I sat backed up to a darkened corner of the last room in the house and felt a thousand eyes watching my every move. Simple thoughts had ceased to resound authenticity as my manically overdriven mind attacked itself. I had been up for too long. Any guess at how many weeks would sound like pure lunacy. Days had stretched into weeks and weeks had become months, Impossible ,I know but when you live by the little hand held mirror and it’s little white lines become big white lines; time ceases to exist.
Backed into a corner of a darkened room because the tiniest sound surrounded my ears and became a mocking sneer at the paper world around me. I could find no safety, no comfort. My nose bleed freely ,but the real problem was the panic that filled my very essence. To much, to much, to much … I was busy trying to shrink from existence. I was very small by this time. The last time I had eaten was just a memory. Beer had kept my stomach from growling…that and the ever appearing white lines harnessed my appetite. I was a small form in a darkened room, whimpering at the sounds and darkened shadows around me. The very few people who had stayed to watch the total dismantling of my mind stood just far enough away from me to be safe, yet watch out for me.
They had called a preacher, weather to give last rites or to exercise the demons, that they could clearly feel, that were raping my mind, I’m not sure which.
I shuddered again and again. Racks of shudders attacked my body as I tried to curl further into myself.
A man, a stranger walked into that last room and stared down at me. His presence in the room made me feel embarrassment. Shame ran loosely through my thoughts. I was half clothed. Bikini top and cutoffs was all I had wore…for ever. hadn’t changed them since I had quit my job so many weeks ago. I say quit…I had just stopped going. I got lost the last time I had tried to go.
The man bent down to look into my eyes.
He was not made of paper…I could tell. He looked as if he were real. The shouting maniac voices hushed as he peered into my eyes. Even though I wore very little clothing, and felt such shame by that, he looked right into my eyes with such love that tears began to flow freely from my eyes. I wanted to rush into his arms, but my past abuses kept me backing further into the wall behind me. He leaned in, maybe sensing my absolute reluctance. “Jesus loves you Mary.” was all he said. But he spoke those words to me with such authority and conviction, that there was no room for argument. I looked down at the absolute nothing I had become, as shame tried to rape me again. “No,” he said gently as he reached out and lifted my face upwards. “ He loves you just as you are, dirty, and messed up. He came and died for you…YOU Mary! The power behind those words were the only thought that could pervade my delirium., Yet I quickly discarded the thought, anyway. My brain could not wrap around the idea of the child in a manger…The idea of a bruised and bloody man on a cross…the idea that this fictionist character could think anything at all. I had no history of a deity…beyond myself.
Still the thought tickled my mind.
Who was this Jesus.
And why would he care about me …here and now?
What did this preacher man mean?
My heart threatened to explode out of my chest…I had come to the end…
Lucid thinking wasn’t even a consideration.
Fear gripped me. My heart rapped against its enclosure as I tried to breath. The eyes were everywhere. Laughter echoed inside my mind.
I heard my friend tell me that I needed to eat. That I needed to sleep. My body twitched with the enthusiasm. I felt this at the thought of my own bed. I hadn’t been there in so long. I longed to see my apartment…my bed…my cat. The thought of my cat propelled me up. The rush of movement made my heart leap scarily. I steadied myself, and lurched out of the room. I ran to my car digging in my cutoffs for my keys. I got lost a couple of paces from the house and pulled over. I was completely overwhelmed with dread. I had no idea how to get to my house. Suddenly a mans face appeared in my car window, gently he spoke to me. “Follow me Mary.” “Just watch my red lights” It was my friends boyfriends face. He had saved me once before, when I had gotten lost trying to find my sisters house. That had happened several weeks ago. I was still out in the dark abyss trying to find my way back to the reality that I knew existed, but could no longer find.
I followed those lights all the way to my house, some five blocks away. My hands gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. Nausea was a constant companion.
Laying on my bed…I was so afraid to close my eyes…I was afraid I would just stop being. My body twitched endlessly. Silent laughter echoed inside my mind…slithering voices taunted me, “You will die if you close your eyes.”
I’m not sure how I lived through that. Not sure how long I was outside my mind. I merely know that it happened just like that.
The people that were with me during that time in my life are always so surprised to see me upright and talking. Why did I live? How did I live? What kind of madness did I bring back with me? I can’t answer any questions about my time in my personal circle of hell. I just know that I sit in my living room with my children and I am alive. The weeks after my mental death was no picnic either. I certainly drug something back with me. Or maybe I am just completely mad now and remember things from my fucked up perspective. The question still remains constant…what came first the crazy or the way to cope with the crazy. I don’t know.
