@ Fall, '96
I lay there awake, about 2:30 AM. When I went to bed It was beginning to come together, the years of voices saying unspeakably awful things in my mind, the images of molesting hands that plagued me, made me hate myself, made me crazy more than once, the years of looking inside and seeing myself as filthy and disgusting. These all began to make sense to me. Fear and despair and hatred had always overcome me whenever I faced these “thoughts”, but this time was different... this time I wasn’t afraid. This time I knew it was happening out of love. And this time these “thoughts” took shape as memories., I had been molested. It wasn’t me saying all those incredibly awful things, someone had said those things to me. It wasn’t that I was shit inside, someone had made me feel that way.
I lay there next to Beth, knowing I couldn’t tell her just yet. I had to let it congeal a bit more in my mind, let it become more real. Once, two years before, I had suggested to her that maybe I had been molested as a child, the idea had come up in a 12 step session that day. She said It was possible (she always says that when she thinks something is really off-the-wall) but unlikely since nothing had come out before now. I rarely thought of it again. Until now.
I don’t know how I fell asleep again. I’d been having trouble sleeping as I was in a manic phase; however difficult that was to admit. It was similar to others I’d had over the last seven years: spiritual euphoria, a feeling of prescience, difficulty in completing tasks, irritability among other things. This time was different somehow. For one thing I was in perhaps the best “place” of my adult life: more secure, more loved, more productive. And throughout this ”phase”, even before I recognized it as such, I had told myself I would do nothing out of fear but everything out of love. This did not mean I didn’t screw up,it just meant no one got hurt. I was able to work, quite effectively I thought; though, truly others noticed something wrong before I did.
I’d been increasingly unable to focus on specific repair projects. I worked for a rental maintenance contractor. What drew me was organizing and assigning people, putting the right person on the right job at the right time. We were growing at the time, or so I thought, and I threw myself into it, knowing they only wanted to pay me for the repair and all I cared about was the people. My current hotline to divine guidance stood me in good stead for this task and I used my prescient capabilities to the fullest. It wasn’t my fault management wouldn’t cooperate, they just didn’t realize I had my fingers on all the buttons, everything was going great. I could handle all of it and everybody, the guys all loved me and thats what counted. Those little things that kept falling through the cracks didn’t matter, trust me, I’ve got it all handled. By the time I realized I was in overdrive I’d probably laid the groundwork for getting eased out of my job later on.
All my guys were happy, though. Working conditions were the best they’d ever been and people were as productive as they could be considering they’re talent and temperment. When I started they couldn’t keep people, now they couldn’t get rid of them. Guys told me I was the best boss they’d ever had. But those cracks that things kept falling through seemed to be getting bigger. My short term memory got ridiculously short and then shorter and my already brief attention span became
fleeting.
It was the middle of a week in June when I admitted I was in trouble. When I told Beth I was manic she said, “Oh, really”, or words to that effect. she’d spotted some symptoms even though I’d tried to hide them from her even more than from myself. I slowed down at work and coasted into the weekend feeling shaky, conscious now of what was going on. In the past these episodes had been all about fear and ego. This time I had been concentrating on the will of God, trying to keep my manic ego out of it, and on love, love of others and myself. It seemed to make all the difference.
I’d been hospitalized three times in the past eight years for “psychotic episodes” related to these disturbing “thoughts”. The one thing that was common to all three was fear. Overwhelming bouts of fear of a malevolent natural and supernatural world caving in on me. A world I should be able to control, hold together, create, but since I was shit I couldn’t and it all came crashing down. My fault. The world came apart, people got hurt and it was all my fault.
But this time the fear wasn’t there. Somehow I had found the key and I wasn’t afraid. In the absence of the fear I was able to really look at my “thoughts”. Seeing them without fear for the first time brought me to a certainty often shaken and questioned but never broken: I was abused as a child.
The next day we went up to a lake cabin I had been working on and it was there that I told her what I now knew to be true. She looked at me as though the final piece in a puzzle had fell into place. She hugged me and cried and later told me that in a workshop she had attended recently (she is a counselor) the subject of child abuse came up often. Suddenly a thought, like a message flashed across her mind: “Mark was abused as a child”. Why this hadn’t happened before, all I can say is we weren’t ready. The workshop was taught by counseling psychologist who was eventualy to become my therapist.
The rest of the weekend went like a second honeymoon for us. Our relationship had been very strained recently. I’d been unable to open up or reach out. I’d been irritable and distant. For some unknown reason I had taken to keeping a knife with me often. Looking back, probably as protection from the abuser who was almost literally coming back to get me. Another manifestation of my abuse that had been expressing it self recently was the desire to crossdress. I’d struggled guiltily alone with this since early childhood, since my first abuse, and it was coming back strongly now. All this seemed to melt away for a time. We were at peace and close to each other for the first time in months and with the new revelation there was a part of me I was able to share for the first time.
I of course got absolutely no work done. Try as I might, I couldn’t pick up a saw, I was so totally drained. I would wander out to my sawhorses, look at things, fiddle around with my tape measure, laugh and shuffle back into the cabin. The owners, our doctor and his wife who were also “friends” from church, were on a tight schedule and were counting on me to get certain things done. I didn’t. We figured they’d understand since we had been declared “family” by the wife, he was my doctor, she was a counselor who had been abused as a child herself, we shared our faith , and had known them for so many years. They didn’t understand. They were livid. Or rather she was livid and Dr. Wimp just smiled weakly and went along with her. This was a great contribution to my recovery, I must say, and a great burden on my wife as she had to work in the same suite of offices with this woman and actually had try to explain the whole thing rationally to this irrational person.
The cabin eventually came off on schedule. I was able to offer just enough help and a lot of advice to get it done in time for their high profile guests, who are such nice people I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded a little unfinished work anyway. We were never invited back. I spent nearly every spare moment for a year on that place. Heart and soul, man. If I’d had insulin shock and the flu or a broken arm and a strained knee it would have been OK. But I had the temerity to have a mental illness and an emotional crisis so I was deemed irresponsible. And by “professionals”, “friends”, “spiritual family”. I have some anger invested in this still, I think.
As I said earlier, I was eased out of my job . After the weekend at the cabin I took some time off and some limited duty days when I stayed in the office or talked to people by phone from home. I was still manic so I was doing great things... or not. The rental management people we contracted with didn’t understand what was going on and I wasn’t about to tell them. They weren’t the type of people you trust with intimate secrets. I had told Brad, my boss and a couple of the guys I worked with directly and that was enough. Management lost confidence in me, decided I didn’t like my job and, worst of all, decided I was too expensive. They started giving Brad hell whenever he used me. At one point he said, “It looks like it’s either you or me Mark”. It was me. It took a while, we made it through the busy summer and the August-September rush on the edge of our teeth but then things started to wind down. Brad would give me special assignments here and there and ask me if I had a lot of projects of my own. I did not. I decided to go after it in ernest, though; and for a little while it looked like it might work but the jobs didn’t come fast enough or big enough. Soon I was looking for a job, again.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Meditation: Ephesians 3:14-21
The following passage from the Bible has helped me immensely; I read it daily for months, intensely, letting the words burn into my mind and heart until I knew it by heart. I now pray it often meditating on it.
Ephesians 3:14-21
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him, who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father…”
Because he is Creator Father, infinite, magnificent and powerful beyond all imagination. Holding the universe, all universes, in existence by his mere thought. Yet he is Abba, Father, our intimate, loving, Daddy, Papa loving with the tender love of Dada for his little child, knowing ever fiber, every hair of our head, every tear, every laugh. And by whose loving plan, set out before the foundation of the world, sent his only Son to teach, to serve, to love, to heal us all, and to take away our sin and guilt.
“…from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,…”
He created and named and knows every family, every person. We are all his children, not only by creation, but by adoption through his Son, Jesus Christ, the first born from the dead. If we die to sin and death through baptism, even baptism of desire, we rise again as brothers and sisters of Christ, children of God and in the body of Christ.
“…that according to the riches of His glory he may grant you to strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man,…”
Rich in glory, and love is his greatest glory, love of his creation, mankind and because he is glorious he wants us to be rich in glory, too. He strengthens us. he sends his Spirit to any who ask, seek, knock, and gives them gifts to make them strong, to show his glory and his glorious love.
“…that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;…”
And God’s greatest gift, from his own heart, his Son, the image and revelation of God. Faith in his Son is a gift he gives us by his great love, and if we accept it, Jesus Christ will come and live in us, love in us, with and through his Holy Spirit.
“…that you, being rooted and grounded in love,…”
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” God is love, the ground of the universe, of being, let us ground ourselves in his love and love for others.
“…may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and breadth and height and depth…”
If we ground ourselves in this love, our Father and his Son send the Spirit to empower us, to teach us. In his great love, he wants to reveal himself to us, he wants us to know him intimately as we are known.
“…and to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge…”
Yet knowing the love of Christ, in our hearts, our minds, our souls, is beyond anything else we can know or imagine, he is in all and is all. All I need to know is that Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, gave up everything for me, and lives to love me, care for me, help me, I need only love him in return, try to put him first in my life.
“…that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Jesus is the fullness of God. Let him dwell in you. I may feel I can’t go on but Jesus in me can. ‘I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me.’ (Gal 2:20a)
“Now to him, who by the power at work within us, is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think,…”
The gentle, loving power of God is working in all. Ask, seek, knock, he knows what you need, but he wants you to turn to him and ask, and receive with loving thanks.
“…to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations, forever and ever, amen.”
Every good comes from God, thank him, praise him, not because he needs it but because it is we who need to give thanks and praise, it lifts us up and heals us and it is the natural response to his love. If not for us then for our children and our children’s children…
Ephesians 3:14-21
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him, who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father…”
Because he is Creator Father, infinite, magnificent and powerful beyond all imagination. Holding the universe, all universes, in existence by his mere thought. Yet he is Abba, Father, our intimate, loving, Daddy, Papa loving with the tender love of Dada for his little child, knowing ever fiber, every hair of our head, every tear, every laugh. And by whose loving plan, set out before the foundation of the world, sent his only Son to teach, to serve, to love, to heal us all, and to take away our sin and guilt.
“…from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,…”
He created and named and knows every family, every person. We are all his children, not only by creation, but by adoption through his Son, Jesus Christ, the first born from the dead. If we die to sin and death through baptism, even baptism of desire, we rise again as brothers and sisters of Christ, children of God and in the body of Christ.
“…that according to the riches of His glory he may grant you to strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man,…”
Rich in glory, and love is his greatest glory, love of his creation, mankind and because he is glorious he wants us to be rich in glory, too. He strengthens us. he sends his Spirit to any who ask, seek, knock, and gives them gifts to make them strong, to show his glory and his glorious love.
“…that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;…”
And God’s greatest gift, from his own heart, his Son, the image and revelation of God. Faith in his Son is a gift he gives us by his great love, and if we accept it, Jesus Christ will come and live in us, love in us, with and through his Holy Spirit.
“…that you, being rooted and grounded in love,…”
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” God is love, the ground of the universe, of being, let us ground ourselves in his love and love for others.
“…may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and breadth and height and depth…”
If we ground ourselves in this love, our Father and his Son send the Spirit to empower us, to teach us. In his great love, he wants to reveal himself to us, he wants us to know him intimately as we are known.
“…and to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge…”
Yet knowing the love of Christ, in our hearts, our minds, our souls, is beyond anything else we can know or imagine, he is in all and is all. All I need to know is that Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, gave up everything for me, and lives to love me, care for me, help me, I need only love him in return, try to put him first in my life.
“…that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Jesus is the fullness of God. Let him dwell in you. I may feel I can’t go on but Jesus in me can. ‘I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me.’ (Gal 2:20a)
“Now to him, who by the power at work within us, is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think,…”
The gentle, loving power of God is working in all. Ask, seek, knock, he knows what you need, but he wants you to turn to him and ask, and receive with loving thanks.
“…to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations, forever and ever, amen.”
Every good comes from God, thank him, praise him, not because he needs it but because it is we who need to give thanks and praise, it lifts us up and heals us and it is the natural response to his love. If not for us then for our children and our children’s children…
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
So Bad, Narrative @2001
It was the worst the first time. In the desert of southern California where I went mad for the first time. I wasn't necessarily more crazy at first it was just that Helen seemed to, orchestrate it to be so badly handled that I escalated exponentially to be totally psychotic. So that you might understand I will have to go back. From '87 when I was incarcerated for the first time to February of, I think, '85 when the whole California adventure began. I was happily working as a carpenter in Sun Valley, Idaho and mostly ignoring my terribly abusive wife, Helen.
We had had a so called marriage for six years of hellish fighting and frequent separations and reconciliations when she ran out of energy and money or just got kicked out by her boyfriend. I would take her in since I knew she was quite serious when she said she was going to kill herself. My God always told me that’s something that one simply cannot do so I would take her in. It was my job to keep her alive and one would think there might be some gratitude but then you don't know Helen. Immediately she starts in with her noisy, explicit, insistent demands of fidelity down to the merest glance and honesty to last dangling participle. Standards which she herself was of course free of. I didn't care much, I was in a good place and I just fought with her two or three times a day and left. Everything was in walking or biking distance, she could have the car and I stashed my tools on the job sites.
February came and impending layoff and the unemployment wouldn't cut it for Helen's porous fingers so I signed up for a hitch in Palm Desert, California with a local developer who had some land down there he was going to slap some apartments onto and make us all some quick cash. Something pulled me strongly to the job but there was also something else. I was scared to death for the first time in my life. I'd always been a praying kind of person, in a casual, relaxed, kind of way, but now my prayers became fervent and constant; anxiety ridden and deep into the night. Yes, I would go, but nothing would ever be the same and I would be tested. Man, I didn't know the half of it.
I'd been drawing a lot lately, really taking it seriously and having good results, all in pencil. Drawings took me months of careful, agonizingly detailed work. One day a week before I left I picked up a magazine with a bighorn sheep on the cover and the picked up a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen and in two days I had an excellent, detailed drawing of that bighorn completely filling an eight and a half by eleven sheet of drawing paper. I would find out two weeks later at a Palm Desert museum that it was a desert bighorn I had drawn and that the desert bighorn is the symbol of the Palm Desert area, used on all their logos, something I truly had no way of knowing.
And so I went in a carpenter caravan and landed in Palm desert at two AM on a desert winter morning, arriving along with the first valley floor snow in twenty years. Helen stayed back and from her communication her already strange spirituality became stranger by the day, lights flashing, strange dreams and supposed communications from the dead. Work went well but she showed up in a supposedly rented car (I found out later she traded considerable sexual favors for its free use).
Perhaps here a few more words about Helen would help. Most importantly she was not to be trusted, she was cute and sweet and charming and could not tell the truth to save her soul. I especially could not trust her, about anything in any way. The depth and breadth and height of this fault of hers cannot be understated. Not in any of the ways that human beings trust each other could I trust her. She would lie about what she ate for breakfast, if I turned my back she would make a face, she would steal my money and spend it on another man.. Why did I stay? She would have died by her own hand, I could protect myself from her quite well, but at the time her passions ran so deep, she couldn't protect herself from herself. Six years later when her passions had run down a bit and her suicide threats became mere power ploys, I divorced her, having done my job. One of the hallmarks of her life was obtaining money from people by various lies about her needs and health and such. Another was dealing drugs. Both would catch up to her when I was no longer around to keep her in check. Yet another was her penchant for odd spiritualities, this is what came strongly into play now.
She became deeply involved in the then current southern Cal vogue of "New Age" spirituality. In speaking with a group counselor later about all this his eyes would light up and he would say, “I see you are firmly grounded in the New Age." I said, "No, there is no such thing as firm ground in the New Age. I just know what its about." Its not new, it is very very old. It has poked up its head over the years usually as different forms of Gnosticism or solipsism. We make ourselves God and then anything we decide is spirit and truth is spirit and truth and of course the result is chaos and the very real powers that are at work in the world, evil powers, are made stronger and step into the gap left by the exclusion of the real God because that is their greatest and truly only tool, chaos.
So, Helen shows up supposedly needing money for the car and starts channeling spirits while I keep channeling her money. She gets me fired off my buddy’s tract, how, I don't really remember but she was good at getting me fired, did it several times. So I get a job on a golf course housing tract where the front door has a million dollar fountain and a bronze gate and tire spikes so you can't back up. You better know where you're going to get in that way. Me, I went in the back, a straight and narrow dirt road with a security card machine and a speaker that asked your name and job number just to double check. She keeps me up all hours of night battling her spirits while I'm working in multi million dollar tracts on million dollar homes on postage stamp lots in 117 degree heat thirty days a month. To say I was under stress is to understate a bit. When I dragged home she’d be sitting there smoking and say some thing snide like, "Have fun?" This meant, "Have fun looking at all the f______ girls all day?" Yeah, like they were letting all kinds of hot women in the back gate, maybe they were crawling over the broken glass embedded in the top of the twelve foot high brick wall in their bikinis? And that particular battle would play. This was nothing though. In the next act the phone would ring twice and she would answer it and the room would go quiet and chill and she would turn slowly to me and electricity would cross the room and she would have a different complexion and eyes and expression. And in a husky voice she would say something like, "Don't look for her here, she's gone, maybe for good this time," and a powerful, cruel but also sad smile would come. This personality would play cruel mind games with me until I decided I had to do something. The first time I finally just bundled her into the car (So strong a personality, she was strangely physically weak), and went for a drive. Our apartment was on the highway that led up into the San Jacinto Mountains so after just driving around town I headed up the mountain and the closer I got to the second lookout the more she became nervous though nervousness seemed foreign to her personality. As we got closer she suddenly convulsed and cracked her head sharply against the window and Helen was back, asking what we were doing and bitching about putting miles on the car.
