by Restin Wells
Many people try to be little dictators over themselves, not realizing the forces they are up against. Not that self-discipline is wrong. Self-discipline is the "White Stone". It is the badge of achievement to which one attains, in the common trials of life. That only prepares for the refining of the gold. "Gold" is formed in the fiery heat, and circulation of Light, of extraordinary inner war. Then, dictatorship gives way to democracy.
I've always had a curious reaction to those old photos you see in the news magazines, of the statues of Stalin, and other communist leaders, being yanked sacrilegiously off their pedestals by a crane. You see them carried off upside down by the crane cable, the scowling, schoolmaster look still frozen upon their faces. Inner leadership of oneself, and all the demands and needs, has to be earned and proven, has to take hold of the grass roots and pull your separate parts together in fairness and honesty. That is the rule in the politics of the outer world, and is also true in the inner world of politics.
If I've failed to work with myself, I grow up to be an empty barrel. I feel empty. I haven't done anything with myself except to ACT tough, or act aloof, disdainful, and unhurtable. But I really felt like a weak nobody. So, I made myself a perfect setup for a trick of major proportions to be played on me. It is this: My little mind looked outside of itself and tried to find someone else who did at least seem to have the strengths it didn't have. Then it would latch itself onto that hero person like a tick. I say, "It did it" on purpose, because almost everyone is totally unconscious of how that works, even though it is very common. So, I became like a suckerfish attached to a big killer whale, and rode with it for the protection I felt so lacking. And I could as well be a 6'9", 250 lb football player, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. It was what I was longing to do when I felt the lovesick blues for my favorite actor at the movies, or the singer who wailed over the radio.
Another strange thing that happens there is how the mind gets the relationship adjusted around so that I fancied I had a natural man/woman interest. But it was really an attempt of the child part within to regain something very important that was lost. Without realizing it, I would try to fool myself that it was something appropriate for my age. Yet, it was still a child in search of someone strong. If I felt such admiration for someone of my same sex, there would be an uncomfortable confusion, not regarding myself as gay. There would also be embarrassing moments trying to explain it to curious friends. Almost everyone goes through that, in some degree or other.
Some people, both men and women, have thought they're gay, or bi, because of that phenomenon, when actually it has little to do with adult sex. It comes from an age that is prior to distinct sexual differentiation.
Before my breakdown, I was like so many thousands of other people who are wandering around looking for their other half in special people. Especially movie stars and singers seem to be a window into our emotional side, even while we are claiming not to have any mushy feelings or need anybody for anything at all. Most of us allow only a tiny opening for a safe way to feel anything emotional, anything related to love. The FAVORITE ACTOR or the FAVORITE SONG is the only carrier of our feelings. We deny and push down feelings so much and so hard that our lives are as dull and mean as a slum town. Consequently, there is tremendous pressure beneath our armor-plated surface, like a network of underground fires channeling into latent volcanoes. Therefore, when we make an exception, when someone finally gets to us, we nearly go crazy--and also set ourselves up for big time hurt when things go sour. And things probably will go sour because we've starved ourselves into needing too much, clinging too hard. For, like it or not, a human being is created with lots of feelings in need of expression and help. It's a law of nature. The best bet is to have the guts to face them and manage them; instead of pretending they don't exist while they take control anyway from behind the scenes.
I went around in my world proud of myself to be a Cool Cat by not ever letting myself feel anything. But deep inside, I was a coward, keeping everything jammed down inside like a pressure cooker, and just one heartbeat short of going nuts over the first person to listen to more than two words I said. So long as there were half of myself unknown to me, I felt empty and yearning for something or someone to fill what's missing--when I would dare be still long enough for a feeling to catch up with me. So, out of my ignorance I was very easily deceived about who is important, and why. When I finally met someone who filled me with joy about myself, I was captured in the delusion of the Transference relationship.
