A Glint

Mental illness causes your world sometimes to get very small, limited to one single glint in your mind's eye.
A glitch.
Caught in a flashback in a barren room, all of my life revolves around that instant of unreasoning terror that I can't understand.
At the same time as this occurance shrinks my life's potential, it is also broadens my mind to include or reveal hidden schema. Now I'm aware that the room is there, and I'm amazed that my brain has been so clever all this time, that in five minutes or five seconds it puts together this overpowering moment in time with vivid detail and the emotions to go with it.
It leaves me confused and frustrated, wondering how I can get through my life now when my brain keeps jerking me back to then.

Another Day

It hurts today.
Hurts.
I don't think it's ever going to go away.
I don't think I'm being a perfectionist as many people say.
It hurts me to live right now.
All I want is to do the same reasonable things that are expected of everyone else.
Go to a job every day, do my work and pay my bills without feeling isolated and afraid for no reason.
Maintain healthy relationships.
Enjoy my life.
The Dialectical Behavioral Therapy catch-phrase is "Creating a Life Worth Living."
They don't call it "The Please Don't Kill Yourself" Therapy approach, but it is.
And it works, I'm told.
Just not so far today.

A Subjective Look at Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

There were a lot of things I loved about this book, but I really had to look for them.
This is because the author, Tim Robbins, kind of ticked me off.
The story is set out like a tall tale with a moral to it, something to the effect that being different is good and that being a woman is powerful, but Robbins pisses all over that by virtue of being a man pretending to speak for women, by writing too many gratuitous soft-porn scenes that read like a middle-aged man's wet dreams, and in the end simply by making a dirty old man character his philosophical mouthpiece while making another character (named for himself) the be-all-end-all solution to all the heroine's problems.
I was highly tempted to consider him a complete ass and throw down the book on several occasions, but ultimately the main character's refusal to conform to societal norms and pigeonholes, as well as some of the author's actual philosophies on life had an effect on me that I'm not able to dismiss.
Perhaps this is what good writing is comprised of: Something that challenges you, that forces you to think.
 I find I'm not quite done thinking this one over yet.

Sometimes I don't have any idea how I feel about a thing while I'm experiencing it. I know everyone has this problem to sort out on occasion, but in my case even a very strong, obvious emotion doesn't always get through. I'm afraid of powerful feelings that I perceive as being negative. My father was a slave to his emotions, and he damn near killed us with them. In particular, I recall the night he followed us (we were on foot) in the family van and I couldn't tell if he was trying to run us off the road or just hit us outright. As a result of my fear of letting my emotions get the best of me, I go a little farther than just suppressing things that I fear may hurt. I think what my mind actually does is block some strong emotions completely in a residual survival instinct that prevents me from even knowing I've got anything to feel. 

Until several days later, when emotions come pouring through some insignificant event, and I'm sitting in the parking lot at work, sobbing and feeling utterly hopeless and ready to quit, completely overtaken by an overwhelming cluster of thoughts and feeling that I cannot sort.

This is a fairly long blog entry.

Like me, you'll just have to keep reading and get through some of the messier emotions first, before you can see if I'm making any real point here.

Like with dreams, the things that stick out for us in a story that we've read are subjective, are based upon our background knowledge, our life experiences, and even how we see the world in that precise time that we are reading the book. It's possible that what is important about a dream is not what you remember of it so much as how you feel about what you remember. I find that what "sticks out" for me is as important as what the author may be trying to say (I'm egotistical that way).

I feel the book lends itself to quotation well, especially since the entire second half of the book was basically just using the character of "The Chink" on the mountaintop for the author to proselytize his views on life. But many of them were interesting or in outright agreeance with me. I managed to weed it down to only 14 quotes, just for you:

1.)  "Einstein had observed motion and learned that time and space are relative; Sissy had committed herself to motion and learned that one could alter reality by one's perception of it." ~p 71

Recently my therapist said something trite such as that it doesn't really matter what actually happened in a specific circumstance we were discussing so much as what I believe happened, that my reality is valid in so far as it affects me. 

I'm not sure how I feel about that. I believe that my attitude can affect how I perceive my life, but I do know there's a difference between reality and fiction, and it's only when I allow myself to forget it that I tend to get hurt. Are what happened and what I believe happened really the same thing? Perhaps this question is dependent upon the circumstances.

For me, the importance of this passage is that I think I can find new ways to view the things that have happened to me; ways that will empower me instead of hold me back.

It's hard, though. 

I hope you don't know what it's like to be told by a parent during your formative years just how useless, lazy and worthless they think you are.

But regardless of what I was told, I know better than to believe it, and this is where I believe my own perception of reality is vital to my happiness.