This sort of thing continued for I'm not sure how long with various permutations, always hostile to me, sometimes claiming to be male, sometimes literally frothing at the mouth with hatred and loathing, her blazing eyes begging to do something to her I would regret. Sometimes claiming if I only joined them I could travel the country helping people "Highway to Heaven" style. I was pretty sure it was a highway somewhere else. One even claimed to be an angel sent to help me but the ridiculous things she had me do proved she could not be so even if I were inclined to stretch my imagination that far. I say all this from a rather distant perspective, a “spectators view” which I have had since childhood as a result of sexual abuse, but there was also another part of me that was, while not being entirely taken in, was wanting to believe in the good and was being totally shattered and torn by the evil. I'm sorry I can't write it from that perspective, it would not be coherent, but I will eventually try to give you some sense of it. I basically decided an evil spirit was out to get me and was using Helen to do it. Which really wasn't far from wrong, I just didn't realize she was cooperating, that she had to cooperate, or "It" as we called it, could do nothing. Yes, I believe in evil spirits, I'm Catholic, we're supposed to, but that is another story, or another part of this story I may not take the space to tell.
Through all this my work somehow did not suffer. I was now running a roof framing crew, figuring hips and valleys and rafters and trusses and sheeting and tails and supervising half a dozen guys. My perception of reality began to recede from me though. I became more and more of a spectator in my own life, watching, floating through my days and sleepless nights in a spiritual place that was far from my physical world. It may sound kind of nice but it eventually became terrifying, I didn't understand it, everything had spiritual ramifications and consequences, the smallest and meanest things to the most important. Some of Helen's New Age thinking began to confuse me. It felt like I was making my own universe, maybe I was. That was terrifying. I was steadily becoming more and more depressed. Each time I closed my eyes, when I opened them, the world seemed changed, dirtier, meaner, farther from the good. Was I the “Lathe of Heaven”? Did I change the world for the worse as I slept. I looked at Helen. As I became sicker, she seemed cleaner, healthier, purer. The demon had done much of his work so he receded a bit, though the inhabitations still occurred. I seemed to be a dwarf star and she my twin, circling a black hole, inexorably being sucked in. No matter where I went, what I did I could not escape my fate.
The phase of the tract we were working on came to an end and they cut back the crew, certain I was one to be cut I never returned, such was my self esteem. I later learned I'd been chosen to run the roof crew again. I have done such things to myself often. Certain I was out of work, my depression escalated a notch and though I soon found work it didn't last, the job was shut down by financial problems. Out of work again I wandered, I orbited nearer the black hole, drawing Helen with me. Suicide seemed to become an option, I spent days searching in the Santa Anna winds that were really the pull of the black hole for a way to kill my- self but I could find no lethal objects without breaking some law or other or leaving a mess for someone else to clean up. Strangely it never occurred to me to use the tools in my bag, there were many that would have sufficed, but I was out of work and didn't deserve to open it. I realized if I killed myself Helen would probably kill herself. And, paradoxically, I didn't think she would ever allow me to kill myself, perhaps projecting my own values onto her, so the thought occurred to me I would have to kill her first in order to kill myself and I was over come with self-loathing at the thought. How could I even think such a thing? She was so beautiful, so pure, so wonderful, how could I think of harming her? I had chosen this time to forget all the horrific abuse she had put me through. I came home from wandering all day to find her saying she had been worried, take a shower, put on your new clothes, you'll feel better she said.
Most people, one would think, when faced with a spouse in an emotional and spiritual crisis might call a friend to help, or a family member, or a clergyman, or a mental health counselor. Helen called the cops, sure to make my anxiety go up, but then she wasn't trying to help me feel better. In fact, as I was soon to find out, she was sowing seeds sure to make matters worse. As I came out of our bedroom, there they were, in full regalia, night sticks and guns prominent. In my state I was certain they all read my mind, I was afraid I was going to hurt Helen and they were here to protect her. These guys are trained to help you Mark, you can trust them, she says. Soon I was alone in our bedroom with one of them and admitting my awful thoughts. Why not, they already knew, thats why they were here. Red flags were going up for him though he didn't want them to. We had had very positive dealings with these two before, we had started a neighborhood watch program and gotten a child out of a very abusive home and they liked us. (I was to find out later that Helen's involvement in the neighborhood watch was an excellent cover for her drug dealing.) These guys were in a quandary as to what to do until Helen brings up her big lie of the evening, that I was abused by my father and both cops take up the thread like they’d discussed it before and I blew up. My Dad was one of the few men in my life that was not abusive to me as a child and in my heightened emotional state I just couldn't take another lie, and to the cops at that. My paranoia went wild, they could get to him somehow through this, harm him somehow, I couldn't let that happen. I struggled, they cuffed me and I was in the back seat and under involuntary commitment headed for the nearest hospital which just happened to be The Hospital of the Rich and Famous. If you are thinking this is quite possibly the worst way to handle a near psychotic person, you're right, but it gets worse.
So we take the short ride to The Hospital of the Rich and Famous while paranoia and anxiety and all your basic psychoses are swirling in my brain but I'm still remarkably somewhat in control. They then stick me in a stark white safe room with padded walls and a wire mesh window in the door that an ambulance driver keeps playing peek-a-boo-haha-with-the- crazy-guy through the whole time they are debating what to do with me. Of course they don't want me but I'm a danger to myself and others so they have to but I'm too paranoid to sign any admitting papers and Helen is of course nowhere in sight to help out. Probably toasting her great triumph at some bar. So I'm escalating the whole time and after hours of pacing and games with the hilarious ambulance driver I'm strapped into one of the shirts with long arms and onto a cart and into the ambulance for the one hundred and twenty mile ride to County General. Comforting thought, isn't it. The one saving grace was the person who rode with me was a strong, silent man with an easy, gentle manner. I assume Mr. Peek-a-boo was driving. Of course the ambulance was riding the solar wind to the center of the black hole, to the end of the line, to hell, to a place not unlike Dante's Inferno which I had been catching glimpses of in my wanderings. I had found a curious strength in myself, though, I had found that if I only concentrated well enough, perfectly enough, I could break my bonds with my mind and go free, but it had to be the right time. It seemed to come when the ambulance slowed gently to a stop and remained so. Is this it? I asked. I don't know he slowly said. The end of the line? No. My last chance then? A stoplight I think. Maybe now, break my bonds and go out across the desert and hide in the many unfinished homes and find my way north, back to Sun Valley. We began moving again. Oh no. Was that my last chance? I don't now. Silence for miles as my mind floated and flamed into passionate breaking of all bonds of the oppressed and waned into peacefully wandering away into the night to the certainty that I was going to the end of the line, never to emerge again. Lights, many powerful lights and a strong audible click and stop. End of the line, the black hole, the wind had stopped. Hell. And I somehow deserved it.
I was wheeled into a hallway, a cold, dirty white hall, inhabited by the sort of Dantean characters I had been envisioning. Several accident victims in various stages of being repaired, all bleary eyed and bloody. One, in a wheel chair and cast noted my straight jacket and comments, "They must not trust you." Why not? I thought, I have hurt no one. Stumbling 'round the halls seemed to be mental patients as well, shivering and wailing and trembling. Calling out for help. This truly was hell, but as I looked in the eyes of these people I realized there was some mistake, these people were not evil, they were innocents, they were not meant to be here. I must free them, yes I must free them. I was left alone in the hallway, now was the time I would break my bonds and theirs and we could all be free. We can be free if we only will it so. I began to cry out so, be free, you can all be free. I struggled mightily with my bonds and screamed freedom to all. Huge orderlies came and dragged me towards the elevator to the secure rooftop area but had to choke me out to subdue me I was so certain of my mission. I awoke in the elevator in full restraints, arms and legs. One of the huge attendants apologized, saying he hated to choke someone out like that. I thought if only I had had more time, more focus, we would all be free.
In full restraints I was placed on a bed in a small secure room with bars on the windows. I had to call the attendant to pee into a bed pan and slurp soup while still fully restrained. I have no idea how long I was like this, I remember but one night but it may have been many. I awoke from that one night to see Helen and her mother standing over me. I was to be freed to a regular room. Helen claimed if it wasn’t for her they would have never let me out of there. Right, if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have been in there,but I was still oddly under her spell and couldn’t see that. I remember hearing someone say the ones who come in the worst like that rehab the quickest. But now she was involved again, the one who put me here is here again, but as I said I had not yet put that together, I was glad to see her. The rest of the stay is a bit of a blur. Within a few weeks I was released to a halfway house where I met Gloria whose testimony appears elsewhere in this volume. Within a week I was pulled out by Helen and her mother. "He just needs to get out of that loony bin and get back to work!" Right, in the care of the very person most responsible for my being there. And yes, I went right back to work, unmedicated as I could not afford the thorazine they gave me and it did me no good anyway. A relapse was all but assured. While I was incarcerated Helen had gone back to Sun Valley and gotten out of a lot of bills and other troubles by telling people I had died in a an uninsured construction accident. Several years later there were quite a few people very surprised to find me alive.
The relapse came within six months. There was the same kind of spiritual game playing on her part and lots of job politics going on in my work I didn't need, either. Helen decided to move to Idaho for what reason, I'm not sure other than she had been raised in a town near the one she picked, we'll call it Pike. Somehow she construed it to be my idea. Each time I closed my eyes my depression deepened, my world clicked down a notch, once again meaner, dirtier, nastier with each night or even nap. I could feel the click down of my world, like the click of the ambulance locking into the bay at County General. The black hole started swirling again, the only way out, to kill Helen and then myself. Let me assure you I had never harmed her, though she had grievously harmed me often, the very thought of harming her sent me into paroxysms of guilt. The deeply spiritual cast to everything deepened even more, with spiritual evil ascending and I descending.
With great anxiety and trepidation on my part we set out on our move. Such a stressful thing as moving is another thing one does not want to do with a near psychotic person, but she was not inclined to care for me. We stopped for lunch in a little Utah town in the midst of a minor snow storm, it may have been June, I don't know. I noticed a small hospital, a place of safety for a person in extremis like me. She drove out onto the freeway for several miles. My brain was whirling I can't go on, there is a blizzard up ahead there is death in this pickup and I cannot stand it any more. She would say I tried to strangle her but all I did was turn my hands toward her then open the door at sixty miles an hour and put my foot in the snow and yell at her to stop. I tumbled out at about forty five and brushed myself off and stumbled slowly, zombie-like across the freeway. We'd been going uphill and I remember no traffic in those lanes but as I crossed the median I saw an old white semi coming down the hill. The driver was visible and his "Oh shit" was almost audible as he locked up and almost jackknifed on the snowy road. I continued my zombie-walk unperturbed into the next lane as a brand new shiny black semi crested the hill doing about ninety. There was no "Oh shit" here, no response at all from the driver dressed in black with black mirrored shades. He knew there was no way he could do anything at all to avoid me. He knew it was all up to me. If I had slowed my pace but a fraction I'd not be here today, if I'd taken one less step I'd have been scattered for hundreds of yards down the freeway. I had my choice and I made it, I took that one last step and the semi wind whipped warm exhaust and cold, stinging ice crystals through my thin shirt as I stood watching death fly down the hill doing ninety in the slow lane.
I walked down the hill after him toward the little Utah town and its little hospital where I would get some help and call my mom and dad to maybe come pick me up. They were divorced but they would come together on something like this. I wasn't hitch hiking but a man stopped and picked me up. He was like the guy in the ambulance, strong, but gentle. I asked where he was going, he said anywhere you want to go. I said the hospital he said OK. We got there just fine and I called my mom but who should show up but my lovely wife and three huge state troopers who took me into custody and finger printed me and put me in jail for the night. Thats my Helen, always comes through in a pinch. It wasn't too bad except for when the urinal next to my bed was flushed and wouldn't stop running and I had a river running into the drain under my bed all night. And the anxiety attack I had early that morning that they gave me Haldol for that locked my jaw then the Valium they gave me that helped my jaw but my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth all day. My brother came and got me out the next day and well, something made those troopers change their minds because they were saying "Y'all come back now" and such when I left and Helen was nowhere to be seen.
To make a long story a little shorter I stayed in a psyche ward in the capital for a few weeks and got out and eventually got free of Helen as I said and have had ups and downs with my illness, nothing more so dramatic but some episodes just as severe, they were just handled right and didn't escalate like these two did. I need to make something very clear here, what I blame Helen for, beyond twelve years of abuse, is the extravagant escalation of and the incarcarations during these episodes. I do not and cannot blame her for the presence of my illness. She contributed to the severity of it, but not to its existence. Its existence, I believe, is part heredity, part childhood sexual abuse and part a lifetime of disfunctional thinking and unhealthy handling of stress. I was depressed and experienced anxiety before I ever met Helen. Had we not had a relationship perhaps I would never have gone completely psychotic, though I would have been vulnerable to it, and I still would have been ill. The psychotic breaks I’ve had have left me broken in subtle and not so subtle ways that can never be repaired. Though I have achieved a fairly high level of functioning I have never been the same and right now consider myself to be functioning at about 60% of my capacity. Once your mind has completely failed you , been completely out of your control, you can never completely trust it again. This sets up a fundamental insecurity that subtly underlies your life. I've been hospitalized twice since these two episodes and nearly hospitalized a few more times. I say the illness is king, I just adapt to it and the various medications that I take to battle it. Its always there, never really gets better, sometimes gets worse, and a good day is when I'm not afraid.
@2001
We had had a so called marriage for six years of hellish fighting and frequent separations and reconciliations when she ran out of energy and money or just got kicked out by her boyfriend. I would take her in since I knew she was quite serious when she said she was going to kill herself. My God always told me that’s something that one simply cannot do so I would take her in. It was my job to keep her alive and one would think there might be some gratitude but then you don't know Helen. Immediately she starts in with her noisy, explicit, insistent demands of fidelity down to the merest glance and honesty to last dangling participle. Standards which she herself was of course free of. I didn't care much, I was in a good place and I just fought with her two or three times a day and left. Everything was in walking or biking distance, she could have the car and I stashed my tools on the job sites.
February came and impending layoff and the unemployment wouldn't cut it for Helen's porous fingers so I signed up for a hitch in Palm Desert, California with a local developer who had some land down there he was going to slap some apartments onto and make us all some quick cash. Something pulled me strongly to the job but there was also something else. I was scared to death for the first time in my life. I'd always been a praying kind of person, in a casual, relaxed, kind of way, but now my prayers became fervent and constant; anxiety ridden and deep into the night. Yes, I would go, but nothing would ever be the same and I would be tested. Man, I didn't know the half of it.
I'd been drawing a lot lately, really taking it seriously and having good results, all in pencil. Drawings took me months of careful, agonizingly detailed work. One day a week before I left I picked up a magazine with a bighorn sheep on the cover and the picked up a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen and in two days I had an excellent, detailed drawing of that bighorn completely filling an eight and a half by eleven sheet of drawing paper. I would find out two weeks later at a Palm Desert museum that it was a desert bighorn I had drawn and that the desert bighorn is the symbol of the Palm Desert area, used on all their logos, something I truly had no way of knowing.
And so I went in a carpenter caravan and landed in Palm desert at two AM on a desert winter morning, arriving along with the first valley floor snow in twenty years. Helen stayed back and from her communication her already strange spirituality became stranger by the day, lights flashing, strange dreams and supposed communications from the dead. Work went well but she showed up in a supposedly rented car (I found out later she traded considerable sexual favors for its free use).
Perhaps here a few more words about Helen would help. Most importantly she was not to be trusted, she was cute and sweet and charming and could not tell the truth to save her soul. I especially could not trust her, about anything in any way. The depth and breadth and height of this fault of hers cannot be understated. Not in any of the ways that human beings trust each other could I trust her. She would lie about what she ate for breakfast, if I turned my back she would make a face, she would steal my money and spend it on another man.. Why did I stay? She would have died by her own hand, I could protect myself from her quite well, but at the time her passions ran so deep, she couldn't protect herself from herself. Six years later when her passions had run down a bit and her suicide threats became mere power ploys, I divorced her, having done my job. One of the hallmarks of her life was obtaining money from people by various lies about her needs and health and such. Another was dealing drugs. Both would catch up to her when I was no longer around to keep her in check. Yet another was her penchant for odd spiritualities, this is what came strongly into play now.
