Into The Bag
When I was quite young, I had that idea that people talk about kids having: it can't happen to me. I remember the day I lost that illusion. I was probably 6. Dad had taken me to gymnastics practice and while I waited with him for my class to be called, we did what me and my dad did: I did a handstand on his feet, he grabbed mine and then he walked around with me upside down. Then he told me that he and mom were separating.
I remember feeling confused. I had thought about divorce not very long before that (for what reason, I don't know) but had reassured myself that this wouldn't happen to me. That's why I was confused. If this wouldn't happen to me, then why was it?
Later in my childhood, I remember hearing adults talk about how we all thought thus and such couldn't happen to us, but it could, and we'd better believe them! That confused me too. I no longer harbored that belief. No, then I took them all at their word and if they said I would die if I tried drugs, then I believed I would. If they said a stranger might try to kidnap me, assault me, kill me, then every stranger I saw was as likely to do that as the next.
I don't know that I've had more "unbelievable" life events than other people. Like most things, some I expect have, some I have not. I admit that when I read, Running With Scissors I felt an odd gratitude toward Augusten Burroughs for showing me that someone real, indeed had a weirder childhood than I had.
There was one time when Lion and I did LSD together. Among the drug induced things that happened for me that night, I had this sensation of passing through different realities. It felt like, chemically, the drug would take over my brain for bursts of time and I would experience everything differently, sometimes dreamlike, then maybe a different dream, then the camera angle shifted and my experience was different, until I made it back to a place where my brain felt like it usually did, only drug induced -though I knew it. I described this experience at the time as "going in and out of bags". That's what these different mind states felt like; it was the shape of them. I felt physically as if my mind was flowing from one bag to another.
I realized recently that it isn't LSD that does this. It's LSD that speeds up this process and makes it visible. We have different perspectives all through our lives. A perspective we held on a situation as children, is not the same as our perspective now, from a distance.
I woke up this morning with a dreamy thought: why isn't my life like a vacation? Why do I not walk down the hall each morning feeling as if I'm in Florida, open to possibilities and free of worries? In my sleep addled state, I decided it was because the house is messy and I really had to spend today getting the kitchen clean (I didn't but that's a different story). This probably isn't the entire truth. Yeah, having the house messy is a stress to me, but this is probably more about the bag I'm in. Then I fell back to sleep.
My therapist asked me Wednesday how my depression is. I said I thought it was fine. She told me to think about it this week. Today I woke up and didn't want to get up. I didn't want to eat. I didn't want anything really. I couldn't make decisions. I hate it when she's right, except I don't really because I'm not really feeling much right now -that being as how we know she's right.
But this is my bag for right now. I have noticed an opening in it every now and again the last few weeks, and it's pretty icky out there. Every now and then I feel a flicker of deep seated dread. Here and there tears well up when I wonder if my mother sent me an email, or I think I'm going to call her. My startle response is triggered again, and then my bag clamps down on it, all of it, and I'm back again in my calm little sea of not all that much.
When I said yesterday that it's a good thing my mother just died and left some money since neither Monkey nor I have a job, Clover said he was surprised but it's probably a good thing I can make jokes about this right now. In the same way I, and only me between us, can make Jew jokes. And later I said that the nice thing about having my mother dead is that I can say anything I want on public forums, that all the people who would really care, are gone.
All this is true. I'm becoming aware that it's a very different bag I'm moving into, this one where every blood relative outside my generation is gone. It glimmers of almost a giddy sort of freedom, a feeling of living with no safety precautions, a feeling of "If I'm too small, no one is going to see me anymore." A calm settles that draws back more power than I can actually weild. I have fantasies of powerpunching big, white bureaucrats in their collective red tape, their faces disbelieving -but I have no idea why.
Who was I when my parents lived? Am I different now? Could I be? Some people seem to understand naturally how odd a time this is for me. Maybe they don't understand how, but neither do I. Some people seem to have lost sight of how three weeks is a drop in the bucket when it comes to significant death even if I act normally most of the time. When I feel like people understand that this is special and different, I feel more normal. I feel more able to be normal. Maybe it's because I know that at the moment things become less than usual, it won't come as a surprise to anyone.
I could use extra attention right now. Some are trying, but it's hard because as much as I want it, I'm not accepting it easily. Not that I feel I'm rebuffing it, but if it takes effort from me, I'm just not much up for it. I'm noticing more than ever how meaningful touch is to me. I notice the sort of touch that I want and actively guard against touch I do not want.
I wonder if these are bags running into each other. I told my art therapy group the other day that I wasn't surprised that grieving one relationship brings up feelings of grief from other, under grieved, relationships (Lion). On one hand, when I met with Clover yesterday for the first time since before my mother died, I noticed every little touch and what it meant to me. On the other hand, I went to a BBQ last weekend and felt my ribs ache with anxiety over how to turn down hugs or kisses I didn't want.
But then we can look at it all a different way, this is not about different realities at all. No tiny me's sit, perched amidst the ventricle's of my brain perseverating on how it looks from their particular angle. This is about chemical relativities and when one pathway is stimulated, other memories attached to that pathway are also stimulated. Or no, maybe it's all described by depression itself. Isn't a major sign of it a feeling of removal from reality, of seeing things as if through someone else's eyes? Or is that a sign of schizoid disorder? On one hand, nothing feels very real, as if I'm high in a hot air balloon and all that there really is is me and the balloon. But on the other hand everything is bigger than life, but not with me in it. Not all the time. What if I'm just as crazy as my mother and I'm going to subject Monkey to the job of holding me together?
