Invisible bones
Hoo boy. Are you guys ready for me to get back to talking about how crazy I am? Because that is what is about to happen. If you aren't into it, or if you would like to get to the really important class time change notice that I'm going to give you today, skip to the bottom. For those of you, like the reader who told me this week that the blog is "getting too esoteric," who prefer that I get back to full disclosure on my struggle to dog paddle the ocean of human interaction, stick around.
Thanks for sticking around. This week, guys. Damn. So, I was reading this lousy in-flight magazine while idling on the runway in Charlotte. I don't fly in planes very much, because I don't enjoy the experience that accompanies flying. I don't like the ticketing process, nor do I like traveling to the airport 2 hours in advance. I do not appreciate the 3 oz rule, the shoe thing, or how wild people get if you say, like, "somebody give me a drink before I blow something up," which by the way you can totally say on the Amtrak and get not just a drink but a, "hear that, girl." Airports are control freaks, and as it turns out, control freaks make me feel very, very anxious. To quell my anxiety, I decided to read the literature in the seat pocket.
I scoured SkyMall, memorized the drink menu, noted the exit ways and skimmed vacation package deals until my eye caught some quote in the middle of the page, enlarged and boldfaced for the purpose of doing exactly what it had just done, and was reeled in by a reference to "God's grace in my life" or the like, not because I like reading inspirational non-fiction (shut up, you do too) but because it seemed out of place. Like, do we talk about our walk with the Lord on in-flight magazines now? I thought we don't do that. Who can keep up.
The story was about a guy who became a non-denominational minister. Totally safe, vanilla sunrise over the mountain (if you are not a devout anything other than Christian, which USAirways hopes you are not). His life changing circumstance was that, as a young adult, he'd been in an accident, a bad one, and broken all his bones or something. I read about how he thought he was dead, and then laid in a hospital bed for months before he could even sit upright, more months before he could move on his own, then more months and years of casts, braces, crutches, and still, after all these years, his bones are all grown back crooked and the lifelong nerve damage makes it so regular tasks hurt him more than they hurt other people, so he needs help with everything. If you are like most everyone else, you just read that and thought, "damn, that is terrible and amazing, cheers to that dude for pulling through, I would absolutely hold a door for him if I saw his crippled ass coming through the Macy's." But if you are like me, that story made you jealous.
When I read that thing, all I could think was that I wished so much I could explain myself so easily, that my story could be told so matter of factly, and responded to so simply and clearly, but all the bones I've broken are invisible, and the thing that broke them is rated NC-17. I, too, had a life changing circumstance that left me barely alive and in dire need of intense care for years and years. I, too, feel acute pain doing regular chores and have a crooked posture and wicked scarring. I, too, need a little help all the time. But I don't often get it, which I say not to trigger your pity, but to ask you to consider mental illness in a new light for a moment. Imagine what that man's life would have been like if no one believed his bones were broken. What if he was told not to mention the accident because it made people uncomfortable? What would that man's life be like if he had to set all his own fractures with cardboard and masking tape, pretend not to have been hurt, and go on working like a regular person? What if, when he broke down in pain, he was criticized for being obsessed with himself?
I want to tell you what it was that happened in my life, what my accident was, but I can't, because it is the kind of thing that you will never read about on an in-flight magazine. It is violent and disturbing and sexually explicit, and happened lots, from the time I was 3 until I was 15, leaving me with a load of diagnoses that, even if I listed them, would not give any unspecialized person any idea what to do with me. This is probably why I have so many friends with psychology degrees. (Broken bones dude marries his physical therapist, whatchu wanna bet.) I, unfortunately, was not believed nor was I treated for so many years that my invisible bones are crooked as hell, people. I have mental and emotional nerve damage that is so for real, a seemingly regular difficult thing may actually incapacitate me. Like going to a funeral. Which is what I was on the plane to do.
My grandfather died last week. He was one of my favorite people. He was hilarious and hardheaded about all the right things. He was the only registered democrat in a family of buttoned up baptist republicans, and judged a man solely on how clean he kept his Sunday shoes. He cursed in front of the kids for what he said was their own benefit, and remedied his ages ago drinking problem not by teetotalling, but by confining his drinking to an annual binge with his boys out of town. When I was growing up, I ate dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Ellis' house every Friday and Sunday. We went to church together 3 sometimes 4 times a week, and they went to every single kidthing I did. They took the only pictures of my childhood that exist, and provided me with the only stability that I've known, if I've known any. I will miss Grandpa Chester, but then I have missed him for a long time already.
I hadn't seen the people from that part of my life in 17 years, because the accident broke us all up, so my old church was exactly like a haunted house would be if haunted houses were real. The teachers I had when I was young, the cousins I never talked to again, the family and church elders who told me my bones were not broken, that there was no accident and that I would start walking straight or else, they were all there. One of them, really well-meaningly, friended me on Facebook and then wrote some things about burying the hatchet and accepting God's grace, and I felt like saying, "hey you know what, it's not that I'm so angry at you guys, it's that the thing you all said wasn't real turns out to be really real, so like, while you've all been praying for me to stop being so mad about something that never happened, I've been in an out of psychiatric institutions trying learn how to function in the actually real world, which wouldn't be so fucking difficult if you guys would have been vaguely in touch with it back then." But I didn't say that. I simply accepted her friend request, and then used my privacy settings to make it so that we never ever see each other's posts ever again.