She became deeply involved in the then current southern Cal vogue of "New Age" spirituality. In speaking with a group counselor later about all this his eyes would light up and he would say, “I see you are firmly grounded in the New Age." I said, "No, there is no such thing as firm ground in the New Age. I just know what its about." Its not new, it is very very old. It has poked up its head over the years usually as different forms of Gnosticism or solipsism. We make ourselves God and then anything we decide is spirit and truth is spirit and truth and of course the result is chaos and the very real powers that are at work in the world, evil powers, are made stronger and step into the gap left by the exclusion of the real God because that is their greatest and truly only tool, chaos.
So, Helen shows up supposedly needing money for the car and starts channeling spirits while I keep channeling her money. She gets me fired off my buddy’s tract, how, I don't really remember but she was good at getting me fired, did it several times. So I get a job on a golf course housing tract where the front door has a million dollar fountain and a bronze gate and tire spikes so you can't back up. You better know where you're going to get in that way. Me, I went in the back, a straight and narrow dirt road with a security card machine and a speaker that asked your name and job number just to double check. She keeps me up all hours of night battling her spirits while I'm working in multi million dollar tracts on million dollar homes on postage stamp lots in 117 degree heat thirty days a month. To say I was under stress is to understate a bit. When I dragged home she’d be sitting there smoking and say some thing snide like, "Have fun?" This meant, "Have fun looking at all the f______ girls all day?" Yeah, like they were letting all kinds of hot women in the back gate, maybe they were crawling over the broken glass embedded in the top of the twelve foot high brick wall in their bikinis? And that particular battle would play. This was nothing though. In the next act the phone would ring twice and she would answer it and the room would go quiet and chill and she would turn slowly to me and electricity would cross the room and she would have a different complexion and eyes and expression. And in a husky voice she would say something like, "Don't look for her here, she's gone, maybe for good this time," and a powerful, cruel but also sad smile would come. This personality would play cruel mind games with me until I decided I had to do something. The first time I finally just bundled her into the car (So strong a personality, she was strangely physically weak), and went for a drive. Our apartment was on the highway that led up into the San Jacinto Mountains so after just driving around town I headed up the mountain and the closer I got to the second lookout the more she became nervous though nervousness seemed foreign to her personality. As we got closer she suddenly convulsed and cracked her head sharply against the window and Helen was back, asking what we were doing and bitching about putting miles on the car.
This sort of thing continued for I'm not sure how long with various permutations, always hostile to me, sometimes claiming to be male, sometimes literally frothing at the mouth with hatred and loathing, her blazing eyes begging to do something to her I would regret. Sometimes claiming if I only joined them I could travel the country helping people "Highway to Heaven" style. I was pretty sure it was a highway somewhere else. One even claimed to be an angel sent to help me but the ridiculous things she had me do proved she could not be so even if I were inclined to stretch my imagination that far. I say all this from a rather distant perspective, a “spectators view” which I have had since childhood as a result of sexual abuse, but there was also another part of me that was, while not being entirely taken in, was wanting to believe in the good and was being totally shattered and torn by the evil. I'm sorry I can't write it from that perspective, it would not be coherent, but I will eventually try to give you some sense of it. I basically decided an evil spirit was out to get me and was using Helen to do it. Which really wasn't far from wrong, I just didn't realize she was cooperating, that she had to cooperate, or "It" as we called it, could do nothing. Yes, I believe in evil spirits, I'm Catholic, we're supposed to, but that is another story, or another part of this story I may not take the space to tell.
Through all this my work somehow did not suffer. I was now running a roof framing crew, figuring hips and valleys and rafters and trusses and sheeting and tails and supervising half a dozen guys. My perception of reality began to recede from me though. I became more and more of a spectator in my own life, watching, floating through my days and sleepless nights in a spiritual place that was far from my physical world. It may sound kind of nice but it eventually became terrifying, I didn't understand it, everything had spiritual ramifications and consequences, the smallest and meanest things to the most important. Some of Helen's New Age thinking began to confuse me. It felt like I was making my own universe, maybe I was. That was terrifying. I was steadily becoming more and more depressed. Each time I closed my eyes, when I opened them, the world seemed changed, dirtier, meaner, farther from the good. Was I the “Lathe of Heaven”? Did I change the world for the worse as I slept. I looked at Helen. As I became sicker, she seemed cleaner, healthier, purer. The demon had done much of his work so he receded a bit, though the inhabitations still occurred. I seemed to be a dwarf star and she my twin, circling a black hole, inexorably being sucked in. No matter where I went, what I did I could not escape my fate.
The phase of the tract we were working on came to an end and they cut back the crew, certain I was one to be cut I never returned, such was my self esteem. I later learned I'd been chosen to run the roof crew again. I have done such things to myself often. Certain I was out of work, my depression escalated a notch and though I soon found work it didn't last, the job was shut down by financial problems. Out of work again I wandered, I orbited nearer the black hole, drawing Helen with me. Suicide seemed to become an option, I spent days searching in the Santa Anna winds that were really the pull of the black hole for a way to kill my- self but I could find no lethal objects without breaking some law or other or leaving a mess for someone else to clean up. Strangely it never occurred to me to use the tools in my bag, there were many that would have sufficed, but I was out of work and didn't deserve to open it. I realized if I killed myself Helen would probably kill herself. And, paradoxically, I didn't think she would ever allow me to kill myself, perhaps projecting my own values onto her, so the thought occurred to me I would have to kill her first in order to kill myself and I was over come with self-loathing at the thought. How could I even think such a thing? She was so beautiful, so pure, so wonderful, how could I think of harming her? I had chosen this time to forget all the horrific abuse she had put me through. I came home from wandering all day to find her saying she had been worried, take a shower, put on your new clothes, you'll feel better she said.
Most people, one would think, when faced with a spouse in an emotional and spiritual crisis might call a friend to help, or a family member, or a clergyman, or a mental health counselor. Helen called the cops, sure to make my anxiety go up, but then she wasn't trying to help me feel better. In fact, as I was soon to find out, she was sowing seeds sure to make matters worse. As I came out of our bedroom, there they were, in full regalia, night sticks and guns prominent. In my state I was certain they all read my mind, I was afraid I was going to hurt Helen and they were here to protect her. These guys are trained to help you Mark, you can trust them, she says. Soon I was alone in our bedroom with one of them and admitting my awful thoughts. Why not, they already knew, thats why they were here. Red flags were going up for him though he didn't want them to. We had had very positive dealings with these two before, we had started a neighborhood watch program and gotten a child out of a very abusive home and they liked us. (I was to find out later that Helen's involvement in the neighborhood watch was an excellent cover for her drug dealing.) These guys were in a quandary as to what to do until Helen brings up her big lie of the evening, that I was abused by my father and both cops take up the thread like they’d discussed it before and I blew up. My Dad was one of the few men in my life that was not abusive to me as a child and in my heightened emotional state I just couldn't take another lie, and to the cops at that. My paranoia went wild, they could get to him somehow through this, harm him somehow, I couldn't let that happen. I struggled, they cuffed me and I was in the back seat and under involuntary commitment headed for the nearest hospital which just happened to be The Hospital of the Rich and Famous. If you are thinking this is quite possibly the worst way to handle a near psychotic person, you're right, but it gets worse.
So we take the short ride to The Hospital of the Rich and Famous while paranoia and anxiety and all your basic psychoses are swirling in my brain but I'm still remarkably somewhat in control. They then stick me in a stark white safe room with padded walls and a wire mesh window in the door that an ambulance driver keeps playing peek-a-boo-haha-with-the- crazy-guy through the whole time they are debating what to do with me. Of course they don't want me but I'm a danger to myself and others so they have to but I'm too paranoid to sign any admitting papers and Helen is of course nowhere in sight to help out. Probably toasting her great triumph at some bar. So I'm escalating the whole time and after hours of pacing and games with the hilarious ambulance driver I'm strapped into one of the shirts with long arms and onto a cart and into the ambulance for the one hundred and twenty mile ride to County General. Comforting thought, isn't it. The one saving grace was the person who rode with me was a strong, silent man with an easy, gentle manner. I assume Mr. Peek-a-boo was driving. Of course the ambulance was riding the solar wind to the center of the black hole, to the end of the line, to hell, to a place not unlike Dante's Inferno which I had been catching glimpses of in my wanderings. I had found a curious strength in myself, though, I had found that if I only concentrated well enough, perfectly enough, I could break my bonds with my mind and go free, but it had to be the right time. It seemed to come when the ambulance slowed gently to a stop and remained so. Is this it? I asked. I don't know he slowly said. The end of the line? No. My last chance then? A stoplight I think. Maybe now, break my bonds and go out across the desert and hide in the many unfinished homes and find my way north, back to Sun Valley. We began moving again. Oh no. Was that my last chance? I don't now. Silence for miles as my mind floated and flamed into passionate breaking of all bonds of the oppressed and waned into peacefully wandering away into the night to the certainty that I was going to the end of the line, never to emerge again. Lights, many powerful lights and a strong audible click and stop. End of the line, the black hole, the wind had stopped. Hell. And I somehow deserved it.
I was wheeled into a hallway, a cold, dirty white hall, inhabited by the sort of Dantean characters I had been envisioning. Several accident victims in various stages of being repaired, all bleary eyed and bloody. One, in a wheel chair and cast noted my straight jacket and comments, "They must not trust you." Why not? I thought, I have hurt no one. Stumbling 'round the halls seemed to be mental patients as well, shivering and wailing and trembling. Calling out for help. This truly was hell, but as I looked in the eyes of these people I realized there was some mistake, these people were not evil, they were innocents, they were not meant to be here. I must free them, yes I must free them. I was left alone in the hallway, now was the time I would break my bonds and theirs and we could all be free. We can be free if we only will it so. I began to cry out so, be free, you can all be free. I struggled mightily with my bonds and screamed freedom to all. Huge orderlies came and dragged me towards the elevator to the secure rooftop area but had to choke me out to subdue me I was so certain of my mission. I awoke in the elevator in full restraints, arms and legs. One of the huge attendants apologized, saying he hated to choke someone out like that. I thought if only I had had more time, more focus, we would all be free.
In full restraints I was placed on a bed in a small secure room with bars on the windows. I had to call the attendant to pee into a bed pan and slurp soup while still fully restrained. I have no idea how long I was like this, I remember but one night but it may have been many. I awoke from that one night to see Helen and her mother standing over me. I was to be freed to a regular room. Helen claimed if it wasn’t for her they would have never let me out of there. Right, if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have been in there,but I was still oddly under her spell and couldn’t see that. I remember hearing someone say the ones who come in the worst like that rehab the quickest. But now she was involved again, the one who put me here is here again, but as I said I had not yet put that together, I was glad to see her. The rest of the stay is a bit of a blur. Within a few weeks I was released to a halfway house where I met Gloria whose testimony appears elsewhere in this volume. Within a week I was pulled out by Helen and her mother. "He just needs to get out of that loony bin and get back to work!" Right, in the care of the very person most responsible for my being there. And yes, I went right back to work, unmedicated as I could not afford the thorazine they gave me and it did me no good anyway. A relapse was all but assured. While I was incarcerated Helen had gone back to Sun Valley and gotten out of a lot of bills and other troubles by telling people I had died in a an uninsured construction accident. Several years later there were quite a few people very surprised to find me alive.
The relapse came within six months. There was the same kind of spiritual game playing on her part and lots of job politics going on in my work I didn't need, either. Helen decided to move to Idaho for what reason, I'm not sure other than she had been raised in a town near the one she picked, we'll call it Pike. Somehow she construed it to be my idea. Each time I closed my eyes my depression deepened, my world clicked down a notch, once again meaner, dirtier, nastier with each night or even nap. I could feel the click down of my world, like the click of the ambulance locking into the bay at County General. The black hole started swirling again, the only way out, to kill Helen and then myself. Let me assure you I had never harmed her, though she had grievously harmed me often, the very thought of harming her sent me into paroxysms of guilt. The deeply spiritual cast to everything deepened even more, with spiritual evil ascending and I descending.
With great anxiety and trepidation on my part we set out on our move. Such a stressful thing as moving is another thing one does not want to do with a near psychotic person, but she was not inclined to care for me. We stopped for lunch in a little Utah town in the midst of a minor snow storm, it may have been June, I don't know. I noticed a small hospital, a place of safety for a person in extremis like me. She drove out onto the freeway for several miles. My brain was whirling I can't go on, there is a blizzard up ahead there is death in this pickup and I cannot stand it any more. She would say I tried to strangle her but all I did was turn my hands toward her then open the door at sixty miles an hour and put my foot in the snow and yell at her to stop. I tumbled out at about forty five and brushed myself off and stumbled slowly, zombie-like across the freeway. We'd been going uphill and I remember no traffic in those lanes but as I crossed the median I saw an old white semi coming down the hill. The driver was visible and his "Oh shit" was almost audible as he locked up and almost jackknifed on the snowy road. I continued my zombie-walk unperturbed into the next lane as a brand new shiny black semi crested the hill doing about ninety. There was no "Oh shit" here, no response at all from the driver dressed in black with black mirrored shades. He knew there was no way he could do anything at all to avoid me. He knew it was all up to me. If I had slowed my pace but a fraction I'd not be here today, if I'd taken one less step I'd have been scattered for hundreds of yards down the freeway. I had my choice and I made it, I took that one last step and the semi wind whipped warm exhaust and cold, stinging ice crystals through my thin shirt as I stood watching death fly down the hill doing ninety in the slow lane.
I walked down the hill after him toward the little Utah town and its little hospital where I would get some help and call my mom and dad to maybe come pick me up. They were divorced but they would come together on something like this. I wasn't hitch hiking but a man stopped and picked me up. He was like the guy in the ambulance, strong, but gentle. I asked where he was going, he said anywhere you want to go. I said the hospital he said OK. We got there just fine and I called my mom but who should show up but my lovely wife and three huge state troopers who took me into custody and finger printed me and put me in jail for the night. Thats my Helen, always comes through in a pinch. It wasn't too bad except for when the urinal next to my bed was flushed and wouldn't stop running and I had a river running into the drain under my bed all night. And the anxiety attack I had early that morning that they gave me Haldol for that locked my jaw then the Valium they gave me that helped my jaw but my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth all day. My brother came and got me out the next day and well, something made those troopers change their minds because they were saying "Y'all come back now" and such when I left and Helen was nowhere to be seen.
To make a long story a little shorter I stayed in a psyche ward in the capital for a few weeks and got out and eventually got free of Helen as I said and have had ups and downs with my illness, nothing more so dramatic but some episodes just as severe, they were just handled right and didn't escalate like these two did. I need to make something very clear here, what I blame Helen for, beyond twelve years of abuse, is the extravagant escalation of and the incarcarations during these episodes. I do not and cannot blame her for the presence of my illness. She contributed to the severity of it, but not to its existence. Its existence, I believe, is part heredity, part childhood sexual abuse and part a lifetime of disfunctional thinking and unhealthy handling of stress. I was depressed and experienced anxiety before I ever met Helen. Had we not had a relationship perhaps I would never have gone completely psychotic, though I would have been vulnerable to it, and I still would have been ill. The psychotic breaks I’ve had have left me broken in subtle and not so subtle ways that can never be repaired. Though I have achieved a fairly high level of functioning I have never been the same and right now consider myself to be functioning at about 60% of my capacity. Once your mind has completely failed you , been completely out of your control, you can never completely trust it again. This sets up a fundamental insecurity that subtly underlies your life. I've been hospitalized twice since these two episodes and nearly hospitalized a few more times. I say the illness is king, I just adapt to it and the various medications that I take to battle it. Its always there, never really gets better, sometimes gets worse, and a good day is when I'm not afraid.
@2001
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Ger'asene Apologetic
May, 2006
The Ger’asene Apologetic
They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Ger'asenes.
And when he had come out of the boat, there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,
who lived among the tombs; and no one could bind him any more, even with a chain;
for he had often been bound with fetters and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the fetters he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him.
Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out, and bruising himself with stones.
And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped him;
and crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me."
For he had said to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!"
And Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion; for we are many."
And he begged him eagerly not to send them out of the country.
Now a great herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside;
and they begged him, "Send us to the swine, let us enter them."
So he gave them leave. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.
The herdsmen fled, and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened.
And they came to Jesus, and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the man who had had the legion; and they were afraid.
And those who had seen it told what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine.
And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their neighborhood.
And as he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him.
But he refused, and said to him, "Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."
(Mark 5:1-19, RSV)
My God, My God, what have I done?
May 4, 2006
As I write this the voices are, for the most part, quiet. They make no comments or suggestions as I type. When they do pop up, I ignore them or tell them to shut up. They do not praise me as the consummate writer or tell me I am the Second Coming or encourage me to do something else, something irrational, foolish but oh so compelling. And they don’t tell me lies, lies I used to repeat to people sometimes. I am racked with embarrassment and guilt. Neither do they console me or entreat me to relax. I seem to have escaped their power, and their solace. Some of the events contained herein have been pieced together after the fact as I sometimes have memory lapses, especially when under heavy stress.
