TRIAL BY FIRE
By Lynn-Marie Ramjass (Part 1)
"To see the world in a grain of sand. And heaven in a wildflower/Hold infinity in the palm of your hand. And eternity in an hour." William Blake
“I Am,” said he.
“I Am,” said she.
And then the war began. It is all about control between the woman and the man. It is the struggle between what St. Francis of Assisi called brother Sun and sister Moon, the shadow and the light. I am the author and the narrator. I am the reality and the illusion, the nightmare, and the dream. I am the storyteller, telling my story, in a way that nobody else can. This is my story.
Some of you will undoubtedly not believe me. I
cannot force you to believe something you yourself have not experienced. But
others, you will believe me. You will feel my pain, taste my fear, and share my
shame. Somewhere in the core of your being, you will know, having had similar
experiences.
It is my hope that you will come to understand that it is okay to endure what we have endured and not lose our faith, or our hope, or our dreams. And you will not be afraid any longer. You will not be afraid to love and to allow yourselves to be loved in return. You will come to know that even if that love were lost and that trust broken, to have little or no regrets, but only thanks for having had the experience.
In time, like me, you can be proud of your sufferings and the intense passion you possess. For many of you, these deep, bittersweet, and often painful feelings and experiences have fashioned you into kinder, nobler, more compassionate, and empathetic human beings. Hopefully, you will wear your scars as badges of honour and own each wound and experience. You will find your voice and speak your truth. You will follow your own path and come to accept that you are far stronger than others accredit you. Most likely, far stronger than you believed yourselves to be. For to live with bipolar disorder is not for the faint of heart.
There will come a day, undoubtedly after
many, many years, when the ties that tethered you will finally be removed. Many
of you readers will walk out of the darkness and into the light. The world will
think that you have somehow unlocked some of the mysteries of the universe. I can assure you that many of you have. Though the world may call you mad. I pray you remember them, these universal truths and the oneness with a power, so much bigger than yourselves! You
will know what is most important in life. You will be proud of who you are and what you have endured. You will know the man, or the woman, you are in the process
of becoming. You will know, with absolute certainty, you are exactly where you
are meant to be, at this moment, on this day, and in this lifetime. You will
find your purpose!
There will be no more fears of living
in a cardboard box and hollering at the moon. You will know that it is okay to believe in
the existence of angels and demons, in God (a higher power, whatever you imagine that to be) and in the presence
of the devil and his dominions. You will know because you had experienced both. Both the infinite darkness and the brilliant light.
It is your life, your journey, your spiritual
path and only you may give a proclamation of your belief, or your disbelief
according to you and to your experiences. Many of you are fortunate to have the democratic right (and if you are religious, or deeply spiritual) an obligation and the freedom to do so.
You will come to know that it does not
matter what others believe. It is what you believe that matters. You will learn
to believe in and love yourself, and in those whom you love and who love you. Hopefully,
you will learn to see beyond the pain, the bitter disappointment and not harden your hearts or close your minds. But endeavour to love others, those who are different than you, but most especially yourself. For
love is all that truly matters. For love
and the memory of it, is all that we take with us when we depart this earth.
My struggle started when they tried to shove me in a box. “Here” they said, as they handed me a list of rules. This is when you are to go to sleep. This is when you are to wake. This is what you are to eat. This is what you are to drink. This is what you are to wear. This is what you are to do. This is what you must never do. This is what you are to feel. These are the things and people you will love. These are the things and people you will shun and avoid. This is what you must think. But, most importantly, this is what you must believe! If it is not your parents, it is society that sets and dictates the rules we are to live by. These social constructs within various cultures define, restrict, and often destroy entire civilizations, families, and far too many relationships.
Though I tried my best, since my youth, I could not live or think within the confines of a box. Nor obey all the insidious rules within my society, my religion, and my household. No one was going to dictate to me whom to love. For in my mind love should not have boundaries and must be unconditional. My problem then was my complete inability to express or share such love without fear of being judged or labelled or misunderstood. I loved deeply, profoundly, unconditionally but from far and away. It took me decades to learn to express my feelings. And as a result, I was terribly shy, lonely, and isolated during my youth. Thankfully, I grew out of that. I evolved. I matured. I shared parts of myself, I never had before. In so doing, I formed lifelong, loving, genuine relationships and deepened those I already had. I learned intimacy and to take risks. Today, receptive to possibilities, new friendships and experiences.
