De-Pathologizing the Human Experience

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There’s been an article floating around Facebook lately, that I’ve found myself afraid to link to it, even though reading it was one of the most gratifying things I’ve done for myself lately. I’ve been gathering courage and other necessary emotions, so here it is:

What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital

Although some of what is referred to in this article rests on a more serious side of the spectrum of mental illness, something clicked when I read this that I hadn’t really been able to articulate until now.

Yeah, I thought. What if there’s nothing wrong with me and there’s actually more RIGHT with me because of how I feel -- and how much I feel?

As far as “mental illness” goes, I’m not even on the radar. Yes, I’ve dabbled with depression. Yes, I know and have dealt with addiction and mental illness in others, and a lot of even deeper shit of my own that I’m not interested in getting into here. But to the average person looking at my life, I look pretty normal: I am a 32-year-old freelancing woman who is building a life that can be as nomadic or stationary as I wish, battling demons both quietly and out loud here on my blog, and dealing with—I have discovered – many things that many people feel. I know this because very often an invisible audience member will peek up briefly to tell me that what I write applies to them, and that they admire my ability to say it out loud.

Anyone who’s been reading my blog at all has probably noticed some themes. Please don’t hate me for being different; let me try to explain why I do this is one of them. The deeper root of this is an even simpler sentence: please tell me I’m not crazy for being this way.

There’s a lot in my head. But you know what? There’s a lot that’s NOT in my head, invisible audience, and that article pointed it out. I have thought I was crazy because I could not make myself happy with the things that we’re told we’re supposed to be happy with. In our society, there must be something wrong if you have everything anyone could ever want — shelter, food, family, relationships, vacations, even! — and yet you still find yourself restless, nomadic, deeply introspective and unable to rest within the role you’ve been given. But what if — WHAT IF — that lingering depression, the melancholy that comes after spending an evening with people discussing things you don’t care about is your entire being telling you not that you’re crazy, but that your real responsibility in this lifetime lay elsewhere? What if those niggling feelings of doubt and fear and restlessness were your psyche trying to tell you that there was something more for you out there, outside of the existence of “having it all,” when "all" is a predefined notion set by someone else, with no regard for the yearnings you have in the middle of the night, when everything is quiet and you're exhausted beyond all belief and surrounded by all you've created, but you can't help but dream of something different?

This is where I have arrived, invisible audience. I am done arguing. I am done explaining. And I am done trying to justify my actions in a way that makes them sound not crazy. Because there is no fighting the cloud that makes me feel crazy. It is a non-entity just as invisible and strong as gravity, and the trick is not to fight it, but go dive into the ocean, where the rules around gravity are different; where I have always known how to float when others sink.

I have been really angry lately. And that anger is a new feeling. It’s not polite, you see; it will not follow the social norms I have been taught about respecting my elders and not interrupting. It would make me look crazy if I let it erupt out of me, but you know what? As far as that spectrum goes, my craziness is already established. I burned some shit in a pile in my yard the other day just for the hell of it. I’ve been standing naked in the rain a lot. I have shut the door to my bedroom for more privacy in a house I live in alone. I’ve been singing loudly and badly on purpose on walks, and I have given up on trying to explain my reasons for anything. Because sometimes I don’t have reasons, invisible audience. Sometimes I am simply sad, followed by being simply angry, followed by being simply and profoundly grateful that underneath all this gunk, I have found that feeling ME is not as crazy as I was led to believe. 

So instead of scrambling around trying to rid myself of the half of the feelings on the spectrum that I learned were signs of a problem, I’ve decided to acknowledge that they are signs from myself that something needs to change: something is not working, and something else can take its place. When I’m tired, I take a nap. When I’m angry, I snap at people. When I’m happy, I whistle, sing and dance in my yard. And when it’s all over, I am me, all of me: all a human is supposed to be. 

Love and wholly human kisses

Morgan

Beyond the Agony and the Ecstasy

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They talk about broken hearts like they’re a bad thing; like they’re only something that can happen in a romantic relationship. I have found neither to be true.