When the voices began sometime in 1987, I was under terrific stress in my abusive first marriage. My then wife was into New Age spirituality and was supposedly channeling spirits, mostly very negative and abusive, perhaps evil. This experience opened me up to the reality of the demonic playing a role in human life. I became part of a charismatic prayer group in approximately 1989, which served to reinforce and actually overemphasize this idea. My voices told me I was an exorcist. Such spiritual ideas often accompany madness; there is often a fine line between the madman and the mystic. In the world of the mad, spirits abound, saints and demons, Satans and Christs. Most mentally ill people I have met say that there is a spiritual element to their illness. Mental illness seems to break down barriers between what might be called normal reality and the spiritual realm. It is often overwhelming, resulting in much famously odd behavior and claims. I became a spiritual warrior, battling demons everywhere I went. I regularly if not constantly said prayers of exorcism and protection for others and myself for several years. This fascination made me sometimes physically ill and led to generally benign but irrational behavior at times. I believe such prayers have their place but to be preoccupied or fascinated with the demonic as I was is not healthy or logical and perhaps gives it more power. I still believe there is demonic influence on human life, but living a good life and having an active prayer life is protection enough. The non-spiritual person sometimes seems the safest of all from the demonic. Was I influenced by demons? No way to really know. It’s a possibility. All I know for sure is I have had problems knowing what is “real” for nearly two decades now. I do not recommend charismatic spirituality to any one with psychotic tendencies or any mental illness that features any problems discerning reality. It is simply too stimulating. I do not recommend New Age spirituality to anyone at all; it can be dangerous, especially in its more extreme forms.
The voices no longer seduce me with loving words into their incredible world where I am the center of the universe, where everything is about me and in me and through me. Where I am encouraged, recruited to be the Christ. Christ was and is me and I am female (At the time of this particular delusion I was attempting to live as a woman). I turn down the job but they insist. The Church’s secret is being revealed as they speak, Christ was and is a woman named Marquesa. She, I, wrote the Gospel of Marquesa on a beach in Galilee after the resurrection while the apostles, some women, played volleyball in the sand. Somewhere in the bowels of the Vatican, Cardinals are gathered ‘round an ancient pallet, sealed for nearly two millennia, reading my words, in modern English (It seemed total gibberish in about 300 AD when they sealed it up), written in #2 pencil on canary yellow legal pads 2000 years ago. It was treated as a mysterious and secret religious relic all these centuries, self-preserving and a total mystery. It was locked up in a vault many centuries ago at the birth of the Vatican and all but forgotten. But with all the miracles I performed and the tabloids proclaiming me the Second Coming, and the movies and books and special appearances on MTV, someone looked up the name Marquesa and found it referred to this ancient relic. At the same time they are reading it, I am lying on my bed, listening to them while I am writing an exact narrative of these unfolding events on that 2000 years ago beach, which is exactly what they are reading which is exactly what I am hearing (and writing) and they read their own exact words and are told to have pity on me as I lie there, experiencing all this in my New World bed in a little western town nearly half a world away. Paradox, paradox, there lies madness, there lies madness. But I cut a deal with them, they get to keep their male messiah and I publicly turn down the job of Christ in exchange for them opening up the Church’s vast riches to help the poor and set up a world wide adoption network since they are so against contraception and abortion. I am, too, against abortion I mean, but I see it as a necessary evil, but if they lightened up on contraception and did the adoption thing, and helped the poor like they’re supposed to, they could outlaw abortion without triggering a back alley blood bath. I would make a good Messiah but I still turn down the job. Somehow I know I’m not God. Okay, so how about the Holy Spirit? Same trap, the Trinity thing, you know.
Before that I was Mary, the Mary, and besides that nearly every significant female, known of unknown, before or after Mary. I was the woman behind every great creative man there ever was. The wife, the concubine, the slave, the apprentice. I was DaVinci’s servant girl, but you see, he was just a kindly, half mad eccentric who wrote down my words, and showed his brother my sketches. Mona Lisa was my “Mom”, done from memory since she died when I was quite young. You see, I have forever been the main source of creativity in this world. And the key to God’s will being done in mankind. As I tried to tell Einstein, God does throw dice with the universe, except for me. I always do His will so others can have free will. The constant thrown into the equation to make it work. But at the same time the wild card, the free radical, the warrior princess, forever ready to serve anywhere in any capacity to allow determinism. To be up to this task I was made half angel, half human, born into every generation to serve it.
I was, of course, Eve, (The whole “Fall” thing happened so that people would need each other, if no one was ever afraid, like God says, everything would be fine) and before that all the non-human predecessors back to the primordial puddle where life came into existence. I was there when God dipped His finger into the ooze to give the first sparks of Life. You see I was the cell that would one day become mankind. Before that I was a little girl in Heaven with my Daddy, God and we talked outside of time and together laid out the whole history of the universe. He would propose an idea and I would tell him if I thought it work out. I gave suggestions along the way while I played at His feet, but He did most of the work, just letting me help ‘cause He loved me so much. I’m not sure where my brother, Jesus, was during all this, maybe taking care of Heaven. He wasn’t actually my brother, but that’s what I called Him. I was never anything like God; really, I was just the human archetype, with angel added in to make me immortal. I was never reincarnated, I just lived forever. When I “died” I would just wink out or time for a holiday near heaven and then back into time into the same instant as a child. Sometimes an infant, sometimes a toddler, sometimes a ten year old, whatever worked best at the time. Always an orphan, but always “adopted” in some way by a key person in that generation. Mary was the exception to the angel and adoption stuff, I was totally human then to make it work out, theologically speaking. God knew I could do it once all by myself, so to speak. Especially with Jesus around most of the time. After Mary things changed a bit, of course, since the Kingdom of Heaven had arrived. The person, Mary, went bodily to heaven, while “I”, now Marquesa, received again my angel and went back to work. Yeah, a bit of magic, it’s called a miracle. Things were actually easier, what with the gift of the Spirit and all.
In this present lifetime, I am again only human as it is the turn of the millennium and a cusp in the history of the universe. Everybody thinks this is such an evil time, but relatively speaking, it is really the most peaceful time in history. There are no World Wars or any major wars at all, no Atilas or Hitlers or Pol Pots or Stalins. We just don’t think we’re at peace because there is media coverage of every awful thing that happens anywhere in the world. So much used to happen that hardly anyone ever knew about before the written word and, eventually, radio and TV and satellites and the World Wide Web. And there are just so damn many more people in the world and so much fear. We’ve reached capacity, population will level off soon. Evil per capita and en toto is actually the lowest it’s ever been. Satan was actually totally defeated in Jesus’ incarnation. All that’s left are his leaderless demons and the fear residing in mankind. So, as of this lifetime, there is a critical mass of creativity and Spirit in the world. I get to retire soon. Live a normal life and die like everybody else and stay in heaven. As for the Second Coming stuff, I can see how there might be some confusion, it being around the turn of the millennium and me being so famous and important and all. “Blazing across the sky.” Nobody knows when Jesus will come but the Trinity, not even me.
Not long after all the Second Coming stuff and the deal, about a week, I saved the earth from destruction a couple of times. Again lying on my bed, I was spiritually sent out to the boundaries of our solar system to confront an armada of alien warships on a mission to destroy this evil place called earth. Technologically advanced, they were unburdened by the spiritual and religious constraints on science that have plagued the earth. I was sent as the example of earth spirituality and to point them to the Trinity. They were much impressed and cowed by this great thing known as the Spirit and its ability to reside in so called humans. They opted to study this God and his amazing beauty and power. And returned home. The next day I was called to face another armada from the other end of the universe with similar results. I made vague reference to all this when I checked myself into the mental ward soon afterward, as I was so overwhelmed. They let me go the next day, just a glitch in my medications, not to worry.
The voices tell me what people are thinking and the Spirit allows me to speak to them in their minds. I have averted many suicides and other tragedies by this telepathic counseling. Sometimes I simply comfort people, other times I give suggestions but always pointing them to Jesus or the Father or the Spirit, whichever person of the Trinity serves them best.
Such is the ride I have been on, specifically for the last several months, but with ever increasing dysfunction for the last twenty years.
My voices told me for nearly ten years (I can’t pin down the time this actually began, maybe 1998) that I was actually a woman, that my image of myself as a man was delusion. The horrific Satanic Ritual Abuse I suffered as a child created this delusion. The voices supplied me with an alternate life as a girl and a woman to counter my male memories. My birth certificate was changed to male after the old courthouse in the small town where I was born burned down, something they do in Montana periodically to update their records (There is another story related to my birth certificate but that will come in the next section). Changed in an effort to keep me hidden from the cult of abusers, who viewed me as their chosen one, the one to lead them into the coming new millennium in which we would rise along the Antichrist. When these voices began in about 1987, they soon after helped me through, or perhaps into, two psychotic episodes. A third, less severe occurred in 1992 and several other times I was near psychotic, especially in 1999. The story of the abuse started coming out in, I believe, 1996 and played out in my mind usually dictated by the voice or voices, until about 2002. It has taken until this past year to seriously question the bulk of the story. I still believe I was abused at some time during my childhood but nI now doubt it to be as extensive or horrific as the narrative given me by the voices.
Perhaps I should say I do not hear my voices with my ears, they are not auditory hallucinations. I am told this makes them more like learned scripts rather than voices, which seems actually to give the abuse story more credibility were it not for all the other obviously deluded “thinking.” They occur in my mind, much like thoughts, only in a conversational manner, they refer to me as “you” and themselves as “I” or “we.” They also often use my mouth. I simply relax my jaw and they whisper through my mouth, using my tongue and jaw. For these reasons I find “voices’ a better description. I was certain for many years that at least one of them was God; he seemed to love me so. My constant conversation with “him” or “them,” meaning the Trinity, was constant prayer. I often had what I considered spiritual experiences. In the latter stages they could immobilize me as I lay on my bed, “praying.” This was not only a trance state, but also proof of their divinity. For years I was convinced that I could not live without them. I could not trust the evidence of my senses, they deceived me into believing I was a man and so many other things. I was mad, I could not handle my existence, make my own choices, I had to totally rely upon God. It mattered not that there were so many contradictions, that I suffered much, servants of God suffer, its scriptural. The problems could be my fault, through my sin, or else they were delusions, things were actually just fine. However, I am financially, professionally and personally devastated.
The impact these voices have had on my life for the past twenty years is immeasurable, as they were my guides through these years in all phases of my life. I consistently either avoided discussing these voices with counselors or psychiatrists or, when I did, I greatly understated their importance and prevalence. I did not want my God and guide to be criticized or taken away. Once, around 1998, I did mention to my psychiatrist that I heard the voice of God. He immediately suggested increasing my antipsychotic, which was already at a relatively high level, tranquilizing me too much, I thought. I discouraged the change; this was precisely the type of thing I feared, though my voices were remarkably resistant to medication as they are not strictly hallucinations, as mentioned earlier. As I mentioned, I was told by my voices to ignore the evidence of my senses, I was mad, they could not be trusted, “just trust us.” I eventually insisted that this was impossible. How can one simply ignore all the input of one’s senses, especially when faced with adverse consequences and such great contradictions? It was no way to live.
I was married for thirteen years to a very fine woman. I became convinced I was somehow justified to have an affair. I was also exempt from the moral taboo against such things because of the abuse I suffered as a child. Afterwards, when it was discovered, I was surprised my wife cared enough to be devastated by it. My voices had convinced me she did not care about me anymore, that she was unfaithful herself. She was not unfaithful, I am now certain of this. I was not exempt from consequences and not exempt for tortuous guilt. The voices then convinced me it had not actually happened, that I had been framed. I must admit to some complicity in this and perhaps most of my negative behavior. To say it was all the voices is too convenient. There must have been some character flaws driving at least some of it, though it is wrong to say that mental illness itself is a character flaw. Neither I nor my now ex-wife will ever be the same. In just the past several months I was convinced I had come into a large sum of money and subsequently went on a spending spree whose repercussions I will feel for several more years, if not the rest of my life. I now make decisions ”on my own” and feel less than confident about it, but at least what I do is relatively logical. After my destructive first marriage, I worked hard to develop a sense of personal integrity, and succeeded for the most part. This sense has been destroyed; I am struggling to regain it. I feel I will be able to continue to be stable, though time will tell. I count only a few weeks now in my new life.
There are two little boys in my life (my second wife’s grandchildren) who need me to be a man. My time with them used to be very free and fun and beneficial for all concerned. I have been a major influence in their life, a more complete and dynamic presence than their very decent but limited father. Due to my actions of the past several months (dressing as a woman, irresponsible spending, and a complex little urban neighborhood misunderstanding I choose not to go into) our time is now supervised, limited to the immediate vicinity of their home, and I was at first questioned as to how I was dressed before I came over. This is understandable, especially considering that the parents are both developmentally delayed, but I struggle to accept it, I feel frustrated and insulted and it is frustrating for the boys. My former wife tells me I just need to be patient; the parents need to see that I am stable. Time will perhaps heal, in this as in many other facets of my life.
In the face of much evidence and economic and legal necessity, I have perhaps come to my senses. I know I am poor and deeply in debt, and with consequent legal difficulties. I now know I am male, I no longer dress as a woman, and, as I said, reject much but not all of the abuse storyline. I still desire to be a woman, I have had gender difficulties from my earliest memories, but this will have to come about through “normal” channels, if at all, and not by spiritual intervention. I lived dressed as a woman for much of 1999 and 2000 and again for most of the last seven months. Without my voices to support me, it has become too difficult, too hard to take the hurtful comments, the stares, the ostracization, the bathroom problem. I face opposition in my entire family and was unable to find a suitable job, though I did work briefly for a former employer. I am trying to discern the will of God in this matter, through “normal” channels. I will be male for the foreseeable future, perhaps the rest of my life, though at this time I find this difficult, if not impossible to accept.
I do believe that God was active in my life these last twenty years, perhaps mitigating the damage at times. After separating from my first wife in 1989 things seemed to improve, a lot. I was able to overcome my problems with reality through hard work. I remarried in 1991 and, superficially at least, life was good for several years. In the past decade, though I managed to get a couple of BS degrees,in many ways things simply got steadily worse, I was less sane, the “demons” came out that I was repressing. This decline coincided with the “recovery” of the abuse “memories.” Throughout, I was wholly sincere in my desire to serve God and I believe He honored that. I accomplished much good during the past two decades, there is simply too much damage done, too much pain, too much confusion, too much… to believe that He was truly my guide through it all. There is much more the voices told me, I haven’t the will to pull it all up, but I think you get the idea. I seek God in my heart now, not my mind. Which brings me back to my place with the voices mostly quiet, in a way bereft, but mostly relieved and with a halfway decent grasp on “reality,” if there be such a thing. The Ger’asene is sitting on a rock, clothed and in his right mind, yet feeling lost, guilty, out of place and foolish. And has little idea what to do with himself.
My God, My God, what have I done?
Update, October 2007
I feel like I have overcome my transgender fixation. I took a lot of time and thouhgt through all the scenarios of a life that followed that path. They all led to dead ends. I no longer believe this is God's will for me. I have a good part time job now, hope to go back to grad school in 09. Will declare bankruptcy after the first of the year ( its pretty bad when bankruptcy is a step up). Been almost two and a half years since the divorce. I feel like i am finally healing from it. I actually had a date with a woman this month. It went well but not ready for a relationship just yet. I'm still depressed a lot and occaisionally manic, but I maintain insight and don't listen to the voices anymore. Things are pretty good.
The Ger’asene Apologetic
They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Ger'asenes.
And when he had come out of the boat, there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,
who lived among the tombs; and no one could bind him any more, even with a chain;
for he had often been bound with fetters and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the fetters he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him.
Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out, and bruising himself with stones.
And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped him;
and crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me."
For he had said to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!"
And Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion; for we are many."
And he begged him eagerly not to send them out of the country.
Now a great herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside;
and they begged him, "Send us to the swine, let us enter them."
So he gave them leave. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.
The herdsmen fled, and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened.
And they came to Jesus, and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the man who had had the legion; and they were afraid.
And those who had seen it told what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine.
And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their neighborhood.
And as he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him.
But he refused, and said to him, "Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."
(Mark 5:1-19, RSV)
My God, My God, what have I done?
May 4, 2006
As I write this the voices are, for the most part, quiet. They make no comments or suggestions as I type. When they do pop up, I ignore them or tell them to shut up. They do not praise me as the consummate writer or tell me I am the Second Coming or encourage me to do something else, something irrational, foolish but oh so compelling. And they don’t tell me lies, lies I used to repeat to people sometimes. I am racked with embarrassment and guilt. Neither do they console me or entreat me to relax. I seem to have escaped their power, and their solace. Some of the events contained herein have been pieced together after the fact as I sometimes have memory lapses, especially when under heavy stress.