What came next was a crazy, crazy scary time. I was breathing yes, but I was by no means alive. That man who told me about that dude Jesus tickled my brain. Fear was my ever present emotion. Fear kept me awake at night…all night. The only reprieve I felt was during the day, that’s when I slept. The raucous sound inside my head drowned out everyone’s voice who tried to speak to me. I found a bible…the hounds of hell mocked me as I ran frantically from one reprieve to another. I opened the book, but it made no sense to me. I may as well been trying to read a foreign language. It was a different language for me. It made no sense. The only part that held my brain in any way was the red part. Little sentences. I still had no idea what it was saying, but I felt less uncovered when I read it. I slept with the book on my chest when I took my nap, always during the day. I had to stay up at night. Slithering, horrid voices mocked me at night, every night. Fantastical things happened at night. I pretended normalcy during the day. I stared at people and watched their reactions so that I knew how to respond. I was afraid , so afraid they would find out that I was lost. Even my footsteps were calculated. I had to focus really hard just to put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes I got tripped up as I tried to walk. The function of it confused me and I would stumble.
Slowly my real friends came around to see if I was back, I had always disappeared for awhile…just not as long as this last time. They tried to talk to me and I just smiled and stared. Gone in my madness I could trust no one. The secrets of hell were being whispered to me as I tried to concentrate on the words my friends spoke that became fat puffy words floating between us. I had swore off drugs, any drugs…and I was drowning in sobriety. Tracing the beginning of my madness is precarious at best.
My friend tried to get me a job. I couldn’t even walk let alone walk with a purpose. Her husband took one look at me and told me to call when I felt better. He saw the madness in my stare, I think. Still they took care of me. They brought me food, and smokes. I must have been a good person before I fell. Everyone wanted to care for me.
My journey to clear thought was long and arduous. I traveled to the recesses of my mind. I had before always been the fun party girl. The one who could drink more then anyone…toot more coke then anyone, stay up longer then anyone. Do the most outrageous things…and laugh as I did them. But now…now…I was altered, different. That part of who I was scared the bejesus outa me…I couldn’t go back to that…so I had to create someone else. Who would that be?
Id like to stop here and tell you that I found Jesus and my life became crystal clear and beautiful. It did not.
I did try to understand.
I could not.
I wish it had been so simple…a few words recited in my presence and BAM! Angels sing and all is well…didn’t happen my friend.
I did try…I really did. I mean if you had the demons following you around you would try the crucifix thing too right? that’s what all the scary movies say. Get a cross and all will be well. That was the extent of my knowledge of God…what the movies said about him. So I slept with the bible on top of me . I wore a cross around my neck. In the middle of my sleep I would wake to my body involuntarily ripping the cross from my body and hurling it across the room. So…what now!? Ya no movie had covered that yet?
Real madness was yet to come…I had invited evil in and evil had come to stay… They fight voraciously for one of their kind. I would cry incessantly, please…I didn’t know…and laughter surrounded my mind…I couldn’t even listen to music any more…I could hear their tittering under the sound…and it sounded like they were plotting something…
You don’t know real crazy until you become very intimate with it…and feel you need to be kind to it…so that it doesn’t take you completely away.
Shiny Christians baffled me.
Smiling faces looked like sharks ready to eat my pretty face.
Their fear of me was apparent, I stupidly thought it was because I was evil…not because I was pretty. My perceptions were still not to be trusted.
I had to many questions for them. I really just wanted to know. I was not mocking…I was merely ignorant of truths they had learned as a child. I had not the same history. I was so thirsty.
So I read…when my brain could hold a thought for more then a second…I read…
I would no longer be…the dumb party girl…the giggling stupid girl…the girl who would only wear the latest fashion…I didn’t want to be pretty. I wanted to think. I could actually feel the lines forming in my brain as I read…as I learned. I read everything from C.S. Lewis to Dante. I tried to read the bible…eventually I grasped the concepts…on my own. As always on my own. I didn’t just read one version…I read everyone’s version and what they thought about it…I trusted no one…no one would EVER tell me anything…I had escaped my ring of hell and on one man would ever take me back.
….. I had escaped the lunatic in the mirror…
The battle remains constant…I am now a warrior…I choose my battles when I must. I see the debauchery around me…I still cant stomach shiny, fake…Jesus loves you thoughts. He does…I know He does…and I reconcile that I will never know why…but He really does. The knowledge I carry inside is deep and penetrating…He didn’t save me, when I asked…I didn’t even know at that time what I wanted saved from…But He did save me. He saved me when I screamed loud enough for Him to stop ignoring me and turned around to look at me laying on the floor. Not all at once. And not the first time I asked.
So when you look at me and think that you know what you see…remember that you do not.
When you stare into the abyss of who you are…the abyss stares back at you…
……answers aren’t so simple when you cannot ask the exact question.