The ocean is a symbol of the subconscious, with its fearsome power, immeasurable depths, and dark unknowns, yet teeming with mysterious primal life, swarming to feed perpetual hungers. To look upon its surface, it looks like a vast nothingness; but to dive into its alien dreamscape is to encounter a zoo of both friendly and not-so-friendly denizens. My conscious soul felt like a nothing, while my unconscious seemed like a haunted house of dangerous workings. But because I was in so much mental pain, I was obliged to go into my own unconscious and turn it inside out, to find the remedy. I came up later with so much more of myself added to my conscious knowledge and power. I became like the well-traveled man of the world who has sailed the seven seas, who has been everywhere and seen every thing. Don't we all get tingly feelings under his penetrating, worldly-wise gaze! Never having had the courage to do all that ourselves, we are too fascinated by someone who seems to know more about us than we do.
One reason why so many people are so dependent is because their superstitious fear of the unconscious prevents them from going there to figure themselves out. But, there is where we find our tangled knots of resentments, hurts, and betrayals that we have given up on. There are our cowardly acts and evil schemes at risk of meeting up with our conscience, or our lost mother's sad and frowning countenance. Of course, every well-read person knows that there is where creative ambition, zest, and love of life come from--at the cost of plowing through all that disturbing stuff. Because of that, we keep putting it off for a better time. We don't disturb the slumbering dragons. We leave sleeping dogs lie. We have to be thrown in! How timid we are in our inner lives, in contrast to our bravo in our outer world of sports, and lovemaking! But the more there are unsolved events lurking in our subconscious world, the more we dread meeting it, even for the alleged treasures claimed to be there. And the more susceptible we are to cravings for some substitute to help us feel better. That is one reason we buy the illusion of love for special people who arouse deep feelings.
The more we have fear, shame, and hatred for our own feelings, the more vulnerable we are to certain people who seen to honor some of what we won't give to ourselves. But the way I became more independent was to deliberately contact my feelings and learn how to give a little while remaining a responsible citizen. As that part learned that I was there to help, while setting limits, it began to trust me. Then I found that I wasn't so desperate for any bit of praise or permission. But I could never kill my feelings. I could only exile them. Then they waited in hiding, smoldering with sullen resentment, until just the right set of circumstances, with just the right person. Then they arose and trampled over my will like a herd of wild animals.
My therapist had told me that I had to give up being dependent upon her, and that I could accept being alone in the world. I hated her for trying to tell me that! They were the most painful words I had ever heard. I couldn't even imagine doing anything like that! In a way, she was right, but in another way, she left too much out. There are different pictures of being alone. If you're alone in the arctic, you probably won't make it. If you're alone in Provo, Utah, you might. But no one is so alone as the individual who has blocked out most of his personal history, has shut off all love, has no solid core within, and no hope of God anywhere. Hence, there is that special indignation which comes at that advice. It's better to love another mere mortal, or make-believe they're something better, than face the vast empty feeling of a vacant ballpark inside. So, before someone tells someone else they can face being alone, they need to know what that word means to the other person.
In people who become dependent, it always feels as if there's a big sinkhole inside. It's the feeling that though you're with a thousand people, and a whole bunch of friends, you don't really care about them and they don't really care about you either. There is an endless searching for someone, or something, to make it feel better. Yet, it is never quite the right thing. Even a deception, or fake, is better than nothing, until something better comes along. So, people discover that sex, drugs, food, and "being in love" will seem to take the edge off. Or having an obsession about some hobby, or sport, or sports hero, will make it possible to go on living.
Dr. Tilden, begrudging, as she was to say anything, did take a moment, around this time, to announce that she expected me to pay for at least half of my therapy myself, instead of just using Ben's insurance policy--which was almost the only thing she said to me that month.