When the voices began sometime in 1987, I was under terrific stress in my abusive first marriage. My then wife was into New Age spirituality and was supposedly channeling spirits, mostly very negative and abusive, perhaps evil. This experience opened me up to the reality of the demonic playing a role in human life. I became part of a charismatic prayer group in approximately 1989, which served to reinforce and actually overemphasize this idea. My voices told me I was an exorcist. Such spiritual ideas often accompany madness; there is often a fine line between the madman and the mystic. In the world of the mad, spirits abound, saints and demons, Satans and Christs. Most mentally ill people I have met say that there is a spiritual element to their illness. Mental illness seems to break down barriers between what might be called normal reality and the spiritual realm. It is often overwhelming, resulting in much famously odd behavior and claims. I became a spiritual warrior, battling demons everywhere I went. I regularly if not constantly said prayers of exorcism and protection for others and myself for several years. This fascination made me sometimes physically ill and led to generally benign but irrational behavior at times. I believe such prayers have their place but to be preoccupied or fascinated with the demonic as I was is not healthy or logical and perhaps gives it more power. I still believe there is demonic influence on human life, but living a good life and having an active prayer life is protection enough. The non-spiritual person sometimes seems the safest of all from the demonic. Was I influenced by demons? No way to really know. It’s a possibility. All I know for sure is I have had problems knowing what is “real” for nearly two decades now. I do not recommend charismatic spirituality to any one with psychotic tendencies or any mental illness that features any problems discerning reality. It is simply too stimulating. I do not recommend New Age spirituality to anyone at all; it can be dangerous, especially in its more extreme forms.
The voices no longer seduce me with loving words into their incredible world where I am the center of the universe, where everything is about me and in me and through me. Where I am encouraged, recruited to be the Christ. Christ was and is me and I am female (At the time of this particular delusion I was attempting to live as a woman). I turn down the job but they insist. The Church’s secret is being revealed as they speak, Christ was and is a woman named Marquesa. She, I, wrote the Gospel of Marquesa on a beach in Galilee after the resurrection while the apostles, some women, played volleyball in the sand. Somewhere in the bowels of the Vatican, Cardinals are gathered ‘round an ancient pallet, sealed for nearly two millennia, reading my words, in modern English (It seemed total gibberish in about 300 AD when they sealed it up), written in #2 pencil on canary yellow legal pads 2000 years ago. It was treated as a mysterious and secret religious relic all these centuries, self-preserving and a total mystery. It was locked up in a vault many centuries ago at the birth of the Vatican and all but forgotten. But with all the miracles I performed and the tabloids proclaiming me the Second Coming, and the movies and books and special appearances on MTV, someone looked up the name Marquesa and found it referred to this ancient relic. At the same time they are reading it, I am lying on my bed, listening to them while I am writing an exact narrative of these unfolding events on that 2000 years ago beach, which is exactly what they are reading which is exactly what I am hearing (and writing) and they read their own exact words and are told to have pity on me as I lie there, experiencing all this in my New World bed in a little western town nearly half a world away. Paradox, paradox, there lies madness, there lies madness. But I cut a deal with them, they get to keep their male messiah and I publicly turn down the job of Christ in exchange for them opening up the Church’s vast riches to help the poor and set up a world wide adoption network since they are so against contraception and abortion. I am, too, against abortion I mean, but I see it as a necessary evil, but if they lightened up on contraception and did the adoption thing, and helped the poor like they’re supposed to, they could outlaw abortion without triggering a back alley blood bath. I would make a good Messiah but I still turn down the job. Somehow I know I’m not God. Okay, so how about the Holy Spirit? Same trap, the Trinity thing, you know.
Before that I was Mary, the Mary, and besides that nearly every significant female, known of unknown, before or after Mary. I was the woman behind every great creative man there ever was. The wife, the concubine, the slave, the apprentice. I was DaVinci’s servant girl, but you see, he was just a kindly, half mad eccentric who wrote down my words, and showed his brother my sketches. Mona Lisa was my “Mom”, done from memory since she died when I was quite young. You see, I have forever been the main source of creativity in this world. And the key to God’s will being done in mankind. As I tried to tell Einstein, God does throw dice with the universe, except for me. I always do His will so others can have free will. The constant thrown into the equation to make it work. But at the same time the wild card, the free radical, the warrior princess, forever ready to serve anywhere in any capacity to allow determinism. To be up to this task I was made half angel, half human, born into every generation to serve it.
I was, of course, Eve, (The whole “Fall” thing happened so that people would need each other, if no one was ever afraid, like God says, everything would be fine) and before that all the non-human predecessors back to the primordial puddle where life came into existence. I was there when God dipped His finger into the ooze to give the first sparks of Life. You see I was the cell that would one day become mankind. Before that I was a little girl in Heaven with my Daddy, God and we talked outside of time and together laid out the whole history of the universe. He would propose an idea and I would tell him if I thought it work out. I gave suggestions along the way while I played at His feet, but He did most of the work, just letting me help ‘cause He loved me so much. I’m not sure where my brother, Jesus, was during all this, maybe taking care of Heaven. He wasn’t actually my brother, but that’s what I called Him. I was never anything like God; really, I was just the human archetype, with angel added in to make me immortal. I was never reincarnated, I just lived forever. When I “died” I would just wink out or time for a holiday near heaven and then back into time into the same instant as a child. Sometimes an infant, sometimes a toddler, sometimes a ten year old, whatever worked best at the time. Always an orphan, but always “adopted” in some way by a key person in that generation. Mary was the exception to the angel and adoption stuff, I was totally human then to make it work out, theologically speaking. God knew I could do it once all by myself, so to speak. Especially with Jesus around most of the time. After Mary things changed a bit, of course, since the Kingdom of Heaven had arrived. The person, Mary, went bodily to heaven, while “I”, now Marquesa, received again my angel and went back to work. Yeah, a bit of magic, it’s called a miracle. Things were actually easier, what with the gift of the Spirit and all.
In this present lifetime, I am again only human as it is the turn of the millennium and a cusp in the history of the universe. Everybody thinks this is such an evil time, but relatively speaking, it is really the most peaceful time in history. There are no World Wars or any major wars at all, no Atilas or Hitlers or Pol Pots or Stalins. We just don’t think we’re at peace because there is media coverage of every awful thing that happens anywhere in the world. So much used to happen that hardly anyone ever knew about before the written word and, eventually, radio and TV and satellites and the World Wide Web. And there are just so damn many more people in the world and so much fear. We’ve reached capacity, population will level off soon. Evil per capita and en toto is actually the lowest it’s ever been. Satan was actually totally defeated in Jesus’ incarnation. All that’s left are his leaderless demons and the fear residing in mankind. So, as of this lifetime, there is a critical mass of creativity and Spirit in the world. I get to retire soon. Live a normal life and die like everybody else and stay in heaven. As for the Second Coming stuff, I can see how there might be some confusion, it being around the turn of the millennium and me being so famous and important and all. “Blazing across the sky.” Nobody knows when Jesus will come but the Trinity, not even me.
Not long after all the Second Coming stuff and the deal, about a week, I saved the earth from destruction a couple of times. Again lying on my bed, I was spiritually sent out to the boundaries of our solar system to confront an armada of alien warships on a mission to destroy this evil place called earth. Technologically advanced, they were unburdened by the spiritual and religious constraints on science that have plagued the earth. I was sent as the example of earth spirituality and to point them to the Trinity. They were much impressed and cowed by this great thing known as the Spirit and its ability to reside in so called humans. They opted to study this God and his amazing beauty and power. And returned home. The next day I was called to face another armada from the other end of the universe with similar results. I made vague reference to all this when I checked myself into the mental ward soon afterward, as I was so overwhelmed. They let me go the next day, just a glitch in my medications, not to worry.
The voices tell me what people are thinking and the Spirit allows me to speak to them in their minds. I have averted many suicides and other tragedies by this telepathic counseling. Sometimes I simply comfort people, other times I give suggestions but always pointing them to Jesus or the Father or the Spirit, whichever person of the Trinity serves them best.
Such is the ride I have been on, specifically for the last several months, but with ever increasing dysfunction for the last twenty years.
My voices told me for nearly ten years (I can’t pin down the time this actually began, maybe 1998) that I was actually a woman, that my image of myself as a man was delusion. The horrific Satanic Ritual Abuse I suffered as a child created this delusion. The voices supplied me with an alternate life as a girl and a woman to counter my male memories. My birth certificate was changed to male after the old courthouse in the small town where I was born burned down, something they do in Montana periodically to update their records (There is another story related to my birth certificate but that will come in the next section). Changed in an effort to keep me hidden from the cult of abusers, who viewed me as their chosen one, the one to lead them into the coming new millennium in which we would rise along the Antichrist. When these voices began in about 1987, they soon after helped me through, or perhaps into, two psychotic episodes. A third, less severe occurred in 1992 and several other times I was near psychotic, especially in 1999. The story of the abuse started coming out in, I believe, 1996 and played out in my mind usually dictated by the voice or voices, until about 2002. It has taken until this past year to seriously question the bulk of the story. I still believe I was abused at some time during my childhood but nI now doubt it to be as extensive or horrific as the narrative given me by the voices.
Perhaps I should say I do not hear my voices with my ears, they are not auditory hallucinations. I am told this makes them more like learned scripts rather than voices, which seems actually to give the abuse story more credibility were it not for all the other obviously deluded “thinking.” They occur in my mind, much like thoughts, only in a conversational manner, they refer to me as “you” and themselves as “I” or “we.” They also often use my mouth. I simply relax my jaw and they whisper through my mouth, using my tongue and jaw. For these reasons I find “voices’ a better description. I was certain for many years that at least one of them was God; he seemed to love me so. My constant conversation with “him” or “them,” meaning the Trinity, was constant prayer. I often had what I considered spiritual experiences. In the latter stages they could immobilize me as I lay on my bed, “praying.” This was not only a trance state, but also proof of their divinity. For years I was convinced that I could not live without them. I could not trust the evidence of my senses, they deceived me into believing I was a man and so many other things. I was mad, I could not handle my existence, make my own choices, I had to totally rely upon God. It mattered not that there were so many contradictions, that I suffered much, servants of God suffer, its scriptural. The problems could be my fault, through my sin, or else they were delusions, things were actually just fine. However, I am financially, professionally and personally devastated.
The impact these voices have had on my life for the past twenty years is immeasurable, as they were my guides through these years in all phases of my life. I consistently either avoided discussing these voices with counselors or psychiatrists or, when I did, I greatly understated their importance and prevalence. I did not want my God and guide to be criticized or taken away. Once, around 1998, I did mention to my psychiatrist that I heard the voice of God. He immediately suggested increasing my antipsychotic, which was already at a relatively high level, tranquilizing me too much, I thought. I discouraged the change; this was precisely the type of thing I feared, though my voices were remarkably resistant to medication as they are not strictly hallucinations, as mentioned earlier. As I mentioned, I was told by my voices to ignore the evidence of my senses, I was mad, they could not be trusted, “just trust us.” I eventually insisted that this was impossible. How can one simply ignore all the input of one’s senses, especially when faced with adverse consequences and such great contradictions? It was no way to live.
I was married for thirteen years to a very fine woman. I became convinced I was somehow justified to have an affair. I was also exempt from the moral taboo against such things because of the abuse I suffered as a child. Afterwards, when it was discovered, I was surprised my wife cared enough to be devastated by it. My voices had convinced me she did not care about me anymore, that she was unfaithful herself. She was not unfaithful, I am now certain of this. I was not exempt from consequences and not exempt for tortuous guilt. The voices then convinced me it had not actually happened, that I had been framed. I must admit to some complicity in this and perhaps most of my negative behavior. To say it was all the voices is too convenient. There must have been some character flaws driving at least some of it, though it is wrong to say that mental illness itself is a character flaw. Neither I nor my now ex-wife will ever be the same. In just the past several months I was convinced I had come into a large sum of money and subsequently went on a spending spree whose repercussions I will feel for several more years, if not the rest of my life. I now make decisions ”on my own” and feel less than confident about it, but at least what I do is relatively logical. After my destructive first marriage, I worked hard to develop a sense of personal integrity, and succeeded for the most part. This sense has been destroyed; I am struggling to regain it. I feel I will be able to continue to be stable, though time will tell. I count only a few weeks now in my new life.
There are two little boys in my life (my second wife’s grandchildren) who need me to be a man. My time with them used to be very free and fun and beneficial for all concerned. I have been a major influence in their life, a more complete and dynamic presence than their very decent but limited father. Due to my actions of the past several months (dressing as a woman, irresponsible spending, and a complex little urban neighborhood misunderstanding I choose not to go into) our time is now supervised, limited to the immediate vicinity of their home, and I was at first questioned as to how I was dressed before I came over. This is understandable, especially considering that the parents are both developmentally delayed, but I struggle to accept it, I feel frustrated and insulted and it is frustrating for the boys. My former wife tells me I just need to be patient; the parents need to see that I am stable. Time will perhaps heal, in this as in many other facets of my life.
In the face of much evidence and economic and legal necessity, I have perhaps come to my senses. I know I am poor and deeply in debt, and with consequent legal difficulties. I now know I am male, I no longer dress as a woman, and, as I said, reject much but not all of the abuse storyline. I still desire to be a woman, I have had gender difficulties from my earliest memories, but this will have to come about through “normal” channels, if at all, and not by spiritual intervention. I lived dressed as a woman for much of 1999 and 2000 and again for most of the last seven months. Without my voices to support me, it has become too difficult, too hard to take the hurtful comments, the stares, the ostracization, the bathroom problem. I face opposition in my entire family and was unable to find a suitable job, though I did work briefly for a former employer. I am trying to discern the will of God in this matter, through “normal” channels. I will be male for the foreseeable future, perhaps the rest of my life, though at this time I find this difficult, if not impossible to accept.
I do believe that God was active in my life these last twenty years, perhaps mitigating the damage at times. After separating from my first wife in 1989 things seemed to improve, a lot. I was able to overcome my problems with reality through hard work. I remarried in 1991 and, superficially at least, life was good for several years. In the past decade, though I managed to get a couple of BS degrees,in many ways things simply got steadily worse, I was less sane, the “demons” came out that I was repressing. This decline coincided with the “recovery” of the abuse “memories.” Throughout, I was wholly sincere in my desire to serve God and I believe He honored that. I accomplished much good during the past two decades, there is simply too much damage done, too much pain, too much confusion, too much… to believe that He was truly my guide through it all. There is much more the voices told me, I haven’t the will to pull it all up, but I think you get the idea. I seek God in my heart now, not my mind. Which brings me back to my place with the voices mostly quiet, in a way bereft, but mostly relieved and with a halfway decent grasp on “reality,” if there be such a thing. The Ger’asene is sitting on a rock, clothed and in his right mind, yet feeling lost, guilty, out of place and foolish. And has little idea what to do with himself.
My God, My God, what have I done?
Update, October 2007
I feel like I have overcome my transgender fixation. I took a lot of time and thouhgt through all the scenarios of a life that followed that path. They all led to dead ends. I no longer believe this is God's will for me. I have a good part time job now, hope to go back to grad school in 09. Will declare bankruptcy after the first of the year ( its pretty bad when bankruptcy is a step up). Been almost two and a half years since the divorce. I feel like i am finally healing from it. I actually had a date with a woman this month. It went well but not ready for a relationship just yet. I'm still depressed a lot and occaisionally manic, but I maintain insight and don't listen to the voices anymore. Things are pretty good.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Paradox
Paradox
God
All powerful creator
Omnipotent
Omniscient
Infinite
The ancient question:
Can this God
create an object
even He
cannot move?
Pardox.
Or is it?
What of the human heart?
Tweak the question a bit,
Can He create
Something
Even He
Cannot control?
Adam and Eve
His chosen people
Those healed by Christ
And sharply admonished
To tell no one.
His Popes
You and I.
Those who love Him
Choose to do His will.
And even they
Stray.
Evil happens
If we so choose.
Free will you say?
Or Omniscient error?
Proof for the atheist?
Love.
Love is all powerful.
Love creates.
God is Love.
Love does not control.
Love not freely chosen
Is not love.
Man’s heart roams free.
Paradox?
Painful truth.
Is this God cruel
Or mad
Or absent?
Can one who has experienced the power of love
Doubt the existence of God?
Can one who has not or has lost love
Or who has seen evil
Believe in Him?
Evil?
Love’s absence?
Can this infinite God be absent?
Or simply choose
To withhold
His omnipotence
For the sake of love?
To love so much
As to allow
Evil?
Choice?
Madness
Divine madness.
God chooses not to control
The human heart.
Evil will control
The human heart
If the heart so chooses.
Yet love remains
God.
God
All powerful creator
Omnipotent
Omniscient
Infinite
The ancient question:
Can this God
create an object
even He
cannot move?
Pardox.
Or is it?
What of the human heart?
Tweak the question a bit,
Can He create
Something
Even He
Cannot control?
Adam and Eve
His chosen people
Those healed by Christ
And sharply admonished
To tell no one.
His Popes
You and I.
Those who love Him
Choose to do His will.
And even they
Stray.
Evil happens
If we so choose.
Free will you say?
Or Omniscient error?
Proof for the atheist?
Love.
Love is all powerful.
Love creates.
God is Love.
Love does not control.
Love not freely chosen
Is not love.
Man’s heart roams free.
Paradox?
Painful truth.
Is this God cruel
Or mad
Or absent?
Can one who has experienced the power of love
Doubt the existence of God?
