I started this essay before the election, but was knocked completely off balance by the results and couldn't get back into it until this morning. The first thing I felt on that horrible Wednesday morning was shame. Shame that millions of so called progressives chose to stay home instead of voting for a black woman.
I mentioned my shame to my brother, Tom, who replied that his immediate feeling was betrayal, and I think that's right. Harris wasn't my ideal candidate - not nearly left enough for me - but she is a highly intelligent, qualified, capable, and compassionate person, and the alternative was... a dottering, raping, money-laundering, hatemonger and wanna-be fascist dictator? Make it make sense. That Fucking Guy's votes increased by less than 2 million (which is shocking by itself), but the Democratic vote decreased by 12 million. In other words, the left did this. Betrayal, indeed.
I refuse to stay knocked down. We are all #antifa now. Mutual Aid is what will get us through. Let's get to work.
I started seeing a new therapist, Billy, a few weeks ago. The first session was exhilarating.
One of the key symptoms of paranoia is the belief that one is the literal center of the universe. What I mean by that is that the entire world, as far as human perception allows, exists solely for the purpose of tormenting, and ultimately, murdering me. Now that I’m moshtly [sic] recovered from my CPTSD, I still believe the former (because ego) but I no longer fear the latter (because it was all just a misunderstanding on my part - my delusion was that I would die if I remembered my assaults when the reality [also sic] was that what I really was afraid of remembering was that I had already died (ego)). A more complete description is that, at the moment of my assault (one of them), I was afraid that the knife at my throat was going to result in my literal death, but also that what was about to happen to me was so frightening that I somehow turned my powers of perception off and my brain stopped recording (metaphor) with the end result that I spent much of my life confusing the figurative death with the (perceived) impending death.
In other words, I was afraid I was going to die, but I was really just afraid to remember that I had already died, so you see it was a feedback loop. I was stuck in time and I believed (knew) that by remembering I died, I would die again, and the whole paranoid cycle would continue, which of course it did, because that’s what loops do.
I was really just afraid to remember that I had already died.
This is the first time my therapist is younger than me, which is not having any effect on me, other than to note it. But it isn’t noteworthy either because I’ve become an age at which most people are younger than me. I snicker quietly to myself more than you can imagine, “he/she/they is a kid! [sigh] it’s their world now.”
Back in the early (imagined) post-pandemic days (I say ‘imagined’ because we aren’t truly post-pandemic yet) I was shopping for a bottle of wine, and the sales guy, David, invited me into the tiny back office to sample a few wines he was evaluating. This was very soon after many of us stopped masking (we shouldn’t have), but before we started pretending things were ‘normal’ again. (another thread is pushing against the threshold, but I’ll resist this one)
My social abilities vary depending on the circumstances. In situations where clear social structures are in place, or I have a familiar role to play, I can be easily, earnestly, and eagerly engaging. Otherwise, when in unfamiliar territory, I can be withdrawn, uncertain, dim-witted, and inept. In the worst of circumstances, I can embody all of these charms simultaneously. Poor David.
I don’t remember anything about the wines we tasted together. I don’t remember any of what I said. All I remember is that, instead of allowing David to share his thoughts on the wines, I talked over him to such a degree that his smile changed from sincere and warm to forced. As he kept backing further away from me and into the corner, I finally became self-aware and in a state of mortification, I thanked him and torpedoed out of there. Of course, I later apologized to David, and I think I’ve demonstrated that I’m not usually that guy, but one can never escape a first impression, can one? (don’t answer that)
Here’s my secret for how I’ve grown to believe I am the center of the universe without being insane: I have since realized that so are you. And you. And you. And, yes, you. Everybody is. It’s who we are. It’s what we are. It’s that simple.
The universe only exists because we perceive it.
So, my first therapy session with Billy the Kid was exhilarating. It was also inspiring, but I’m not ready to talk about that part yet. The session was energetically similar to my cringe wine store performance. In both cases, it had been so long since I had engaged with someone on a personal level, I found myself spewing words like someone unkinking a garden hose. I’m typically reserved and somewhat aloof. I like to think I choose (prefer) to be this way, but really it’s just a life-time habit of holding back.
The good news, is that with Brian (his name’s not Billy - I just said that so I could make that joke), I am allowed to be that guy. It is in fact, the point of therapy, that sweet solipsism, wherein I am in fact not only allowed but encouraged to be the center of my universe.
I’ve said this before, but it makes more sense to me now: I don’t have writer’s block, I have writer’s fright. My writer’s block isn’t an absence of inspiration or of ideas. It’s a terror. I am not describing impostor syndrome. It’s hard for me to write because I’m not a writer. I have no patience or discipline when it comes to writing. I’m not interested in writing as craft or art. Some people like me get around this by claiming to be a poet first, and a writer second. I’m not that either.
I was apprehensive about starting with a new therapist. I’ve been in therapy (recovery) for decades. My inner life is complicated and convoluted. My last three therapists all knew each other, and had even worked together with MenHealing. There was an obvious and familiar thread between them. How could I possibly bring a new guy, who is not part of the MenHealing universe, up to speed? Was I really ready to do this? Should I make a plan? What topic(s) should I start with? I wasn’t hesitant or uncertain about the venture, I was worried about the craft, the lack of apparent structure in the process.
