This entry is written to somebody specific--I don't know whom--but they will know. It is a love letter to a person who thinks he/she is crazy. But I know he/she isn't, just as I know I am not crazy. I also know that I have been deeply (almost mortally) psychically wounded in my life. I know that I began at about the age of one year to develop ways to handle the psychic trauma I endured. Although I am now in my seventh decade, sometimes when I sustain wounds that are reminiscent of psychic wounds I received as a child, I respond now in the ways I did then.
My characteristic response to danger of any kind is to retreat. Specifically, when I begin to trust that a person has come into my life and is available to me, responsive to me, and honest with me, and then I come to doubt whether any of that is true, I become confused regarding whether the person has turned on me or whether I have misread the myriad clues about that person's true nature. It is in that state of utter confusion--confusion about the external (the trustworthiness of the person) and confusion about the internal (my ability to trust)--that I retreat.
You could look at me and not know I have gone away. Actually you'd have a hard time looking at me when I am in this state because I stay inside my house, very often not dressing for days on end, very often not leaving my bed.
My away place is a psychic place that is as real as a transparent column. It exists parallel to my real life, but the person who occupies it is not my real self. It is a physical person who does not feel physical. She feels as if she has no body. She is not connected to anything of this earth. The inside of her head feels hollow and just on the edge of vertigo. She looks at her arms and legs and does not recognize them as belonging to her. She can use her eyes to read and her ears to hear, but her hands do not want to respond to a ringing telephone. Her legs do not want to respond to the call of a full bladder. Walking is a risky proposition for her, even to go to the bathroom 10 feet from her bed. Even removing the blankets and exposing her extremities to the air seems too harsh for her to endure.
She has lost all sense of time. It could be Sunday morning; it could be Wednesday afternoon. It doesn't matter.
Nothing matters. She is safe here, in this place where she does not have to explain anything to anybody. She doesn't have to ask for anything. She has no future and no past. She is time out of mind. She is not connected to anything or anyone, and nobody remembers her.
Her store of food diminuishes; she eats whatever she finds in the cupboard whenever she feels stomach pangs. She falls into and out of blessed sleep, round the clock. She is far, far away, numb...
...until!...Reality inevitably forces itself into her private space. Damn Reality...That force that causes the blood to start moving again through her body. Such pain!...the pain of feeling coming back into her legs, her arms, her mind.
Pain of lonliness, pain of betrayal, pain of abandonment, pain of hatred, pain of feeling the physical and mental shell that contain the emptiness.
Her dearest and most loyal friend (who also knows all this for himself), her brother, comes to her and transports her to her only safe person on the planet, her psychiatrist. She can tell him everything about how she can't feel, doesn't want to feel. Inside those four walls she knows from experience that she can say all of it and not be judged. Better yet, she is taken seriously, accepted totally, and in no danger of reprisals. This man is a full partner in her life. He wants to work it through with her, help her feel, help her heal.
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Damn that excuse for a human being who told her for four months that he loved her, was fascinated by her, was going to be close to her for a very long time. Damn him for calling her every day, sharing his secrets, laughing at her jokes. Damn him for living 1500 miles away, writing those hundred emails over the months. Damn him for coming to within 60 miles of
her and just dissapearing from her life.Damn him for breaking his proomise. Damn him for saying it was her fault. Damn him to Hell. He can find her in Purgatory on his way down.
She will come back to life at some point. Not quite yet. Soon maybe. For now the parallel existence is a safe enough place. In case he decides to call he won't be able to find her in her hiding place. But her brother knows where she is; he has a key to the transparent door.