Can one who has not or has lost love
Or who has seen evil
Believe in Him?
Evil?
Love’s absence?
Can this infinite God be absent?
Or simply choose
To withhold
His omnipotence
For the sake of love?
To love so much
As to allow
Evil?
Choice?
Madness
Divine madness.
God chooses not to control
The human heart.
Evil will control
The human heart
If the heart so chooses.
Yet love remains
God.
Sodden
There’s a hole in my heart where the rain comes in
Blue skies or gray it pours in like sin
There’s a hole in my soul where their eyes bore in
Pouring judgment on me until they win
My sodden heart breaks at the seams
And my laden soul cracks at the beams
My God My God I can’t bear the weight
My Lord My Lord I can’t stand the wait.
What have I done
But try to follow you
Sweet Jesus you know I’ve ached to be true.
But here I am
Broken and torn
Sodden and saddened
Beaten and worn.
And still it rains and bores and pours in on me.
I am left on the cross street for all to see.
There he goes, that’s the one
Hell I wish I had my gun
Stares and sneers and a deadly remark
And now I lay alone in the dark
I did not shield myself from anything
Wore my soul on my sleeve, everything.
I did it all for love, did it all for You
So to hell with them, I have been true.
Yes, I’m broken in every way
Yet I live to cry another day.
Sodden, I know all that they say.
Beaten, yes, but just for today
I rise, I walk. I face the fray.
I love You still,
I come to do Your Will.
Blue skies or gray it pours in like sin
There’s a hole in my soul where their eyes bore in
Pouring judgment on me until they win
My sodden heart breaks at the seams
And my laden soul cracks at the beams
My God My God I can’t bear the weight
My Lord My Lord I can’t stand the wait.
What have I done
But try to follow you
Sweet Jesus you know I’ve ached to be true.
But here I am
Broken and torn
Sodden and saddened
Beaten and worn.
And still it rains and bores and pours in on me.
I am left on the cross street for all to see.
There he goes, that’s the one
Hell I wish I had my gun
Stares and sneers and a deadly remark
And now I lay alone in the dark
I did not shield myself from anything
Wore my soul on my sleeve, everything.
I did it all for love, did it all for You
So to hell with them, I have been true.
Yes, I’m broken in every way
Yet I live to cry another day.
Sodden, I know all that they say.
Beaten, yes, but just for today
I rise, I walk. I face the fray.
I love You still,
I come to do Your Will.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Now 2
I want to start over with this life of mine.
Do it better from now on.
I’ve spent so much of myself
somewhere other than here and now
and somehow anything but happy.
“One day, one place at a time, OK?”
Tomorrow is worry and fear,
yesterday is judgment, regret.
Today is all I have,
now is where I’m at,
so I’ll stay right here in now ‘til its over
because everything happens now.
Nothing happens in the future,or the past.
No amount of fear or worry
can make anything happen in the future.
No amount of regret can change a thing in the past.
I have my own small space in now
where I have some control, if I want it.
With a little work, I can do pretty much what I please,
Be happy, be sad, be content, be afraid...
I now choose to be content within this space of mine
and as I move my space around in life,
to interact with others, or not,
I choose to remain focused on peace of mind,
not worry or fear, so maybe I’l be able
to hold my part of the world together
as now goes on.
And I hope I might somehow make life a little better
for those whose space is most intimate with mine.
Now is all we have
and all we need.
Lord , help me to be here now.
Always now, help me stay away
from other places, other times.
Let me be here now, with you.
Let me be happy in my now, in my little space.
Let me be responsible only for that which you give me, Lord.
Let me not be afraid.
Please Lord, let me not be afraid.
Do it better from now on.
I’ve spent so much of myself
somewhere other than here and now
and somehow anything but happy.
“One day, one place at a time, OK?”
Tomorrow is worry and fear,
yesterday is judgment, regret.
Today is all I have,
now is where I’m at,
so I’ll stay right here in now ‘til its over
because everything happens now.
Nothing happens in the future,or the past.
No amount of fear or worry
can make anything happen in the future.
No amount of regret can change a thing in the past.
I have my own small space in now
where I have some control, if I want it.
With a little work, I can do pretty much what I please,
Be happy, be sad, be content, be afraid...
I now choose to be content within this space of mine
and as I move my space around in life,
to interact with others, or not,
I choose to remain focused on peace of mind,
not worry or fear, so maybe I’l be able
to hold my part of the world together
as now goes on.
And I hope I might somehow make life a little better
for those whose space is most intimate with mine.
Now is all we have
and all we need.
Lord , help me to be here now.
Always now, help me stay away
from other places, other times.
Let me be here now, with you.
Let me be happy in my now, in my little space.
Let me be responsible only for that which you give me, Lord.
Let me not be afraid.
Please Lord, let me not be afraid.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Still
Trust is gone,
the only thing that relieves the fear
is anger, and that only lasts so long.
I could hardly trust myself to breath, my heart to beat.
life became fear of movement,
and movement the only thing i could do.
Life became fear of forward motion,
of time, especially time.
For any forward motion brings risk
and risk is terror without trust.
Deliberate movement became an antidote,
dance became therapy,
anger became a release.
Planning was beyond comprehension
as it takes faith in the future.
Organization was difficult in that
it took trust in myself,
in my decision making.
Decision making was fine for the immediate, physical,
nearly anything immediately physical was OK.
But anything requiring trust in the future
was futile.
And there was the constant fear
of the movement of time
and of the present.
Fear of now and all its possibilities
Trust in me
Says my God.
How can I when I fear every passing moment?
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still, but I can hardly stand to sit
Let alone be still.
Be not afraid
I am with you.
Really?
I am with you always, until the end of the age.
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.
Every hair on your head is counted.
Be still and know that I am God.
I have loved you with an everlasting love
I have formed you and you are mine.
Sorry, I just can’t, I gotta go,
Somewhere, anywhere,
I just have to keep moving.
I am with you
OK, then come on.
We can talk on the way to… somewhere.
Be still…
OK, I’ll try to be still in my head but I got to keep moving.
Bless the Lord, Oh my soul.
Yeah, I really like that one.
Do not forget all the gifts of God,
OK, like be still, and think about the good stuff.
So I had my deliberate motion
in walking through the snow in the dark.
It took a while but I noticed,
It was beautiful.
So quiet, just the crunch of my feet on the snow,
So still, just a few snowflakes gently drifting down.
Somehow I had shut out the cars going by on the street.
With my hood up and my head down I couldn’t see them.
I noticed my breathing, fast and shallow, like I was scared.
My heart, too, beating fast.
Ok, lets be still.
Slow everything down.
Relax, body, slow down, heart, feet.
I stopped, took a deep breath,
And looked up.
The big white snow flakes drifted down
past my eyes through the blue black sky.
They seemed to come from nothing, out of nowhere.
They appeared and fell all around me,
Slowly, continually, gently.
I am with you.
A flake landed on my cheek.
Like a tear.
Angry?
No.
Trust in Me.
the only thing that relieves the fear
is anger, and that only lasts so long.
I could hardly trust myself to breath, my heart to beat.
life became fear of movement,
and movement the only thing i could do.
Life became fear of forward motion,
of time, especially time.
For any forward motion brings risk
and risk is terror without trust.
Deliberate movement became an antidote,
dance became therapy,
anger became a release.
Planning was beyond comprehension
as it takes faith in the future.
Organization was difficult in that
it took trust in myself,
in my decision making.
Decision making was fine for the immediate, physical,
nearly anything immediately physical was OK.
But anything requiring trust in the future
was futile.
And there was the constant fear
of the movement of time
and of the present.
Fear of now and all its possibilities
Trust in me
Says my God.
How can I when I fear every passing moment?
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still, but I can hardly stand to sit
Let alone be still.
Be not afraid
I am with you.
Really?
I am with you always, until the end of the age.
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.
Every hair on your head is counted.
Be still and know that I am God.
I have loved you with an everlasting love
I have formed you and you are mine.
Sorry, I just can’t, I gotta go,
Somewhere, anywhere,
I just have to keep moving.
I am with you
OK, then come on.
We can talk on the way to… somewhere.
Be still…
OK, I’ll try to be still in my head but I got to keep moving.
Bless the Lord, Oh my soul.
Yeah, I really like that one.
Do not forget all the gifts of God,
OK, like be still, and think about the good stuff.
So I had my deliberate motion
in walking through the snow in the dark.
It took a while but I noticed,
It was beautiful.
So quiet, just the crunch of my feet on the snow,
So still, just a few snowflakes gently drifting down.
Somehow I had shut out the cars going by on the street.
With my hood up and my head down I couldn’t see them.
I noticed my breathing, fast and shallow, like I was scared.
My heart, too, beating fast.
Ok, lets be still.
Slow everything down.
Relax, body, slow down, heart, feet.
I stopped, took a deep breath,
And looked up.
The big white snow flakes drifted down
past my eyes through the blue black sky.
They seemed to come from nothing, out of nowhere.
They appeared and fell all around me,
Slowly, continually, gently.
I am with you.
A flake landed on my cheek.
Like a tear.
Angry?
No.
Trust in Me.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Thanks T
Just lost, late at night...early in the morning. I have a big, bold print out on 8 1/2 by 11 on my wall, the one on the far right, fourth row up, written in a fit of positive thinking: I LOVE MY LIFE, ALL OF IT. EVEN THE PAIN. THERE LIES LOVE. I don't look at it very often. My 9 year old grandson read the first line out loud a few days ago while we stopped in at my apartment. I didn't look up, until I came back much later. Maybe its right after all. Maybe its real. I'm trying to be real. I really don't know how. When I look back on the things I do and say, so often they're just not real. I was just going with the flow, or trying to impress, or please. Yep, people pleaser. Of course, the real me, if I could ever find me, wouldn't be good enough... for... what?... who?... I don't know, I just wouldn't be good enough if I were really me. So I'm often someone else. Who? I don't know that either but it has to be better than me. That's why I like you. You seem to be you. To be real. I remember being me sometimes, being real. I remember it felt good. I could just never keep it up very long. I always lost myself. You see, this illness, which I've probably had all my life, it just didn't hit big time 'til I was 30, separates you from reality sometimes, but you're never exactly sure when it happens. You think you're cruising along just fine annd then things start falling apart and all of a sudden with a horrific, gut renching realization, you realize you have been living in a delusion for... hours, days, even years. And everything crashes. Your whole life falls apart. And maybe you just cry for a while, or maybe you cry and pace the floor all night or maybe you cry and pace the floor all night and then pack some things by noon the next day and walk down to the emergency ward and say I need to go to the...closest Funny Farm, Nut House, Loony Bin, Insane Asylum...no, where I live right now we call it 5C, the mental ward of a hospital in a town 32 miles away. But if you can't get it together to check yourself in, you'll probably either end up in jail for nothing other than being crazy or they'll come and get you with big beefs and choke you out and put you in that funny shirt with eight foot long arms, Straight Jacket, and put you in a metal room (padded cells are for rich people) on the top floor of the county hospital in what's called 5 point restraints (somebody told me this, I didn't count) where you have to call the beef for a bed pan to go pee. and hopefully they drug you enough so you sleep for a long time and hopefully somebody shows up and vouches for you and they let you out into the "population". On the top floor. Where the more advanced "patients" stay. Where they let you out a few times a day for fresh air or smokes on the roof with 9 feet high fences with barbed wire on the top.
But that was nearly twenty years ago, I live a pretty good life now, reasonably stable, I work, part time. receive SSD. Had a real good marriage for about 6 years and a not so good one for six years and separated for a year and divorced over two years ago. This illness is mostly to blame. I'm one of the lucky ones. I really am quite stable most of the time. I don't "look mentally ill" And you really can't tell by looking...
OK folks, I'm really tired, this isn't good for me, been awake for 21 hours now, I'll pay for this. I just had to tell the truth, be real, even if nobody ever reads this stuff.
Thanks T.
But that was nearly twenty years ago, I live a pretty good life now, reasonably stable, I work, part time. receive SSD. Had a real good marriage for about 6 years and a not so good one for six years and separated for a year and divorced over two years ago. This illness is mostly to blame. I'm one of the lucky ones. I really am quite stable most of the time. I don't "look mentally ill" And you really can't tell by looking...
OK folks, I'm really tired, this isn't good for me, been awake for 21 hours now, I'll pay for this. I just had to tell the truth, be real, even if nobody ever reads this stuff.
Thanks T.
What Does Depression Feel Like?
What Does Depression Feel Like?
For Therese
Like I’m a spectator at my own life.
Watching and wondering why I am so sad.
I look at the blue sky, the trees, feel the breeze,
Hmmm, I should be enjoying this.
Instead I’m sighing heavily, taking small steps,
(Takes less energy that way),
My shoulders drooping. head down.
Hey, you idiot, it’s a beautiful day!
I look up.
It hurts to look at the sky,
Not my eyes, my heart.
Why does that hurt?
Its beautiful, that’s why.
And I am so… not.
It feels like I am outcast, apart, alone.
I am with my grandchildren.
Nine and eleven.
I watch the scene, it seems idyllic.
Actually my ex, step grandchildren, but
They love me.
They are beautiful, wonderful, little people.
I can hardly stand to be with them.
I push them on the swings
And as they laugh
A wave of palpable gloom
Flows out from my gut.
And I want to run away
And hide or even die.
I’m in my body now.
Its not fear, though I am afraid of it.
There is no word for it.
“It” is a flow of almost physically heavy,
very heavy, emotion..
Perhaps a combination of the downside every emotion I have ever felt since I was the one being pushed in the swing and I’m overwhelmed by “I can’t” and “Why?” and “I’ve got to get out of here!” and “I don’t understand”, and “I’m going to cry or yell….”
But I somehow stay, I even smile.
For them. For a while.
This is so hard.
Let’s go guys. (I need a cigarette)
The air and the sunlight are thick and heavy,
I feel like I’m moving against
Some slow but steady current,
Like a river of mud.
And yes, I feel unclean.
And they’re disappointed we’re leaving so soon
And just when I thought I couldn’t feel worse
I feel guilty and weak and….
Worse.
I have disappointed loved ones again.
Somehow that’s the worst thing I can think of right now.
And I’ve done it.
Again.
It’s always been like this.
It will always be like this.
I want to die.
But the boys…. I manage a smile
Want something to drink?
They always like that.
The mini-mart/gas station/A&W
Is always so bright and busy with cool stuff all around.
I feel better.
“Papa?” One of the boys holds something small and cool but mini-mart priced at twice its value and I wouldn’t buy it even if I could afford it. And I shake my head and say I can’t afford it, sorry, and he’s… that word again and I physically droop and almost cry and I pay for our drinks with a heavy sigh and I still manage a smile as I ruffle their hair and give them a bump of my hip on the way back to the car with the primer black hood and fender I can’t afford to get painted but it’s dependable and they like it.
And I love this but I can’t stand it for much longer.
I let them play their radio station.
Unless the lyrics are too trashy
Then its oldies or light rock and my gut burns with that emotion
As I drop them off at home.
Bye Papa. Bye guys. (I’m sorry)
Damn… I couldn’t… I didn’t… Why?
Guilt. Shame. Love. Pain.
Chain smoking and a few diet cokes
I get free ‘cause I’m a regular at the bar and its more bearable.
Home is upstairs. Empty.
I want to run away somewhere but I don’t have the will.
Thank God there’s an elevator.
On the way up I sigh and cry and
I open the door and I sink a little lower looking at the clutter,
But now I can sit in my dusty prayer chair and be still and
Know that He is God.
I close my eyes. And cry.
Eventually, I’m aware of Him.
I’ll live, somehow.
But why?
Thanks so much Therese. I'll think about making it beautiful, giving it a light, and I'm working on tearing it's guts out, but, as you know, its very messy.
Marquos
Therese is here:
blog.beliefnet.com/beyondblue/2007/10/12-ways-depression-is-like-a-p.html
For Therese
Like I’m a spectator at my own life.
Watching and wondering why I am so sad.
I look at the blue sky, the trees, feel the breeze,
Hmmm, I should be enjoying this.
Instead I’m sighing heavily, taking small steps,
(Takes less energy that way),
My shoulders drooping. head down.
Hey, you idiot, it’s a beautiful day!
I look up.
It hurts to look at the sky,
Not my eyes, my heart.
Why does that hurt?
Its beautiful, that’s why.
And I am so… not.
It feels like I am outcast, apart, alone.
I am with my grandchildren.
Nine and eleven.
I watch the scene, it seems idyllic.
Actually my ex, step grandchildren, but
They love me.
They are beautiful, wonderful, little people.
I can hardly stand to be with them.
I push them on the swings
And as they laugh
A wave of palpable gloom
Flows out from my gut.
And I want to run away
And hide or even die.
I’m in my body now.
Its not fear, though I am afraid of it.
There is no word for it.
“It” is a flow of almost physically heavy,
very heavy, emotion..
Perhaps a combination of the downside every emotion I have ever felt since I was the one being pushed in the swing and I’m overwhelmed by “I can’t” and “Why?” and “I’ve got to get out of here!” and “I don’t understand”, and “I’m going to cry or yell….”