Again, I launched into a siege of rejection hate, and hurt feelings. But I still couldn't cuss her out and leave. Furthermore, I was held back from rash reactions by my new respect for the weaker constituents of myself. I gave them full permission to shout and bang out their pain and vengeance--at home. I argued with Dr. Tilden about it, but still couldn't reveal the agony of my heart. But she was right in pushing me that direction I was so loathe to go. I began to realize how my inertia, my lack of energetic ambition, was like trying to get a handhold on a giant pig, wallowing heavily in a deep mud puddle. I felt its gross downward suction, from deep down into my unconscious labyrinth, holding my vitality suffocated in it. The only time I ever seemed to get inspired was when I was doing something to impress my most important person. I couldn't draw upon vitality from within--it had to come from them. I didn't realize it then, but it was the discharging of the past angers that was clearing the way for energy go flow.
Proud that I was of my creative abilities and guts to face all kind of physical dangers, I couldn't face having to work for a living. I could tame wild horses, but I cringed before the world of business and business people. And, I didn't see how Dr. Tilden could be so calloused as to expect me to work when I was so mentally sick! And I really was. There is just no way to express the insult I felt! I had read in psychoanalytic literature that the mentally ill person unconsciously expects the world to make up for the neglects and cruelty in the childhood years. But I didn't feel so much that way, until later I could allow the idea a little. I didn't go around with an attitude. One of my main stances, you know, was the opposite. I had turned away in scorn of people. I would be above any need of anything from anybody. I scorned help, and helpers--but, methinks, a bit too much!
As I lay on the couch one morning, I thought: what did it really mean, that I hated to go get a job and pay my own way? Did I really believe some "mother" entity should deliver all sustenance by magic? Yes, I would have to admit; sometimes I had some inkling of a feeling like that. Who demands to be taken care of, for nothing in return? I had to admit that I hadn't ever had a common job like most people. I made some windfall money off my art. But I was basically cared for by my husband. So, what's wrong with that? I argued to myself. If I had children to care for I should feel okay to be a stay-at-home mom. But I didn't have children. I mostly just served myself, and my hobbies.
Again, I asked, Who demands to be taken care of without giving in return? Only a baby gets that kind of care. I felt myself heat up with rage. I also felt terror lurking behind it. Tears welled up, and I cussed violently as I beat the pillow with my fist. After that came a recognition. I got up the nerve to see myself as an angry, bawling infant demanding to be fed, her chubby arms outstretched and mouth hole wide open to receive--just like a baby bird in a nest, slavering to get something down into her gut. A sucking, slurping, stinking, disgusting little rug-rat! I could hardly endure the guilt and hate, admitting (confessing) that I was still like that, underneath it all. My heart pounded. My breathing went fast. I was supposed to be Ms. Independent-tough. Actually, an inner dishonesty was a large part of the baggage I transferred to a therapist. I vaguely realized my ambivalence was one of the reasons I didn't have a forty-hour job doing something boring, like most people did. I felt guilty about it, and insecure, somewhat, but not enough to go get the job. Yet, as I emerged from my illness, and those things became more conscious, I slowly began to see my role in life in a more realistic way.
So, full of spite, besides really not being well, I went out and got a part-time job doing commercial greenhouse labor, as it was readily available without special training. But it also happened to be the bottom rung of dirty, denigrating employment in the county, despite the nice surface idea that it's working with plants. Any bum or addict could get a job working at a plant nursery, where bosses already were grateful if only people will show up the next day. In my condition, I couldn't give much either, but not much was expected. No one thought it unusual for me to seem stupid, when I was actually pre-occupied. And I did miss a lot of days. I knew Ben's insurance was paying Dr. T. I wasn't so backward that I thought a doctor would see me for nothing. But insurance was something other people did. It held a position vaguely behind the scenes of my world. I knew I shouldn't be such a naive bumpkin about the fees, but couldn't seem to help it.
I resolved to get up enough hatred to break off the therapy. I would hate her to death in my heart and mind, I said to myself, even if not possible to do worse to her! In that stage of my life, I thought she was such a hardnosed bitch, and so inconsiderate of my mental illness--her of all people--who had formerly seemed to understand me better than I thought anyone ever could!
Copyright ©
Restin Wells