2.) "'Be careful, get comfortable, don't make any waves,' whispers the DNA. Conversely, the yearning for freedom, the risky belief that there is nothing to lose and nothing to gain, is also in our DNA. But it's of much more recent evolutionary origin, according to me. It has risen during the past couple of billion years, during the rapid increase in brain size and intellectual capacity associated our becoming human. But the desire for security, the will to survive, is of much greater antiquity. for the present, the conflicting yearnings in the DNA generate a basic paradox that in turn generates the character -- nothing if not contradictory -- of man. To live fully, one must be free, but to be free one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. How's that for a paradox? But since the genetic bent for freedom is comparatively recent, it may represent an evolutionary trend. We may yet outgrow our overriding obsession to survive. That's why I encourage everyone to take chances, to court danger, to welcome anxiety, to flaunt insecurity, to rock every boat and always cut against the grain." ~p  206

Well, I don't know a divorced person out there who hasn't given up security for freedom, and it's up to the individual to decide whether or not that's a good thing.

I want to be that person who leaps first and has faith that the net will appear, but I seldom really am. For survival I always used to play it safe. It's a hard habit to break, and in some cases it's not even desirable to break it. 

3.) "Life isn't simple; it's overwhelmingly complex. The love of simplicity is an escapist drug, like alcohol...Death is simple but life is rich. I embrace the richness, the more complicated the better." ~ p 223

This one reminds me of a specific relationship that ended. It got complicated, and probably still is complicated on some levels. I don't mind complexity.

It enriches my life to let people in anyway and allow them to make little changes, expose me to new thoughts and ideas, or even just to talk to about the arts, politics or culture with, or especially to laugh with. A simple relationship would have no depth of feeling, and it seems to me that a relationship like that would be empty and full of regrets. I'd rather have something wonderfully complex and lose it than to have had nothing at all.

4.) "She had questions to answer and maybe to ask. For

example, 'Where did all this lust come from!' It is important to believe in love. Everyone knows that. But is it possible to believe in lust? Sissy wasn't positive what she believed anymore. Once it had been simple. She had believed in hitchhiking." ~ p 237

I'm going through a stage in my life where I'm questioning a lot of things that I used to believe without thinking. For example, I used to believe that everything happens for a reason, and that everything will turn out all right in the end.

 I like to think that love is so powerful a force that no love you express can ever be entirely wasted. 

I wish that I could still believe in someone ever loving me in the way that I need them to. It's hard to have faith in something you can't see, although that's exactly what faith is. I want flowers and chocolates and to be the first, best thing in somebody's life, but I don't know if I even deserve to have that, let alone expect it of anyone.

5.) "Our business should be liberating the human spirit. Or if that's too idealistic for you, if that strikes you as the business of religion -- which it should be, too -- then our business should be assisting people to function -- crazily or not isn't our concern; that's up to them -- helping them to function on whatever level or levels of normality they choose to function on, not helping them to adjust and locking them up if they don't adjust." ~p 242

I'm fond of this passage because it's where I'm at with therapy. I'm tired of focusing on what might be wrong with me and I'm fixing my focus on the things that are right. I know I've got a lot to work with. I know I've got talent and brains and compassion in spades -- plus I'm a damn good teacher -- and there has to be some part of this world where I can make a life of those things.

I feel my emotional or mental state has often held me back in life.

I have to believe that I can take all of my perceived weaknesses and develop them to be strengths.

Being overly emotional could instead be powerfully compassionate.

And I most certainly hope that remembering the past will help me not to repeat it... 

6.) "Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization." ~ p 242

Gotta love this one. It's concise.

7.) "The Secretary of the Interior knew, of course, that there was a brain in his head and that the human brain was Nature's most magnificent creation...it never occurred to the Secretary to wonder why the brain, if it is as awesomely magnificent as it purports to be, why the brain would waste its time hanging out in a head such as his. Maybe some brains just want the easy life." ~ p 258

(This one's included as comic relief, if you will.)

8.) "She felt guilt, she felt sorrow, shame and confusion, but she did not feel that she owed society any accounting for her behavior, as bad as her behavior might have been. Society had never looked upon her with favor.

 It had been eager to write her off when she was just a little girl. Society may have institutionalized her way back then if she had cooperated. Society had neither liked her nor believed in her, but luckily she had liked herself and believed in herself, and although she recognized that she had floundered in recent years, erred in recent hours, she still liked and believed, and the reckoning she must make was with herself." ~ pp 273-4

Word.