I suppose this too shall pass, with another bag. Might just want to inquire to my therapist about this one though.
I remember feeling confused. I had thought about divorce not very long before that (for what reason, I don't know) but had reassured myself that this wouldn't happen to me. That's why I was confused. If this wouldn't happen to me, then why was it?
Later in my childhood, I remember hearing adults talk about how we all thought thus and such couldn't happen to us, but it could, and we'd better believe them! That confused me too. I no longer harbored that belief. No, then I took them all at their word and if they said I would die if I tried drugs, then I believed I would. If they said a stranger might try to kidnap me, assault me, kill me, then every stranger I saw was as likely to do that as the next.
I don't know that I've had more "unbelievable" life events than other people. Like most things, some I expect have, some I have not. I admit that when I read, Running With Scissors I felt an odd gratitude toward Augusten Burroughs for showing me that someone real, indeed had a weirder childhood than I had.
There was one time when Lion and I did LSD together. Among the drug induced things that happened for me that night, I had this sensation of passing through different realities. It felt like, chemically, the drug would take over my brain for bursts of time and I would experience everything differently, sometimes dreamlike, then maybe a different dream, then the camera angle shifted and my experience was different, until I made it back to a place where my brain felt like it usually did, only drug induced -though I knew it. I described this experience at the time as "going in and out of bags". That's what these different mind states felt like; it was the shape of them. I felt physically as if my mind was flowing from one bag to another.
I realized recently that it isn't LSD that does this. It's LSD that speeds up this process and makes it visible. We have different perspectives all through our lives. A perspective we held on a situation as children, is not the same as our perspective now, from a distance.
I woke up this morning with a dreamy thought: why isn't my life like a vacation? Why do I not walk down the hall each morning feeling as if I'm in Florida, open to possibilities and free of worries? In my sleep addled state, I decided it was because the house is messy and I really had to spend today getting the kitchen clean (I didn't but that's a different story). This probably isn't the entire truth. Yeah, having the house messy is a stress to me, but this is probably more about the bag I'm in. Then I fell back to sleep.
My therapist asked me Wednesday how my depression is. I said I thought it was fine. She told me to think about it this week. Today I woke up and didn't want to get up. I didn't want to eat. I didn't want anything really. I couldn't make decisions. I hate it when she's right, except I don't really because I'm not really feeling much right now -that being as how we know she's right.
But this is my bag for right now. I have noticed an opening in it every now and again the last few weeks, and it's pretty icky out there. Every now and then I feel a flicker of deep seated dread. Here and there tears well up when I wonder if my mother sent me an email, or I think I'm going to call her. My startle response is triggered again, and then my bag clamps down on it, all of it, and I'm back again in my calm little sea of not all that much.
When I said yesterday that it's a good thing my mother just died and left some money since neither Monkey nor I have a job, Clover said he was surprised but it's probably a good thing I can make jokes about this right now. In the same way I, and only me between us, can make Jew jokes. And later I said that the nice thing about having my mother dead is that I can say anything I want on public forums, that all the people who would really care, are gone.
All this is true. I'm becoming aware that it's a very different bag I'm moving into, this one where every blood relative outside my generation is gone. It glimmers of almost a giddy sort of freedom, a feeling of living with no safety precautions, a feeling of "If I'm too small, no one is going to see me anymore." A calm settles that draws back more power than I can actually weild. I have fantasies of powerpunching big, white bureaucrats in their collective red tape, their faces disbelieving -but I have no idea why.
Who was I when my parents lived? Am I different now? Could I be? Some people seem to understand naturally how odd a time this is for me. Maybe they don't understand how, but neither do I. Some people seem to have lost sight of how three weeks is a drop in the bucket when it comes to significant death even if I act normally most of the time. When I feel like people understand that this is special and different, I feel more normal. I feel more able to be normal. Maybe it's because I know that at the moment things become less than usual, it won't come as a surprise to anyone.
I could use extra attention right now. Some are trying, but it's hard because as much as I want it, I'm not accepting it easily. Not that I feel I'm rebuffing it, but if it takes effort from me, I'm just not much up for it. I'm noticing more than ever how meaningful touch is to me. I notice the sort of touch that I want and actively guard against touch I do not want.
I wonder if these are bags running into each other. I told my art therapy group the other day that I wasn't surprised that grieving one relationship brings up feelings of grief from other, under grieved, relationships (Lion). On one hand, when I met with Clover yesterday for the first time since before my mother died, I noticed every little touch and what it meant to me. On the other hand, I went to a BBQ last weekend and felt my ribs ache with anxiety over how to turn down hugs or kisses I didn't want.
But then we can look at it all a different way, this is not about different realities at all. No tiny me's sit, perched amidst the ventricle's of my brain perseverating on how it looks from their particular angle. This is about chemical relativities and when one pathway is stimulated, other memories attached to that pathway are also stimulated. Or no, maybe it's all described by depression itself. Isn't a major sign of it a feeling of removal from reality, of seeing things as if through someone else's eyes? Or is that a sign of schizoid disorder? On one hand, nothing feels very real, as if I'm high in a hot air balloon and all that there really is is me and the balloon. But on the other hand everything is bigger than life, but not with me in it. Not all the time. What if I'm just as crazy as my mother and I'm going to subject Monkey to the job of holding me together?
I suppose this too shall pass, with another bag. Might just want to inquire to my therapist about this one though.