Generally, throughout my life, until my late thirties and early forties, I was a rule abider. So afraid was I to paint outside the lines, to ever break a rule. I was raised Catholic, and to be a good Christian was to please others, but rarely if ever had I learned it was okay to please myself.
My social and separation anxiety began in the first grade. I was six years old and had just started elementary school. It worsened as I grew older. Depression set in when in puberty and adolescence. All through school, I often felt a strange heat and ringing in my ears. I fainted. I fainted often. My parents never thought to have doctors check my brain or my heart. I was afraid of crowds and closed in spaces. I would not, however, merely pass out, but vomit once I gained consciousness. Each time, it fuelled my embarrassment and magnified my anxiety. These spells plagued me for eleven long years.
For the better part of my life, I seemed
haunted by something or someone I could not see or touch. My parents told me, as a child, I
had an imaginary friend though I have no recollection of this. Why me and
not my siblings? To whom was I speaking? Who was I seeing that others could
not? Was I mentally ill even as a child? I had always felt different. For years
I had convinced myself I was adopted. I had always felt like a stranger in a strange land, on the outside looking in.
There were many times, I would be
sitting in class during elementary school and suddenly break out in a cold sweat.
The blood would drain from my face. My heart raced so rapidly, I heard it beating
in my brain like a drum and its echo in my ears. So haunted by a morbid fear of
death and dying, the fear so intense, I could not focus on the lessons of the
day. I would often get a wrap on my
knuckles with a ruler, or a tug on my ear by a teacher who accused me of
daydreaming.
I knew from a young age I was not like other children. I did not think or behave like them. This was proven several times, but I especially recall in grade five when at the age of ten, the assignment was to write a poem about being lost. While other children wrote about lost puppies, lost wallets, being lost in a store etc., I wrote about a black man lost in a white society. I have long since forgotten the poem. But the first line: “He was a black man lost in a white society. They said he had no propriety. They said he would never amount to anything…” This was strange as I am not a woman of colour. I knew only one non-white family in my community. If memory serves me none in the Catholic elementary schools I had attended whilst growing up. I was a voracious reader and an old soul from an early age vastly different from my peers. My deepest fear was not being accepted by those peers. Of not being “good enough.”
I had always felt defective, unwanted, unloved, and broken, but mostly I felt unheard and invisible especially within my own family. I was afraid of success and of failure, of loving too much, or not enough, and not being loved in return. I lived in a perpetual state of fear, panic, chaos, and uncertainty both at home and at school.
I lived and thought in black and white terms. Things were either right or wrong and there was no grey in between, no middle ground. Though
years later, following my parents bitter divorce, my mother would teach me “circumstances
accounted for a lot.” My rigid thinking further
complicated my childhood and my life. I was the classic people pleaser with a type A
personality and a propensity for perfectionism until I consciously broke those toxic habits.
At thirty-two years old, married eleven years
and mother of two young sons (aged nine and eight at the time), my mind, heart,
and spirit completely shattered. My body shut down. And I found myself curled
in a fetal position, in a chair across from a psychiatrist’s desk (my third visit) utterly broken, depleted, and despondent!
I did not know that week I had endured my first full blown manic episode. Or that I would be hospitalized that day June 6, 1989, locked away in a psychiatric ward against my will. Nor could I know then that I would one day find a purpose in my being there. Though deep down, I sensed it and was assured I was not alone, I never was, and I never would be. Once the fear abated, I felt, for the second time in my life, the calm reassurance that I had experienced the divine. I would find myself when I was most lost. But that journey would take several more years, three more psychotic episodes and several more losses.
I firmly believe as Oscar Wilde wrote: "As long as there is life there is hope." It is my hope that whilst you battle your demons daily, you also experience the presence and majesty of the divine. It is my hope that though the world and humanity can often be brutal, cruel, unkind, and destructive. It is also filled with beauty, wonder, majesty, and mystery. I have to believe that there are more compassionate, loving, empathetic, enlightened, selfless souls on this planet, then there are those hell bent on destroying it, and those who think only of themselves, or their own kind. "It is the history of our kindnesses alone make this world tolerable. If it were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters...I should be inclined to think our life a practical jest in the worst possible spirit." Robert Louis Stevenson.
May you give and receive kindnesses that make the journey bearable.
Sincerely,
Lynn Marie
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