9.) "Sissy had joined the ranks of the Unhappy Waiters and Killers of Time. Oh, God, there are so many of them in our land! Students who can't be happy until they've graduated, servicemen who can't be happy until they're discharged, single folks who can't be happy until they're married, workers who can't be happy until they're retired, adolescents who can't be happy until they're grown, ill people who can't be happy until they're well, failures who can't be happy until they succeed, restless who can't be happy until they get out of town, and, in most cases, vice versa, people waiting, waiting for the world to begin." ~ p 288

I feel myself tugging at the bit quite often, pushing for a better life, a life worth living, and I fluctuate between faith and despair.
 It's hard work to discover happiness in the everyday, although the work has been proven worth our while. 
My current approach is to attend a lot of group counseling and individual therapy sessions, trying to learn how to cope with frightening flashbacks so that I can really start living... realizing all along that what I'm doing right now is living, if I'll accept it and give it a good shot.

10,) "To the extent that this world surrenders its richness and diversity, it surrenders its poetry. To the extent that it relinquishes its capacity to surprise, it relinquishes its magic. To the extent that it loses its ability to tolerate ridiculous and even dangerous exceptions, it loses its grace. As its options (no matter how absurd or unlikely) diminish, so do its chances for the future." ~ p 295

This is just plain lovely.

11.) "Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between commitment and need...Of course, love can never be stripped bare of illusion, but simply to arrive at an awareness of illusion is to hold hands with truth -- and sometimes the hard light of lust affords just such an awareness." ~p 330

I'm not going to speculate much on what Robbins says about lust. His Sissy character really got around and got quite confused despite his contention that lust is some kind of great equalizer or stabilizer. I don't hold much with what the Baptist faith taught me due to all the guilt it instilled, but they weren't far off when they told me that sex complicates your ability to be objective. And it takes no genius to see that love and lust aren't as interchangeable as some movies would have us believe. Real love transcends the physical. Not that I have no interest in the physical. To the contrary. 

12.) "Poetry  is nothing more than an intensification or illumination of common objects and everyday events until they shine with their singular nature, until we can experience their power, until we can follow their steps in the dance, until we can discern what parts they play in the Great Order of Love. How is this done? By fucking around with syntax.

[Definitions are limiting. Limitations are deadening. To limit oneself is a kind of suicide. To limit another is a kind of murder..." ~ p 333

"Fucking around with syntax." I was highly amused upon reading that.

Speaking of syntax, I think definitions are boundaries, and that having healthy boundaries is what makes relationships work. That said, to limit does either kill yourself or others.

 All the limitations I place upon myself out of fear are debilitating. The limits my ex-husband placed on me were crippling as well. I am working to break free of those limitations, but it often feels as if my mind's still in the cage that my father began to build when I was only a child...

I hope to shine with my singular nature, full of power in the dance of life, aware of my place and purpose in the Universe.

13.) "When life demands more of people than they demand of life -- as ordinarily is the case -- what results is a resentment of life that is almost as deep-seated as the fear of death. Indeed, the resentment of life and the fear of death are virtually synonymous. Does it follow, then, that the more people ask of living, the less their fear of dying?" ~ p 344

I think so.

I'm asking a lot of life, and I've always asked too much of myself. 

Right now I feel a little resentment, and I often panic for fear that this deadened, angry feeling is me dying inside.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Let's promise each other that we'll keep kicking right back at our lives and encourage one another to look death in the face and laugh.

We'll win.

14.) "The various Oriental philosophers have at least one thing in common: they take the personal and try to make it universal. I hate that. I'm the opposite. I take the universal and I make it personal. The only true magical and poetic exchanges that occur in this life occur between two people. Sometimes it doesn't even get that far. Often, the true glory of existence is confined to individual consciousness. That's okay. Let us live for the beauty of our own reality." ~ p 357

I'm a better person for having been hurt and still allowed more people to come into my life and transform it.

 I'm a better person for having sought and found so many great truths and applied them to my own life instead of insisting that others apply them.

 I don't believe people develop faith, in themselves or anything else, by being told; they develop faith by what they experienced and have felt for themselves.

 It's a personal journey. 

And despite everything I still believe in magic and I still believe in miracles.

 I believe it every time someone takes my hand. 

I believe it every time I make someone else smile. 

I believe it every time I face the pain in my life and insist on not allowing it to stop me. 

And I believe it every time I look around and realize that I am not alone.

Books are subjective.

They speak to what we already know.

They echo into our hearts and minds the thoughts and ideas we've had ourselves.

They put words to the beauty and the confusion of life in the same way that dreams put those things into images.

But no one picks up any book and reads the same story, because they're all our story, not all of ours.

This is what I read when I picked up Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: I read the story of my own life through the fictitious story of another, a joyful, funny shout against anything that I think is limiting me, and I read it in a way that only I would.