For our first session, I arrived (in my living room) without a plan. When I was acting, I was terrible at improvisation. I could only act with confidence because I always worked with a script. Some of the jobs I’ve excelled at, restaurant host, waiter, teacher, yoga instructor, I was able to, despite my social reluctances and shortcomings, because of the structures inherent in those roles.
Another key aspect of paranoia is the perception that there is a surface, superficial reality, and a hidden, intentional alternate reality happening simultaneously. The players in the first are only pretending not to be aware of the second. All of life is a gigantic charade and I, the protagonist, am the only one not in on it.
They’re all playing games with me, laughing behind my back, waiting for me to catch on, at which point, the final act will ensue, my demise.
Both of my parents sexually abused at least some of their children while behaving as if they weren’t. There was always something dark and sinister hovering at both sets of my grandparents homes. My mother, who was supposed to not only love me, but to protect me, was the perpetrator of a violence upon me that reverberates still. My sister was raped repeatedly by our father, and she remembers it as being something everybody knew, but didn’t talk about.
I found refuge with my brother Frankie outside the home. We did everything together, including a lot of the kind of the idyllic things children were supposed to do. We played and we explored. We rode bikes and we fished and we skinny-dipped. But we also played with fire. We were master shoplifters. We broke into houses, and we did vandalism. We smoked, and drank liquor. We were already living double lives as typical children who were also delinquent. And then even that world betrayed me when one of Frankie’s friends, older than both of us, introduced me to a life of shame and retreat.
It’s not paranoia if it’s true, isn’t that what they say?
Everything is connected.
Everything is a lie.
How, a reasonably sane person may ask, does a ten year old child, survive a violent sexual assault, with his older brother as a witness, and then keep it hidden for 30+ years? Hidden from his parents. His other siblings. His teachers. His friends. Himself.
I told Brian little of this in our first session. I had intended to. It was the logical place to start. At the beginning. But the story is so long, so complex, that it can’t be told quickly, or simply, or easily. It can only be told in pieces, because that’s the way the boy lived it. In pieces apart. I couldn’t imagine where to start, or what parts to share first. Every time I thought about it, I would blank out. The scope was (is) too vast and overwhelming to outline or summarize.
My identity has been so shattered and scattered over time that it’s amorphous. It adapts to circumstances. It doesn’t (didn’t) happen on a linear timeline. It was a broken mirror pieced back together over decades. The ground I walked on as a child was as unknowable and dangerous as a quicksand suddenly stumbled into. Anything that resembled a truism was artifice. The known knowns were unknowable. Everything was a lie.
I decided to wing it. I spoke spontaneously and just followed my own words. I improvised. I surprised myself by talking more about the years I worked in theatre, particularly about my experiences as an actor, than I did about my childhood. I didn’t know it at the time, but acting is the perfect vocation for a paranoiac, because it’s our default mode of relating to the world. The jobs I mentioned excelling in, waiter etc., are all role-playing gigs, and they exist within recognized and familiar structural systems. There’s a chasm between the role of an actor and a paranoiac just living, in that the the former is validated - celebrated even - for their dramatic pretensions, while the latter must hide their beliefs and feelings in order to avoid an existential wipeout of identity. Identity is a mask, you see, no more real than Harry Nash.
I used to say there was no greater high than the applause of an appreciative audience, which is almost certainly why I had to give it up.
Do you see the thread connecting all these paragraphs? I freeze up at the blank page because writing betrays hiding every time. I avoided doing improvisation as an actor because of what might be revealed in the absence of stage directions. I quit five years of cello lessons after playing one time in front of a small group of people.
The thing that I am is not a thing, or a role, or a profession, or any of my masks. The thing I am isn’t tangible or certain. The thing(s) I am are the words you’re reading now. This is it. The whole shebang. The whole sum of my existence is a dust speck. I am a citizen of Whoville.
I hope you’ll go back right now and read the second and third paragraphs above (after finishing this paragraph). My (lived) story hasn’t been easy. I have struggled painfully and woefully. Trauma is still embedded in my body today, and it (my body) requires periodic purging. (This is not that. No part of this is that.) I hope when (if) you read those two paragraphs again, you’ll notice something that’s not explicit, not even suggested. OK, go.
Back to it.
I want to emphasize these closing paragraphs to any/all of you who might be a Child of the Secret, a member of the club nobody wants to belong to, a member of my tribe.
Writing those (these) words was (is) fun. This is word play. I love to play with words, not because they are words, but because it is play. This is my joy, long hidden, sneaking out into the daylight.
There’s a great paradox in being a “survivor” of trauma. The very fact of survival is a strength. I have no idea how my young self managed the logistics, let alone the emotions, of hiding such trauma from the world for so long. The fact that not all of us make it this far, that some of us never make it all, only deepens my appreciation for what I’m feeling in my life right now. I simply did not think it was ever going to be possible for me to feel joy again. Real joy. Unqualified joy. Not a joy, in spite of, but a joy that fully accepts and embraces, all that I have endured.
I meant to write... something... before the election. Not this. I knew I was going to start by mentioning my new therapist, Billy the Kid. But I had no more plan than to follow my thoughts and see where they led, and then share them like this.
Another paradox, maybe the original one: I resist the creative impulse because I am afraid of where it will lead me. But where it leads me is here. I’m not sure my intellect will ever fully grasp why I am afraid of my own joy, but I no longer feel the need to understand everything.
For now, it’s enough to simply say, I am here, I am here!
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