Instead, I have found my heart breaking over and over again, having little to do with romance at all, and everything to do with finding myself with a deeper capacity to feel inside my broken heart than I ever did when I thought my heart to be whole. Whole, or, perhaps more accurately, wholly closed.

There’s another word that we’re missing in this language, invisible audience. It is the word for whatever lies beyond the limits of agony and ecstasy, when suddenly you find that your heart has split nearly in half. It is like fresh road rash exposed to the air: it hurts more than you can imagine to allow oxygen to brush against it, never mind anything tactile. It hurts that it is open to air, and it also hurts to know that air is what will make it heal the fastest and with the least amount of scar tissue.

In the case of emotional road rash, it’s not actually pain. It’s something else. It’s not love; it’s not hate. It’s closer to grief, hangs next to anguish, but also near to the ecstasy that comes from deep passion, connection – orgasm, even. It rides a tightrope between agony and ecstasy and feels like a delicious terrible concoction of both at 100% potency.

It, well, it feels far more than anything else, and that is what it is. It could feel like pain, but it also feels like change. It’s scary, messy, causes tears to well up and overflow, and an ache in the chest. It is a deep unnamed feeling that leaves everything beyond and outside of it pale in comparison.

What is it? It is heartbreak. It is the nerves exposed to air, measuring the humidity, the heat, a better barometer than anything manmade, and it is also completely inexplicable, try as I might to explain.

Oftentimes, in a moment of profound pleasure, be it sexual, emotional or physical, I find that a lump appears in my throat and my chest begins to ache. It is not pain, necessarily, but it is certainly not all pleasant. Instead, I think, it must be the feeling of my heart expanding: cracking open over and over again, each crack creating more space, more room, more heart.

And that is where I find myself this week, invisible audience. I am heartbroken, in a way that causes me to weep openly, to shy away from touch as if it burns on the nerves laid bare within my skin, although the wound is invisible. It feels as if the bandages I have wrapped around myself are unraveling, and my pores are drinking in the air as if they have been starving and deprived.

Although there is pleasure in this feeling, there is also a lot of pain. Although it is growth, it is also a shrinking of an old self; a withering of old ideas as new ones burst forth to grow something wild and different.

I can’t say it hurts, but it sure as fuck doesn’t feel good. I suppose that all I can say is that it feels, invisible audience, in a way, a depth and a mixture of burning hot and icy cold that it has never felt before.

Though it is near impossible to explain without having the word, it is there nonetheless, like a scar peeling away from the inside of the skin, finally allowing the air to come in, the lungs to fill to capacity, and the world to burst into vibrant, violent color before my eyes.

Nothing in the world has changed, except me. And in me, everything is different.

Love and ecstatic agonized kisses

Morgan

Breaking the Silence

“Hi Litty. I'm going to walk around the table now. Here I go. I’m coming toward you.”
“Hey there Litty. Nice to see you. I’ll just be over here if you need me.”
“Hi Litty. Are you hungry? Here’s my hand. Don’t worry, I won’t come any closer.”

Litty is one of four cats I’m petsitting for the week. I was warned that it would take her awhile to warm up to me. Litty – Little One – was a rescue cat – rescued from two kids that were torturing her.

Litty came halfway down the stairs to stare at me while I was working at the dining room table. She was skittish and skeptical, and at first any movement I made was enough to make her bolt up back upstairs. Slowly she grew accustomed to me, moving out of the way when I came near, but only far enough that I couldn’t grab her if I tried. That was ok with me -- I've known enough cats to know not to try. The more I talked to her, though – the more I told her I was coming out of a room so I wouldn’t startle her, the more I started talking before I started moving – the more she relaxed.


 

I’m a lot like Litty, I think: I need someone to tell me they’re about to try to get close before they do, or I’m likely to bolt, expecting the worst.

Since I don’t need a babysitter, the real world version of this is a little different. I have learned through much trial and error that I stoke silence into a growing wildfire of dark thoughts, fears and rejections, and the easiest and best way out is to break the silence myself or ask someone to break it for me.

