The Crux

Perhaps everything terrifying is
deep down
a helpless thing that needs our help

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Secret Treasure by Lucid-Light under a creative commons atrribution/name/no commercial use or adaptation licence)

Connection/Dissociation

Been listening to Counting Crows this evening. I admire Adrian Duritz's sharing about his life with dissociative disorder. I imagine that would have been particularly gut wrenching to do so. I'm glad he did.

I find it really interesting how he describes dissociative disorder and performing as a particularly ill fit:

I have a fairly severe mental illness that makes it hard to do my job -- in fact, makes me totally ill suited for my job. I have a form of dissociative disorder that makes the world seem like it's not real, as if things aren't taking place. It's hard to explain, but you feel untethered.

And because nothing seems real, it's hard to connect with the world or the people in it because they're not there. You're not there. That's why I rarely saw my family back then: It's hard to care when everything feels as if it's taking place in your imagination. And if you're distant with people, especially women you're romantically involved with, they eventually leave.

What makes my case even worse is that every night I go out on stage and have this incredible emotional connection between me, the band, and the audience. Then, just like that, it's over. I go backstage, back to the bus, back to my hotel room, and sit there all by myself. That deep connection is yanked away in an instant. It's like breaking up with your girlfriend over and over again, every night.

Well, when you put it like that ... actually, fame has never been much of an appeal to me. I mean, sure, like most people I've indulged in fantasies about it. Especially at times when I'm feeling really bad, really raw. All that unconditional adulation - nice. At the same time, this sort of buffer between you and other people, like a mirage that sits between you, like a fur coat.

Except the emperor wears no clothes, and I think the knowledge of that would send me snorting substances up my nose to deal. That mirage would be a prison. Sitting in a prison on the shifting sands of other people's adulation and hatred - no thanks. I already have a couple of prisons of my own, thanks very much. Those will do.

My heart breaks when I think of how many people struggle with different mental illnesses. My homeless friend K suffers from some sort of undiagnosed disorder where she fades out, loses her memory. I feel some understanding of mental illness. I felt out of control in my teenage years from the things I was carrying, the deep dark hate, the covering over of it. I do not believe I had borderline personality disorder but I do believe I could have gone down that path if things had been different. Who knows? And I've got enough fuck-ups of my own to deal with, that's for sure. So many of us battle. It scares us so that we do not wish to talk about it, but humans are fragile things, and we break. I think our technology makes the situation even more dire these days.

Sometimes I wonder what things would look like if the knowledge was spread over the earth that God is a loving God, that there is wholeness in God, that there is healing and acceptance there. I think of that young bloke I saw at the train station a few months ago, screaming to the sky, "But I got nothin' to live for!" Is there something in his heart that is screaming for redemption? Something in every human heart that beats so tenderly but seems too good to be true.

I do think the reality of God is good enough to be true. Like a fairytale. I don't know know how my mental state would be if I hadn't fallen across God. Even just the concept of God, of redemption, of a pressure valve release. Hopefully I would have fallen across Buddhism instead. Otherwise I do not know, for me, how I would have coped.

My heart cries to God tonight for how hard this world is, and how much we despair, and how little hope there is and I wish God would wake us up. I wish the knowledge of God would fill the earth like water. It would wipe away our tears, swimming in God. It would heal our hearts and heal our minds. It would fill us so that we would be able to be god to each other, unhidden, naked, and unashamed.

It would be heaven.

You can read the rest of Adam's article here.

Pic: http://mavrixonline.com

And You May Ask Yourself - "Well, How Did I Get Here?"

Do you talk to yourself? I don't mean the tapes-in-your-head so-low-you-don't-even-realise it incessant droning of your inner bastards telling you stupid things.

And I don't mean the type of talking to yourself that my Mum does in the kitchen and which I have taken to doing too. "Now, where was I? Oh, okay, here we are. How much butter? Three tablespoons," etc etc.

I'm talking about the sort of stuff you do in psychologists' offices where you sit an empty chair across from you and talk to whichever mad Gedarene of your soul (see previous poem) you are trying to understand. It's something I have begun doing quite regularly (although I skip the empty chair bit, trying as I am to keep myself out being admitted to the psych ward if possible). It goes sort of like this:

"Hmm, okay. I see you've slipped back into this feeling that there is something inherently wrong with you. You know, I can understand why you feel like that. Honestly, when I see what you built when you were young to keep yourself functioning, it's all quite impressive really. But you know it never really was going to survive forever. You know that. But it's okay, really. It's scary not knowing what will be built in its place. You don't even trust half the time that anything CAN be built in its place. Something out of nothing. You will just have to wait and see and hope. And hey, you know what? That feeling you have that there is something inherently wrong with you? It's a lie. It really is. It's a lie. Watch and see what God does."

And blah blah blah. This ongoing, spelling out obviousnesses to myself, has become quite a lovely thing for me to do. Do you do this with yourself? The comfort I feel, it makes me feel safe, you know? As if I'm on my own side. The things I see when I do it, it's like how I feel when I sit down and write and realise that I know and think and remember much more than I thought I did about a particular subject. This is the same sort of thing. It's like conversing with my dreamscape. It's as if the kingdom of heaven is within me.