[spiritual_emergency]

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<font color="#008800"> After any major physical "insult," as they call it, it's all too easy to see yourself as a collection of symptoms rather than as a total human being, including your spirit -- and thus to become your illness. Fear is powerful and contagious.

At first I allowed myself to catch it, worried that if I didn't do what the doctors ordered, I'd be sorry. But now I'm learning to take my healing into my own hands. Healing, after all, is not the same as curing; healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing "what is now".

Ram Dass</font>

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A friend passed that quote to me a few years back, not long after I'd had my "break". It gave me a lot to think about, and since then, has become almost a friend in its own right -- I've hung out with it a lot in the years since.

When all this first happened, I think if someone had asked me then, "What is recovery?" I would have said it meant turning back the clock; it would have meant that none of the things that did happen would have happened at all. Apparently, Life had a different definition and so I have learned that healing and recovery does not mean mean going back to the way things were before.

If healing is health, then health is what I faked prior to my breakdown. My healing began with my experience of psychosis. After that experience, I faked some more health -- in part, because I wanted to reassure those around me that I was okay and they didn't have to worry about me anymore. I also really wanted to believe that the hard stuff was past me. It wasn't.

For the first year or so after that experience, I mostly just sat. I surfed the web a lot. I read the story I had written during my "psychosis" over and over again. I listened to a lot of music, over and over again. In a way, that was the worst of that experience, both for me and for those around me, yet it was also the part when I was doing some of my most intensive healing because truth be told, I wasn't just sitting. I was thinking. I was putting myself back together again. I required enormous amounts of time to myself to do so. Sitting silently for many months was an important aspect of my recovery although it was frightening for those around me -- they didn't know if I'd ever be "well" again. As for me, I had been well once but I didn't know what "well" was anymore -- nor if I could ever go back and reclaim it.

Progress happened in skips and lurches. I'd make a modest leap and this would be interpreted as much-desired progress by those around me. Then, I'd slip back a little and this would be experienced as disappointment, anger, impatience, by those around me. They really, really wanted me to be well again. I was painfully aware that they had loved me more when I was "well". I was even more painfully aware that love had become conditional, a reward for "wellness". I wasn't so sure I knew what "love" was anymore, or if I would ever want to go back and reclaim it.

About 14 months post-break, I got a job -- just a few days a month to start and fortunately, one that meant I'd be able to continue being mostly alone. I now recognize that job as being an important step in my recovery. It was allowing me to painfully forge a new identity, a new way of being in the world. It helped build confidence and create a sense of purpose. If that job had come any earlier, I might not have been capable of doing it and this would have eroded what little sense of self had been rebuilt. Getting a job was important, but even more important was getting a job at the right time, in a manner that allowed me to continue the healing I was doing.

Somewhere in there I began to connect with others who had gone through an experience that was similar to my own. This helped me to connect with the humaness of my experience; it helped to "normalize" the experience when it was understood within context. Connecting with others who were like me was an important part of my recovery process.

More fits, stops, lurches. Eventually I began reconnecting with my family members and extended circle of friends. I occasionally made the effort to actually visit or call, although I still preferred to spend the vast majority of my time alone. 'How long does healing and recovery take?' is a question that echoed inside my head many times in those early days. I finally stopped asking it of myself when I realized it takes exactly as long as it takes, and not a moment sooner. It doesn't happen all at once and it's far from a graceful process. Sometimes it happens only if you look at it, and sometimes, you need to let it steep it's way back to life in a quiet corner where it can be alone. Being alone can sometimes be a very healing act.

Eventually there came a day when I felt a need to clear out the room I'd been practically living in for the many months previously. I pulled out bags of garbage, boxed up whatever had been in the room, I stripped it clean, scrubbed the window of it's hazy smoke stain, and repainted the walls. My husband helped me build a new desk, I salvaged and repainted a table, created a bookshelf to contain the many books I'd purchased to help me understand what it was that had happened to me. I hung pictures of my family -- my history -- upon the walls. The new lamps cast round orbs of golden light upon the walls that had been painted such a deep dark plum, they were almost black.

"Does this mean you're still depressed?" a friend asked upon viewing the color.

"No," I said. I explained that when I walked into that room it felt warm and welcoming to me. The darkness on the walls seemed to suck my own darkness out of me. I felt at peace there. I felt love there. I felt Silence there.

Cleaning and painting that room was an important part of my recovery... but so was letting it slide into decay in the first place.

I have done a lot of healing in this room. It was in this room that I went through my crack-up. It was in this room that I wrote "the story" of that experience. It was in this room that I read that story over and over again, drawing every bit of meaning and nourishment from it -- that story is still teaching me. It was also in this room that I was introduced to the works of some of the clinicians I've leaned on so heavily over these past few years -- John Weir Perry, Carl Jung, R.D. Laing, Maureen Roberts... I have not been alone in this room for I have had some very dear friends in this space with me. I've spent a lot of time sitting on this chair, in front of this keyboard. I've spoken with a lot of people, read a lot of information, listened to a lot of music, done a lot of research. Somehow, all that got mixed into the pigment of the paint in the darkness of these walls that surround me on three sides like a womb: "Darkness born from darkness... the beginning of all understanding."

Am I recovered now? Am I healed now? Certainly, I've recovered and healed enough that I can hold down a full-time job that offers me plenty of promising direction for growth. I've healed and recovered enough that you would never know by looking at me or speaking with me that I had ever been in the space I was. I've healed and recovered enough to begin mending my relationships with the people around me. I've healed and recovered enough that I understand what happened to me and why it happened the way it did. But I'm also still learning. One of the things I've learned is that although it's true that I absolutely cannot go back, some pieces do come forward in their own time.

I invite others to share their own stories of healing and recovery in this space, regardless of where they may be in that process.



[Note: The quote on darkness is from the Tao Te Ching]

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