Of course I could go on. There is a lot more, really. I ended up having a massive meltdown and doing some damage, which I hate doing. Hate hate. But my point today, for the purposes of discussing spiritual practice, is that our mental and emotional bodies are real bodies. Futhermore, most people are walking around with a ton of injuries, some nearly fatal injuries, and very few of us have had the treatment and support to recover from them in any reasonable way. You know how sometimes, when you watch, like, Lord of the Rings or Last of the Mohicans or whatever, and dudes are getting speared and knifed and dismembered and they just tear off a piece of some lady's dress, tie it up and keep fighting, you think, "there is no way that injury is going to heal properly?" Or maybe when you watch WWI movies, where soldiers are getting drunk before having limbs amputated, to deal with the pain, and you think, "that is actually not a good idea?" Or like, when you even think anything about dentistry before anesthetics? I think one day we will look back on this time as a time when folks were totally retarded about mental and emotional well being, and by retarded I mean slow to develop, which is what that actually means, no offense to those with learning disabilities.
We are not without the knowledge of mental illness, by the way. There has been a lot of very fine work done by the pioneers of brainstuffs. The problem, as I see it, is that we, as a society, do not know our own inner landscapes well enough to recognize when we are lost. We can care much better for the physical body and help others who are injured, because the knowledge and understanding of how to care for physical injuries is more or less widespread now. Mental problems are not like that at all. Almost no one has any idea how to help someone who is suffering mentally or emotionally, excepting the use of alcohol and platitudes. This problem, the problem of no one knowing or talking about mental problems, has escalated because, I propose, most people do not even recognize that their mind is a part of their whole, and falsely believe that their thoughts and feelings are what make up who they are. This makes a mental problem seem like a problem with one's actual "real" or "true" self, and therefore, super shameful to have. Who wants to tell anyone that their most essential being is damaged goods? If someone says, say at a dinner party, "The reason I need to sit in this special chair is that I fell from a 5 story building and broke my back," no one says, "I can't believe she would say something like that in front of all of us. She needs to stop being so selfish and keep her personal problems to herself. Besides, where's my special chair?" Mental illness is just an illness of a different part of the self, guys. It doesn't mean there is anything wrong with me me, the real me.
You may have noticed that I have not referred to "spiritual" illness. This is because, while I believe the spirit has preferences, as far as how it would like us to arrange our physical and mental and emotional selves for optimum health, I do not believe the spirit has needs, or can be damaged or sick or deformed in any way. The most essential part of a person, the truest personhood of a person, is unharmable. This is an operating theory, of course. I don't know that this is "true" any more than anyone knows anything else is true, but it helps me to believe this, and some other people in history, some really high functioning people, have believed this, too. I hold on to that, at times like this excruciating week, in order to stay above water. When I feel like a waste of a person, a collage of damages doing damage to those around me, I try to remember to think of us all as medieval knights wrapped in ladies' skirt rags, bleeding and crooked and still swinging our ridiculous swords, perfect inside, healing imperfectly. I have to get to the really important announcement now.
Due to changes in the changing world, Happy Hour Yoga at Stop Smiling, starting not today but Monday, February 7th, will begin at 6:30pm rather than 6:00pm. Please adjust accordingly!
also:
Aint no blizzard leftovers gonna keep us from the Detour Tea Tour! Meet us in Chinatown Sunday morning at 11am, or hit us up along the way. (Details in last week's post.)
and:
February 14th, everyone's favorite day, friend of Happy Hour Yoga, Emily Dendinger, will be hosting her play reading series, called "Inchworm," at Stop Smiling after yoga class! Will there be laughter and romance? I don't know, but there will be booze. Stick around.
one more thing:
NEXT POTLUCK FEBRUARY 18TH. It is rumored that we will be playing whirlyball after the potluck. Do rumors come true?
Posted by Karen Faith at February 4, 2011 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: chicago yoga teacher chicago private yoga chicago yoga classes wicker park yoga 60622 yoga pilsen yo
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: chicago yoga teacher chicago private yoga chicago yoga classes wicker park yoga 60622 yoga pilsen yo
Oh Karen - I don't even know where to begin other than to tell you that I know what it means to have to suffer through all the psychological damage in your adulthood because of what happened to you in childhood.
For the longest time, I thought that "this is just the way I am" and went on with life expecting others to accept me the way I am but recently, after very nearly losing this man I love so dear because of this damaged self, I had to rethink my past. And think of just how firm a grip it had on me and that I needed help. The threat of never being able to fully connect with someone was very real and very scary to me so I sought help. And so I read books and started seeing a therapist. And man...it's a work in progress but I feel and see the change in me. I never thought it could happen but it did, and because of it, I am now finally on a really good path with my partner. It's not that he didn't love me, but it was just too much for him to endure this baggage I had carried around with me from a terrible childhood due to an "unfit father".
I know your childhood and mine are not the same, and that whatever's inflicted will take years to heal, if ever, but now I truly believe we can at least strive to be at a better place - especially with ourselves. We'll never heal 100% but it's possible for us to have a "normal-ish" life with the right help.
Without knowing your history, of course I sound like a do-gooder who's talking out of my ass, but I really do understand your pain, albeit from a different perspective. I know what our insides, invisible but strong, can do to our outsides, and I want you to know that I'm here, that you're not alone, that these very real things that happened to you will always be with you but it doesn't have to define you for the rest of your life.
For once in life, I felt liberated when I saw the change in my outlook and behavior, and I felt hope. Real hope that I can finally like, or even love, the person I am. And that others can too - not just the "stable" parts of me.
Hugs to you and your journey Karen.
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Thank you, Justine.
Sometimes I write these things and I think, what the heck am I doing broadcasting this garbage? And then I remember that this stuff is real and lots of folks deal with it, and the less I talk about it, the less I'm helping folks shake the shame off of it, you know?
Thanks for reading, and for replying, and for being so honest and awesome.
xo
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