The effect of ignorance is also the stigma that keeps us locked away where no one has to see or acknowledge us. Out of sight being out of mind means we can be secluded or restrained. Mayors can clean city streets of us and put us away in shelters, supposedly for our own good. We can be arrested for minor infractions and the crime rate lowered. But someone needs to stand up and ask where we’ve gone. Have we been sheltered or imprisoned, have we been helped or just hidden?
****
In September 2004, voices compelled me to pour lighter fluid over my left leg and set it on fire. I had 3rd degree burns, skin grafts, the whole terrible shebang. February 2005 back in the bin. I’d spent a total of 8 to10 years in the hospital by then. This time voices were ordering me to immolate myself, a whole body sacrifice to atone for countless sins.
That was it. I’d been tied down, locked in, shot up and kept inside too much to take it easily again. I had to decide: live or die.
One evening, Lynnie visited. She was tired of it all too. She said, “Listen, this is what I tell my patients: You can always go down the old familiar road. You’ve taken it a million times. Why don’t you try something new for a change?” She called this ‘bushwhacking,’ and it had nothing to do with George W Bush. I could always switch back to my old way. It was always there. But bushwhacking a brand new path for myself might bring me somewhere I liked better.
It’s still a mystery to me why this took. Maybe I just had to be ready to hear it. I decided I would try her advice. What did I have to lose? My newly bushwhacked path was to follow my doctor’s orders and take every one of the medications prescribed me, as prescribed, without skipping a single dose. For a while at least, see where that got me.
This is where it got me.
You know, a lot of ordinary living passed me by in 35 years. I never dated. I didn’t marry. I haven’t held a paying job since early adulthood. But since 2005, when our book was published, I have learned a lot I did not know about how to live in the world. I have gained friends and lost one I loved. I have learned to drive again. I have become an artist. Recently I had a second book, poetry this time, accepted for publication next March.
What comes next is something no one can say. But for the time being alive and well, I look forward to all of it.
Life is for living. Today is all we have and all we know. Enjoy what you enjoy; when you suffer, suffer well. Remember – and this is for anyone who has ever taken piano lessons: it’s all in the wrist.