But I somehow stay, I even smile.
For them. For a while.
This is so hard.
Let’s go guys. (I need a cigarette)
The air and the sunlight are thick and heavy,
I feel like I’m moving against
Some slow but steady current,
Like a river of mud.
And yes, I feel unclean.
And they’re disappointed we’re leaving so soon
And just when I thought I couldn’t feel worse
I feel guilty and weak and….
Worse.
I have disappointed loved ones again.
Somehow that’s the worst thing I can think of right now.
And I’ve done it.
Again.
It’s always been like this.
It will always be like this.
I want to die.
But the boys…. I manage a smile
Want something to drink?
They always like that.
The mini-mart/gas station/A&W
Is always so bright and busy with cool stuff all around.
I feel better.
“Papa?” One of the boys holds something small and cool but mini-mart priced at twice its value and I wouldn’t buy it even if I could afford it. And I shake my head and say I can’t afford it, sorry, and he’s… that word again and I physically droop and almost cry and I pay for our drinks with a heavy sigh and I still manage a smile as I ruffle their hair and give them a bump of my hip on the way back to the car with the primer black hood and fender I can’t afford to get painted but it’s dependable and they like it.
And I love this but I can’t stand it for much longer.
I let them play their radio station.
Unless the lyrics are too trashy
Then its oldies or light rock and my gut burns with that emotion
As I drop them off at home.
Bye Papa. Bye guys. (I’m sorry)
Damn… I couldn’t… I didn’t… Why?
Guilt. Shame. Love. Pain.
Chain smoking and a few diet cokes
I get free ‘cause I’m a regular at the bar and its more bearable.
Home is upstairs. Empty.
I want to run away somewhere but I don’t have the will.
Thank God there’s an elevator.
On the way up I sigh and cry and
I open the door and I sink a little lower looking at the clutter,
But now I can sit in my dusty prayer chair and be still and
Know that He is God.
I close my eyes. And cry.
Eventually, I’m aware of Him.
I’ll live, somehow.
But why?
Thanks so much Therese. I'll think about making it beautiful, giving it a light, and I'm working on tearing it's guts out, but, as you know, its very messy.
Marquos
Therese is here:
blog.beliefnet.com/beyondblue/2007/10/12-ways-depression-is-like-a-p.html
Friday, October 12, 2007
Perfect
Perfect, strive for perfection, so noble.
So deceptive, so insidious.
Tasks come before me,
I don’t hear the inner perfectionist say it must be perfect.
It’s the knot in my gut, the anxiety that rises up
The depression that looms as I make my attempt
Then the inner critic as I go about my work,
Nothing is good enough,
So often nothing gets done.
So many tasks abandoned,
Ideas and titles of essays unwritten.
Perfection, the great paralyzer,
The constant critic.
Insidious as it shows itself in relationships gone wrong
Over unrealistic expectations.
So difficult to love and be loved
As in love we must love the imperfections in the other
And reveal them in ourselves.
A simple walk down Main Street,
Or in the park or by the river.
Seeking peace and joy.
But all is not perfect and the gloom descends.
Acceptance of this beautiful,
Imperfect world
Seems the only way out.
To use this critical eye
To see the world exactly as it is
And love it anyway.
My God, my Father, my Papa.
He made this world, these people,
who am I say they're not perfect.
How it hurts me to demand I be
Better than my brothers and sisiters.
A demon looks over my shoulder
And whispers in my ear.
Help me brush him off, Lord
Silence him.
I shall not know joy until.
So deceptive, so insidious.
Tasks come before me,
I don’t hear the inner perfectionist say it must be perfect.
It’s the knot in my gut, the anxiety that rises up
The depression that looms as I make my attempt
Then the inner critic as I go about my work,
Nothing is good enough,
So often nothing gets done.
So many tasks abandoned,
Ideas and titles of essays unwritten.
Perfection, the great paralyzer,
The constant critic.
Insidious as it shows itself in relationships gone wrong
Over unrealistic expectations.
So difficult to love and be loved
As in love we must love the imperfections in the other
And reveal them in ourselves.
A simple walk down Main Street,
Or in the park or by the river.
Seeking peace and joy.
But all is not perfect and the gloom descends.
Acceptance of this beautiful,
Imperfect world
Seems the only way out.
To use this critical eye
To see the world exactly as it is
And love it anyway.
My God, my Father, my Papa.
He made this world, these people,
who am I say they're not perfect.
How it hurts me to demand I be
Better than my brothers and sisiters.
A demon looks over my shoulder
And whispers in my ear.
Help me brush him off, Lord
Silence him.
I shall not know joy until.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Mind Freedom International Newsletter
MindFreedom International Public Service Announcement
http://www.mindfreedom.org - urgent: please forward
Thursday, 11 October 2007
How to Screen Yourself for Normality for Free!
by David W. Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Today has been declared "Mental Health Screening Day" by the psychiatric industry.
But wait! Don't panic!
MindFreedom International, a nonprofit human rights coalition of 100 groups, launches a campaign today to "Screen the World for Normality"!
You can screen yourself *now*, wherever you are, in five easy steps.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NORMALITY SCREENING SELF-TEST
1. Make an animal noise. Now. At your computer screen or wherever you are. Make any animal noise: Meow of a cat. Moo of a cow. Anything. Louder the better.
2. Evaluate yourself. Here is how:
3. Did you make an animal noise of any kind? You show no sign of normality. Congratulations!!
4. Did you did *not* make an animal noise of any kind? You show no sign of normality. Congratulations!!
5. Spread the word: Encourage others to take this simple Normality Screening Self-Test!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WHY SCREEN YOURSELF FOR NORMALITY?
This screening was designed by experts. Every normality screening brings Earth that much closer to declaring victory.
Seriously: End the discrimination and segregation of "mentalism" in the mental health system today! All of humanity are in the same mad boat. It is time to ask some of those "Officially Labeled Mad" for navigation tips.
We normality screeners thank the amazing physician-clown Patch Adams and his international clown network. Their clown troupe in Florence, Italy, helped devise and inspire this normality screening effort.
The Normality Screening campaign is sponsored by MFI's "Voices for Choices in Mental Health Care Campaign" in cooperation with the Mad Pride Movement and the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment (IAACM), which is a real organization that Martin Luther King, Jr. called for creating more than ten (10) times.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PLEASE LET OTHERS KNOW about this Normality Self-Screening Test both on and off Internet!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
STAY TUNED HERE for more news.
Just a few hours after e-mailing you this, I and a wonderful MindFreedom Normality Screening Crew -- that includes both a physician and a psychologist -- cross the Potomac River with our rubber chickens and squeaky red noses to peacefully screen for normality directly in front of the American Psychiatric Association headquarters.
Really.
Watch here for results.
We are optimistic.
But then again, we're just not normal.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A FEW NON-NORMAL WEB LINKS FOR MORE INFO about...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Screenfor Normality Campaign
Other successful MAD PRIDE activities this week include Belgium (featuring an appearance by Dan Taylor of MindFreedom Ghana Africa)... An Australian music concert... UK's Bonkersfest doing normality screenings... a photo op at the Alternatives 2007 conference in St. Louis:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride/screen-normality
or go here: http://tinyurl.com/3dudcq
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David W. Oaks blogs about normality screening here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/mfi-blog
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mad Pride Movement:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment (IAACM) which Martin Luther King, Jr. really truly did call for more than ten times... along with brief videos about how to screen for normality:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride/mlk-iaacm/mlk
or go here: http://tinyurl.com/2xvqfn
The only requirement for *you* to call yourself an IAACM leader is peacefully follow these MLK-inspired nonviolence guidelines:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride/mlk-iaacm/peace-rules
or go here: http://tinyurl.com/2cf3u3
And yes, also in the spirit MLK and Gandhi, MindFreedom is seeking to engage psychiatric professional organizations in mediated dialogue.
Videos of MindFreedom activists and allied psychiatric survivor/mental health consumer groups successfully dialoging at the World Psychiatric Association conference in Dresden, Germany in June 2007 are here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/global/world-psychiatric-association
or go here: http://tinyurl.com/2rfc9x
In Arlington, Virginia for the next few days you can meet and hear from the normality screeners themselves, who are attending and speaking at the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology conference, special theme of defending youth from psychiatric human rights violations. David Oaks is one of the keynote speakers:
http://www.icspp.org
MindFreedom International Live Free Internet Radio this Wed., 17 October 2007 at 4 pm features an interview with one of the "normality screeners" in front of the APA headquarters today: psychologist and author Al Galves of New Mexico. You can call in live. Host: David W. Oaks.
http://www.mindfreedom.org/radio
And of course, please visit Normal, Illinois, USA. Because once you've visited Normal, Illinois then you too can wave your hands around and honestly say to your friends, "None of this is Normal":
http://www.normal.org
PLEASE LET OTHERS KNOW about this "Normality Screening Self-Test" both on and off the Internet! Please forward, print out and tell people!
More news at the MindFreedom News Web Site:
http://www.mindfreedom.org
Don't see a news item? Submit it to news@mindfreedom.org
MindFreedom International is a nonprofit human rights group that unites 100 sponsor and affiliate groups with individual members. MindFreedom is the only group of its kind accredited by the United Nations as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with Consultative Roster Status.
MindFreedom International is also one of the very few totally independent groups in the mental health field with no funding from governments, drug companies, religions, corporations, or the mental health system.
All human rights supporters are invited!
Join or donate here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/join-donate
For hard-to-find books and gear (including a Normality Screening Kit, complete with rubber chicken) go to:
http://www.madmarket.org
FOR MORE INFO:
MindFreedom International Office: 454 Willamette, Suite 216 - POB 11284; Eugene, OR 97440-3484 USA
web site: http://www.mindfreedom.org
e-mail: office(at)mindfreedom(dot)org
office phone: (541) 345-9106
toll free: 1-877-MAD-PRIDe or 1-877-623-7743
fax: (541) 345-3737
Please forward.
Want to get off this MF News e-mail announcement list? Two easy ways:
1) To unsubscribe e-mail a blank email to
mindfreedom-news-unsubscribe@intenex.net
Be sure to "reply" when you get the automatic unsubscribe confirmation message.
2) If you have any trouble getting off this list e-mail to office(at)mindfreedom(dot)org with these words in the subject line:
unsubscribe mindfreedom-news
http://www.mindfreedom.org - urgent: please forward
Thursday, 11 October 2007
How to Screen Yourself for Normality for Free!
by David W. Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Today has been declared "Mental Health Screening Day" by the psychiatric industry.
But wait! Don't panic!
MindFreedom International, a nonprofit human rights coalition of 100 groups, launches a campaign today to "Screen the World for Normality"!
You can screen yourself *now*, wherever you are, in five easy steps.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NORMALITY SCREENING SELF-TEST
1. Make an animal noise. Now. At your computer screen or wherever you are. Make any animal noise: Meow of a cat. Moo of a cow. Anything. Louder the better.
2. Evaluate yourself. Here is how:
3. Did you make an animal noise of any kind? You show no sign of normality. Congratulations!!
4. Did you did *not* make an animal noise of any kind? You show no sign of normality. Congratulations!!
5. Spread the word: Encourage others to take this simple Normality Screening Self-Test!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WHY SCREEN YOURSELF FOR NORMALITY?
This screening was designed by experts. Every normality screening brings Earth that much closer to declaring victory.
Seriously: End the discrimination and segregation of "mentalism" in the mental health system today! All of humanity are in the same mad boat. It is time to ask some of those "Officially Labeled Mad" for navigation tips.
We normality screeners thank the amazing physician-clown Patch Adams and his international clown network. Their clown troupe in Florence, Italy, helped devise and inspire this normality screening effort.
The Normality Screening campaign is sponsored by MFI's "Voices for Choices in Mental Health Care Campaign" in cooperation with the Mad Pride Movement and the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment (IAACM), which is a real organization that Martin Luther King, Jr. called for creating more than ten (10) times.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PLEASE LET OTHERS KNOW about this Normality Self-Screening Test both on and off Internet!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
STAY TUNED HERE for more news.
Just a few hours after e-mailing you this, I and a wonderful MindFreedom Normality Screening Crew -- that includes both a physician and a psychologist -- cross the Potomac River with our rubber chickens and squeaky red noses to peacefully screen for normality directly in front of the American Psychiatric Association headquarters.
Really.
Watch here for results.
We are optimistic.
But then again, we're just not normal.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A FEW NON-NORMAL WEB LINKS FOR MORE INFO about...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Screenfor Normality Campaign
Other successful MAD PRIDE activities this week include Belgium (featuring an appearance by Dan Taylor of MindFreedom Ghana Africa)... An Australian music concert... UK's Bonkersfest doing normality screenings... a photo op at the Alternatives 2007 conference in St. Louis:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride/screen-normality
or go here: http://tinyurl.com/3dudcq
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David W. Oaks blogs about normality screening here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/mfi-blog
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mad Pride Movement:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment (IAACM) which Martin Luther King, Jr. really truly did call for more than ten times... along with brief videos about how to screen for normality:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride/mlk-iaacm/mlk
or go here: http://tinyurl.com/2xvqfn
The only requirement for *you* to call yourself an IAACM leader is peacefully follow these MLK-inspired nonviolence guidelines:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride/mlk-iaacm/peace-rules
or go here: http://tinyurl.com/2cf3u3
And yes, also in the spirit MLK and Gandhi, MindFreedom is seeking to engage psychiatric professional organizations in mediated dialogue.
Videos of MindFreedom activists and allied psychiatric survivor/mental health consumer groups successfully dialoging at the World Psychiatric Association conference in Dresden, Germany in June 2007 are here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/global/world-psychiatric-association
or go here: http://tinyurl.com/2rfc9x
In Arlington, Virginia for the next few days you can meet and hear from the normality screeners themselves, who are attending and speaking at the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology conference, special theme of defending youth from psychiatric human rights violations. David Oaks is one of the keynote speakers:
http://www.icspp.org
MindFreedom International Live Free Internet Radio this Wed., 17 October 2007 at 4 pm features an interview with one of the "normality screeners" in front of the APA headquarters today: psychologist and author Al Galves of New Mexico. You can call in live. Host: David W. Oaks.
http://www.mindfreedom.org/radio
And of course, please visit Normal, Illinois, USA. Because once you've visited Normal, Illinois then you too can wave your hands around and honestly say to your friends, "None of this is Normal":
http://www.normal.org
PLEASE LET OTHERS KNOW about this "Normality Screening Self-Test" both on and off the Internet! Please forward, print out and tell people!
More news at the MindFreedom News Web Site:
http://www.mindfreedom.org
Don't see a news item? Submit it to news@mindfreedom.org
MindFreedom International is a nonprofit human rights group that unites 100 sponsor and affiliate groups with individual members. MindFreedom is the only group of its kind accredited by the United Nations as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with Consultative Roster Status.
MindFreedom International is also one of the very few totally independent groups in the mental health field with no funding from governments, drug companies, religions, corporations, or the mental health system.
All human rights supporters are invited!
Join or donate here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/join-donate
For hard-to-find books and gear (including a Normality Screening Kit, complete with rubber chicken) go to:
http://www.madmarket.org
FOR MORE INFO:
MindFreedom International Office: 454 Willamette, Suite 216 - POB 11284; Eugene, OR 97440-3484 USA
web site: http://www.mindfreedom.org
e-mail: office(at)mindfreedom(dot)org
office phone: (541) 345-9106
toll free: 1-877-MAD-PRIDe or 1-877-623-7743
fax: (541) 345-3737
Please forward.
Want to get off this MF News e-mail announcement list? Two easy ways:
1) To unsubscribe e-mail a blank email to
mindfreedom-news-unsubscribe@intenex.net
Be sure to "reply" when you get the automatic unsubscribe confirmation message.
2) If you have any trouble getting off this list e-mail to office(at)mindfreedom(dot)org with these words in the subject line:
unsubscribe mindfreedom-news
So Sad
So Sad
It seems I don’t know how not to be sad
I learned it so well, its apart of me now.
Sadness is my response to most anything.
Its the one emotion I can count on,
the only one not ridiculed by the voices in my mind
(or the people in my memory)
or second-guessed by my heart.
I sometimes cherish my sadness
as the only true emotion I know.
Anger is evil, happiness unreal
and love is impossible but
Sadness will never let you down.
You can’t go wrong being sad.
There is always reason to be sad,
even if its just about the past.
You probably won’t hear
“its dumb to feel sad”
or “you’re gonna regret being sad”
and you won’t be disapointed with sadness, either.
If you’re sad you’re ready to hurt
and you don’t have far to fall.
And when the hurt is gone
you don’t have so far to come to be sad again.
It takes a lot less energy to be sad
You will probably be known
as compassionate
by those who don’t know you well.
Yes, there’s alot to be said for being sad.
Happiness is overated, peace is best, thats what Jesus gave his disciples, do not be afraid is the most common phrase in the Bible, and acceptance of reality is imperative.
It seems I don’t know how not to be sad
I learned it so well, its apart of me now.
Sadness is my response to most anything.
