life at all.

Invictus.