I have a friend who shows me in countless ways that he cares about me. I also know that he only checks his email once or twice a week. Remembering the ways he’s shown me I’m important to him feels about as easy as trying to grow a third arm when I’m waiting for a reply to an email whose contents make me feel vulnerable. Even when I’ve just forwarded him some benign piece of information, my mind is much more likely to leap to the most terrible option available instead of to what is most likely the truth: he hasn’t read the email yet.

The same woman I wrote about last week, Jeanne, pointed out to me that I need to hear it: I need people to tell me how they feel, because, well, because the words are important to me. I’m a writer, after all. Although I can say I write for a living, I actually call myself a writer because writing is where I turn for understanding and legitimizing my feelings: I write when I am happy, sad, afraid, vulnerable. Writing is where I go to feel more alive, and the words are what bring it about. Yes, recently I’ve found many holes in the language and I have been searching for a way to describe what does not exist in the words I have been taught, but I’d rather you bumbled the words and tried to say it loud than simply show me.

This is a new discovery for me, invisible audience, but an important one. Now I know that I need the words to feel safe, and that’s changed something: it means I can’t be silent anymore. Now, when I’m starting to feel skittish and like I want to bolt for the door, I gather my courage and say, “What do you think about this?” OUT LOUD to the other person. And where before I always feared the rejection in their answer, now I am finding sweet relief in hearing the silence be broken, regardless of what words they use to break it. By breaking my own silence, I have managed to ask others to break theirs around me, and I’m finding that the sound of their voices, regardless of message, was all I needed.

Love and broken silence kisses
Morgan

At A Loss For Words

It had never really occurred to me before, but it turns out if you’re finding yourself starving even after eating, it could be because you’re missing an essential vitamin or mineral that was not in the food you just ate – or the food you’ve been eating lately.

I have recently found a similar deficiency in my language, and suddenly I have realized that I am starving.

It didn’t occur to me until lately that words possibly could not be enough; that this vast and varied language that I love to play with could be missing anything at all; that there wasn’t a word for absolutely anything I was feeling, even if I personally didn’t know it yet.

Recently it has begun to occur to me that it is very likely the language I love so much is skewed: skewed toward a logical existence, and away from a creative one.

Certainly, there are many words that I can string together to create a creative picture: I can roar and scream and wail my words; the flame can burn, char, crackle and stutter in the rain if I so wish. The words are sufficient, invisible audience, but suddenly, they are not enough.

I’ve been feeling a disquiet lately. It’s the kind of discomfort that causes me to squirm in my skin; to sit staring out at the rain from my porch, my journal in my lap, trying to find the colors to paint a vibrant landscape with a palette of beige.

The words are no longer enough. Screaming out loud comes closer; breaking things for the sheer joy of hearing them shatter could possibly be the right track; setting a painting on fire might just be the way to convey the heat I’m trying to capture. It’s as if suddenly I have awoken inside a black and white world and I am trying to describe the brilliant hue of the sunset in my dream. It’s as if I want to break clear out of my skin, slough it off like a snake, and slither away cloaked entirely in sunlight.
Suddenly, words seem too logical for what I am. The creativity is leaking out of my every pore; I find it difficult to sit in front of a computer and type black onto a white page when I’d rather be screaming in ecstasy jumping off a cliff; I’d rather have my hands in the dark dirt and see it gathered under my fingernails; I’d rather run until my breath is ragged in my chest and I collapse, my entire body spent.

I’d rather be flying, and yet it still wouldn’t be enough. My creativity, my sexuality, my appetite, have all started screaming that they are starving for outlet; they are all the same thing, you see: the craving for connection, for intimacy, for fire, for art, for moments that stretch the heart chambers and cause the head to bow in disbelief; the moments that take my breath away and cause me to gulp it back in in huge deep breaths, because it is not enough to live one lifetime on this wondrous plane. Instead, I can only look forward to many lives left to come, because each moment is a new one: each sunrise a new brilliant flame, each full moon a new poem to be written, each star-studded sky a new chance to lay out in the grass and ponder how small I am, and how large a universe I get to explore.




Love and wordless kisses,
Morgan