Its the one emotion I can count on,
the only one not ridiculed by the voices in my mind
(or the people in my memory)
or second-guessed by my heart.
I sometimes cherish my sadness
as the only true emotion I know.
Anger is evil, happiness unreal
and love is impossible but
Sadness will never let you down.
You can’t go wrong being sad.
There is always reason to be sad,
even if its just about the past.
You probably won’t hear
“its dumb to feel sad”
or “you’re gonna regret being sad”
and you won’t be disapointed with sadness, either.
If you’re sad you’re ready to hurt
and you don’t have far to fall.
And when the hurt is gone
you don’t have so far to come to be sad again.
It takes a lot less energy to be sad
You will probably be known
as compassionate
by those who don’t know you well.
Yes, there’s alot to be said for being sad.
Happiness is overated, peace is best, thats what Jesus gave his disciples, do not be afraid is the most common phrase in the Bible, and acceptance of reality is imperative.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Sunday
Sunday
I’m feeling much better now,
I hardly think of it at all.
I’m only anxious for the morning now
and a little of the afternoon.
The depression comes and goes these days,
Morning, afternoon, evening,
like a wheel that turns
with a shift in the wind.
Yes, I’m feeling much better now,
except for those sunday afternoons
when the Black Terror builds in my gut,
‘til I’m terrified of myself and the future
and the past and the present.
And the anger and the horror build ‘til I know I’ll kill or die...
and its gone.
The Black Terror doesn’t come often,
but the threat of it looms over sunday
like a Hindenburgh about to touch
its mooring post.
As the afternoon creeps by
I fear every twinge in my belly
and dread every wrinkle in my mood.
Some times there’ll be a swell of It
run low and slow through my soul.
Just enough to remind me
just what it is I’m afraid of.
Perhaps it was on sunday afternoons,
all those years ago,
those people took me to their room.
And the terror was for real.
Right after sunday school.
But I hardly think of it at all anymore,
I’m feeling much better, really.
I’m feeling much better now,
I hardly think of it at all.
I’m only anxious for the morning now
and a little of the afternoon.
The depression comes and goes these days,
Morning, afternoon, evening,
like a wheel that turns
with a shift in the wind.
Yes, I’m feeling much better now,
except for those sunday afternoons
when the Black Terror builds in my gut,
‘til I’m terrified of myself and the future
and the past and the present.
And the anger and the horror build ‘til I know I’ll kill or die...
and its gone.
The Black Terror doesn’t come often,
but the threat of it looms over sunday
like a Hindenburgh about to touch
its mooring post.
As the afternoon creeps by
I fear every twinge in my belly
and dread every wrinkle in my mood.
Some times there’ll be a swell of It
run low and slow through my soul.
Just enough to remind me
just what it is I’m afraid of.
Perhaps it was on sunday afternoons,
all those years ago,
those people took me to their room.
And the terror was for real.
Right after sunday school.
But I hardly think of it at all anymore,
I’m feeling much better, really.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Enemy
Depression, I fear you. You have brought me low. Many times you have driven me to despair, gripped by a cold, wrenching fear from my gut to my spine. I fear you more than death, there is an ending in death but there seems no hope in your ever ending. To put depression to an end one must regain one’s will, for in depression one’s entire will is taken up in just surviving, there is no will left for living.
I fear your spells of anger, the ones where I am so near the edge, the edge of madness and violence. I fear you most of all. Even a hint of you is fearful for I know you can grow quickly, fed by my fear and lifelong attitudes
Perhaps I will never be completely free from you but if I can learn what makes you grow and stay and thrive maybe I can diminish you to a place where the drugs will make you seem to go away. As it is they only seem to take the edge off. I’m still depressed, I’m still scared, anxious. And sometimes I just can’t take it anymore and I’m walking up the hill outside my house screaming ultimatums at God about help and healing... and it helps. I feel better, the next day is easier. I thank God for one good day and manage to struggle through one more week.
I always look to the weekend to be healing but too often it feels just like the rest of the week there’s just not the demands on my time, not as many tasks to do. I still feel anxious, depressed, despair is not far away, I’m just not pushed, there is less stress... in some ways. Sundays are the worst and the best day. I seem to often have attacks of anxiety and near psychosis on sundays. Though they can take a couple of hours in coming these attacks are mercifully short in their intense stage and afterwards I generally feel quite good. As though I’ve conquered some demon from out of the depths of my mind. But depression, you are still my enemy. I fear you more than death.
I have learned that anger suppressed feeds my depression. I realized recently I still have much suppressed anger towards my first wife. She abused me in every possible way, used me up, drove me mad, and let me go when I was of no more use. I loved her, something in me still does. Perhaps that is why I sometimes feel I could actually harm her, something I didn't do when we were together. I have prayed often recently to be able to forgive her, It is slowly being granted but not until I began to express the anger in bold black letters on my sketch pad and computer. Long diatribes of violence, painfully drawn out of my heart in tears. I am spent. I ask my God is that enough? I get the sense it is not. The only thing I can thank her for is she drove me trembling and broken to the feet of Christ at the same time she drove me mad. I escaped to Christ, He was palpably near as I slipped into psychosis, a calm gentle presence nearby or within as reality shifted toward evil. He was with me, keeping the essential me intact even as my personality splintered, spun, and cried so desperately for freedom for the captives that I was chained. I cling to Him now. Still. Always. Whenever my grip upon Him is loosened and I slip, my life loses balance and meaning. I sink.
She was pathologically jealous. Every blink of my eye was punished as a look at another woman. Every emotion I expressed was chastised as wrong. When I expressed no emotion I was cold and heartless and "dead". I was allowed no friends, no family, no money. She demanded absolute fidelity and truth on her terms, terms shifting and impossible to meet. I can say quite literally I could do nothing right and things I had nothing to do with were judged to be my fault, evidently on some supernatural plane. She herself was free from all restrictions. She lied easily, more often than she told the truth. small lies and grand, involved schemes of interconnecting lies. Every day we fought, she attacked in blunt or subtle ways but consistantly punishing me for imagined evils. Once or twice a month there would be the exceptionally cruel battles that would eventually drive me out into the night to walk for hours and sleep in hallways or laundramats. She would seek me out never letting me go, but letting me rest a bit when I had been gone a day or two. She would be kind for a bit. SHe feared losing me. I was her support as well as her foil and target. I looked good next to her. She often threatened suicide should I leave. Somehow I loved her. She was exempt from her demands of absolute fidelity as she was often unfaithful. She had at least three abortions. This does not count the time, early on when she had me acquire money for one and then used the money to pay rent. I doubt any of the pregnancies were from my loins.
In the end she entered into the New Age and channeled the spirits that drove me over the edge. That is another tale. The anger seems to be dissipating a bit. Writing helps.
I fear your spells of anger, the ones where I am so near the edge, the edge of madness and violence. I fear you most of all. Even a hint of you is fearful for I know you can grow quickly, fed by my fear and lifelong attitudes
Perhaps I will never be completely free from you but if I can learn what makes you grow and stay and thrive maybe I can diminish you to a place where the drugs will make you seem to go away. As it is they only seem to take the edge off. I’m still depressed, I’m still scared, anxious. And sometimes I just can’t take it anymore and I’m walking up the hill outside my house screaming ultimatums at God about help and healing... and it helps. I feel better, the next day is easier. I thank God for one good day and manage to struggle through one more week.
I always look to the weekend to be healing but too often it feels just like the rest of the week there’s just not the demands on my time, not as many tasks to do. I still feel anxious, depressed, despair is not far away, I’m just not pushed, there is less stress... in some ways. Sundays are the worst and the best day. I seem to often have attacks of anxiety and near psychosis on sundays. Though they can take a couple of hours in coming these attacks are mercifully short in their intense stage and afterwards I generally feel quite good. As though I’ve conquered some demon from out of the depths of my mind. But depression, you are still my enemy. I fear you more than death.
I have learned that anger suppressed feeds my depression. I realized recently I still have much suppressed anger towards my first wife. She abused me in every possible way, used me up, drove me mad, and let me go when I was of no more use. I loved her, something in me still does. Perhaps that is why I sometimes feel I could actually harm her, something I didn't do when we were together. I have prayed often recently to be able to forgive her, It is slowly being granted but not until I began to express the anger in bold black letters on my sketch pad and computer. Long diatribes of violence, painfully drawn out of my heart in tears. I am spent. I ask my God is that enough? I get the sense it is not. The only thing I can thank her for is she drove me trembling and broken to the feet of Christ at the same time she drove me mad. I escaped to Christ, He was palpably near as I slipped into psychosis, a calm gentle presence nearby or within as reality shifted toward evil. He was with me, keeping the essential me intact even as my personality splintered, spun, and cried so desperately for freedom for the captives that I was chained. I cling to Him now. Still. Always. Whenever my grip upon Him is loosened and I slip, my life loses balance and meaning. I sink.
She was pathologically jealous. Every blink of my eye was punished as a look at another woman. Every emotion I expressed was chastised as wrong. When I expressed no emotion I was cold and heartless and "dead". I was allowed no friends, no family, no money. She demanded absolute fidelity and truth on her terms, terms shifting and impossible to meet. I can say quite literally I could do nothing right and things I had nothing to do with were judged to be my fault, evidently on some supernatural plane. She herself was free from all restrictions. She lied easily, more often than she told the truth. small lies and grand, involved schemes of interconnecting lies. Every day we fought, she attacked in blunt or subtle ways but consistantly punishing me for imagined evils. Once or twice a month there would be the exceptionally cruel battles that would eventually drive me out into the night to walk for hours and sleep in hallways or laundramats. She would seek me out never letting me go, but letting me rest a bit when I had been gone a day or two. She would be kind for a bit. SHe feared losing me. I was her support as well as her foil and target. I looked good next to her. She often threatened suicide should I leave. Somehow I loved her. She was exempt from her demands of absolute fidelity as she was often unfaithful. She had at least three abortions. This does not count the time, early on when she had me acquire money for one and then used the money to pay rent. I doubt any of the pregnancies were from my loins.
In the end she entered into the New Age and channeled the spirits that drove me over the edge. That is another tale. The anger seems to be dissipating a bit. Writing helps.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
"Too Close to Heaven" preface excerpt
A word about rage. I had deep, abiding rage that lived in the abyssal places of my mind and body. It was of the blackest of blacks and seemed infinitely deep and wide. When I tried to personify it, it became a huge, snarling gorilla, driven mad by his cage. The source is all that I experienced as a child. I had to learn very early on to bury this rage as any hint of it would be savagely punished. That was one of the reasons I was so silent. I had no energy for anything else but stuffing the rage. I became very good at it, developed a great strength in this area. Later I would learn to use this rage as my life force as I had not the will to live that is the life force of others. I learned to use this power to be both incredibly strong and incredibly gentle. I had witnessed, experienced the effects of rage unleashed and there is nothing I knew that would incite me to unleash my rage. I learned to use it in sport and in work and it served me well for many years. I excelled in all I did due to the tremendous control I had learned in order to survive. People would say that everything came easy for me and I could see why they would think so. But it is precisely that everything was difficult for me that I excelled. Everything required a tremendous amount of focus and discipline to control and focus the rage. And it worked, it worked well. Until the memories returned, then the beast was loose. It was free, ravaging my body and my mind. I had no energy left but to express the monster. I could no longer work. To write what it brought to my heart, to draw what it brought to my mind was all I had energy for. It rose up in my chest and into my throat, literally choking me. Body memories assailed me constantly. I had no strength, my engine had run wild and would spend itself in ranting and attacking me. I searched for my will to live, I could not find it. I took to carrying a seven inch blade under my thigh as I drove at all hours of the day and night across the back roads of six counties, searching for a reason to live. A steady flow of tequila and kahlua took the edge off. There was still no possibility that I would hurt anyone, I had seen far to much hurt to ever hurt anyone. Even myself, though I wanted too and always held it out as a possibility, I knew I could not. That is one of my God's strictest rules. I had developed a deep and powerful faith, beginning with the endless Bible reading of my mothers that were the only words that truly came through to me, and later, faith in God was the antithesis of those who assailed me and was my only comfort. And He was there, he spoke with me walked with me, He and his angels. I would harm no one except to defend another. And I was forbidden to harm myself. So I drove, and drank. I have never truly been drunk in my life though I have tried mightily. Something in all that I have experienced has denied me that pleasure.
So I asked Him, "What is it that people live for?" Lots of things. "Dammit, thats no answer." Silence. "OK, what do you want me to live for since you're determined to make me live?" Faith, hope and love. "Great, like I haven't heard that one before." Silence. "OK, faith I've got, thats why I'm still here but its not enough anymore." "OK, maybe I've got love ,too. There are people who think they love me and people I try to love. Its not satisfying at all and thats not enough either. Don't give me that hope shit, I've never had it, never will. Its totally nonsensical, there is nothing in this world you can depend on, hope is impossible in this world. And yes I have hope for the next world, hell I have an assurance of the next world but it doesn't do me a damn bit of good if I'm stuck here." Silence. "That line about hope never disappoints, bullshit." How do you know? "Okay, maybe I had hope once but so long ago I have no idea what it is or how to summon it up and I know it wouldn't work anyway" You hope it wouldn't work? "You know very well thats not what I said." Silence. Silence. Try it. "No." Silence. "I don't know how" Don't think. Silence. Silence. "I think I'm gonna throw up." Good, thats your defense mechanism kicking in, you'll get past that... eventually. "Gee, Thanks, now I've really got something to live for." Silence. Silence. There's those two little boys, you know (My two step-grandkids, one newborn, one eighteen months). ...Yeah, they're great, but I really have a hard time being around them." Silence. "Its the abuse, isn't it?" Not precisely. "Then it's this hope thing?" Yes. "I can't handle it and they have it." Not exactly, your hope has indeed been destroyed, long ago and since it only brought you pain, you resist it. These boys have awakened your desire for hope. "They're not mine, you know." Does that matter? ...No, not in the slightest, perhaps I feel more strongly because they're not" Yes. "So, maybe I can handle hope for them, I still have absolutely none for myself" Thats fine, for now. "Oh, don't give me that." They're going to need you. Silence. Silence. Silence. Well? "Yeah, yeah, I know, boy do I know." Silence. Silence. What was it you were looking for? "OK, I guess I already have it, I just can't feel it." Thats OK, you've got it. "I still don't buy into this hope shit, though" OK.
Hope is still difficult for me. It requires faith in future things of this earth. I know too well how wrong things can go. So I simply guard the present as best I can and keep my head down. The rage has been largely dissipated now that I have told much of my story. It still rises up and chokes me at times but the gorilla is merely sullen and grouchy now. The infinite abyss is now a large, sometimes placid lake, racked by storms, but landlocked, limited.
So I asked Him, "What is it that people live for?" Lots of things. "Dammit, thats no answer." Silence. "OK, what do you want me to live for since you're determined to make me live?" Faith, hope and love. "Great, like I haven't heard that one before." Silence. "OK, faith I've got, thats why I'm still here but its not enough anymore." "OK, maybe I've got love ,too. There are people who think they love me and people I try to love. Its not satisfying at all and thats not enough either. Don't give me that hope shit, I've never had it, never will. Its totally nonsensical, there is nothing in this world you can depend on, hope is impossible in this world. And yes I have hope for the next world, hell I have an assurance of the next world but it doesn't do me a damn bit of good if I'm stuck here." Silence. "That line about hope never disappoints, bullshit." How do you know? "Okay, maybe I had hope once but so long ago I have no idea what it is or how to summon it up and I know it wouldn't work anyway" You hope it wouldn't work? "You know very well thats not what I said." Silence. Silence. Try it. "No." Silence. "I don't know how" Don't think. Silence. Silence. "I think I'm gonna throw up." Good, thats your defense mechanism kicking in, you'll get past that... eventually. "Gee, Thanks, now I've really got something to live for." Silence. Silence. There's those two little boys, you know (My two step-grandkids, one newborn, one eighteen months). ...Yeah, they're great, but I really have a hard time being around them." Silence. "Its the abuse, isn't it?" Not precisely. "Then it's this hope thing?" Yes. "I can't handle it and they have it." Not exactly, your hope has indeed been destroyed, long ago and since it only brought you pain, you resist it. These boys have awakened your desire for hope. "They're not mine, you know." Does that matter? ...No, not in the slightest, perhaps I feel more strongly because they're not" Yes. "So, maybe I can handle hope for them, I still have absolutely none for myself" Thats fine, for now. "Oh, don't give me that." They're going to need you. Silence. Silence. Silence. Well? "Yeah, yeah, I know, boy do I know." Silence. Silence. What was it you were looking for? "OK, I guess I already have it, I just can't feel it." Thats OK, you've got it. "I still don't buy into this hope shit, though" OK.
Hope is still difficult for me. It requires faith in future things of this earth. I know too well how wrong things can go. So I simply guard the present as best I can and keep my head down. The rage has been largely dissipated now that I have told much of my story. It still rises up and chokes me at times but the gorilla is merely sullen and grouchy now. The infinite abyss is now a large, sometimes placid lake, racked by storms, but landlocked, limited.
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