Tuesday, November 08, 2005
My Brush With the Dark Side
The Earth, when looking downward from above the North Pole, rotates counterclockwise. Therefore the day is followed by night.
Night brings with it robbers and thieves and bad men roaming the streets. Better to stay indoors locked up tight in the house.
In the house, the lights are turned off to conserve electricity, rendering half the house enshrouded in darkness.
Ghosts and goblins can be in the next dark room. The light falls off to shadow at the doorway. An unwanted intruder could be hiding in the house.
The upstairs is light, while the basement is dark.
Spiders, slugs and cockroaches could be scurrying about in the basement.
But I need to go down there to retrieve something. I must go.
The field is aglow with artificial lighting, but there is the encroaching darkness of the woods beyond the boundary lines.
A ball has rolled into the woods. I must retrieve it.
All experiences from childhood. All very real nominally and phenomenally. One constant reminder of darkness after another.
I built up an immunity to the point I learned to exploit the darkness.
I learned to hide there when playing hide and go seek. I learned to pop out from a dark closet to scare my mother.
So that is why I know the Darkness I encountered in my late thirties was not natural.
I was frightened right down to the instinctual level. I could find no light to step into, no doorknob to lock out the Darkness.
The Darkness was real, right down to the acidity in my stomach, the mercury on my tongue, the slowness and sluggishness of my gait.
The only hope, Love.
I knew intellectually Love would drive out the Darkness. So I reacted in kind with a very forceful Love to overcome the Darkness.
But I pushed too hard at first (the Darkness gave way so easily), so that I could not bear to be separated from my Loved ones.
I checked up on my son at school. I followed my wife to work to make sure she arrived safely. I feared for my parents and brother and sisters' safety.
Then my mind, accustomed to the Darkness, made up stories in Darkness's absence. It played tricks on me. There was meaning to be found in every little gesture, every small word, every minute detail.
And the meaning was Dark. Full of foreboding. Now that I understand foreboding, it no longer sounds cliche' to me.
So Darkness left a vacuum my unconsciousness filled at full throttle. Myths and Dreams and Superstitions and Terrors, all awakened from their primordial state, worked their way into my everyday life.
I learned I needed to cope. I learned that now that they were awakened, the Myths and Dreams and Superstitions and Terrors would not fall away so easily. They enjoyed consciousness too much. The latent made manifest.
I prayed. I sought spiritual counseling from local ministers. I read the Bible. I requested others pray for me.
Little to no effect. I needed more than what the ministers and pray-ers could give.
I sought professional help.
I saw a psychiatrist, an Indian man in his late forties to early fifties who smelled of musk, or was it?
He told me I needed to be hospitalized, for I was at risk of losing everything. My family, my sanity, and so forth.
I agreed, and disagreed. My mind oscillated back and forth over whether or not I needed such treatment.
At the behest of my family, I entered a psychiatric hospitalization program.
I was diagnosed by my Indian psychiatrist as suffering from schizoaffective disorder, depression with mild psychosis.
I was told there was an imbalance of dopamine in my brain that needed to be counteracted with psychiatric drugs.
More or less, I acquiesed. Surrendering, while in the hospital, in lack of loved ones, in lack of ministers, I agreed to take some very powerful psychiatric drugs, and be monitored to see how I would respond.
While in the hospital, I met others, not unlike me, who were going through the same as I. Depression, Paranoia and Anxiety that completely blindsided folks in the middle of a summer day.
They, like me, lived garden variety lives. They were married. They had children. They had extended family members whom they loved. They went to work during the day and came home at night. They attended church. They tried to lead decent, moral lives.
I was taught, through workshops in the hospital, cognitive techniques to cope with anxiety and depression. Thankfully, I responded well to the medication I was given by my Indian doctor, who I still see.
After several days of drug therapy and behavioural workshops, I was sent home, to be seen by the psychiatrist within the week.
My wife and son were glad to have me home. They had visited while I was in the hospital, but it was not the same family life we were accustomed to. At home, things were more normal.
I landed, through a newspaper ad of all places, a job as an inventory supervisor at the bookstore I work at now. After two years, I was promoted to my current position of inventory manager.
I work forty hours a week. No more loads of overtime and tight deadlines, for the time being anyway.
Forty hours is just enough to have plenty of time well spent with the family and my friends.
I suffered nervous breakdowns July 2001, December 2001 followed by a small recurrence in April 2005.
I take my medications daily, as well as nightly, and see my Indian psychiatrist on a regular basis. I understand my schizoaffective disorder, depression and anxiety are being managed and not cured.
Every day, I try to keep things in balance and in perspective.
This is for those who are fighting the good fight.
Peace.
The Earth, when looking downward from above the North Pole, rotates counterclockwise. Therefore the day is followed by night.
Night brings with it robbers and thieves and bad men roaming the streets. Better to stay indoors locked up tight in the house.
In the house, the lights are turned off to conserve electricity, rendering half the house enshrouded in darkness.
Ghosts and goblins can be in the next dark room. The light falls off to shadow at the doorway. An unwanted intruder could be hiding in the house.
The upstairs is light, while the basement is dark.
Spiders, slugs and cockroaches could be scurrying about in the basement.
But I need to go down there to retrieve something. I must go.
The field is aglow with artificial lighting, but there is the encroaching darkness of the woods beyond the boundary lines.
A ball has rolled into the woods. I must retrieve it.
All experiences from childhood. All very real nominally and phenomenally. One constant reminder of darkness after another.
I built up an immunity to the point I learned to exploit the darkness.
I learned to hide there when playing hide and go seek. I learned to pop out from a dark closet to scare my mother.
So that is why I know the Darkness I encountered in my late thirties was not natural.
I was frightened right down to the instinctual level. I could find no light to step into, no doorknob to lock out the Darkness.
The Darkness was real, right down to the acidity in my stomach, the mercury on my tongue, the slowness and sluggishness of my gait.
The only hope, Love.
I knew intellectually Love would drive out the Darkness. So I reacted in kind with a very forceful Love to overcome the Darkness.
But I pushed too hard at first (the Darkness gave way so easily), so that I could not bear to be separated from my Loved ones.
I checked up on my son at school. I followed my wife to work to make sure she arrived safely. I feared for my parents and brother and sisters' safety.
Then my mind, accustomed to the Darkness, made up stories in Darkness's absence. It played tricks on me. There was meaning to be found in every little gesture, every small word, every minute detail.
And the meaning was Dark. Full of foreboding. Now that I understand foreboding, it no longer sounds cliche' to me.
So Darkness left a vacuum my unconsciousness filled at full throttle. Myths and Dreams and Superstitions and Terrors, all awakened from their primordial state, worked their way into my everyday life.
I learned I needed to cope. I learned that now that they were awakened, the Myths and Dreams and Superstitions and Terrors would not fall away so easily. They enjoyed consciousness too much. The latent made manifest.
I prayed. I sought spiritual counseling from local ministers. I read the Bible. I requested others pray for me.
Little to no effect. I needed more than what the ministers and pray-ers could give.
I sought professional help.
I saw a psychiatrist, an Indian man in his late forties to early fifties who smelled of musk, or was it?
He told me I needed to be hospitalized, for I was at risk of losing everything. My family, my sanity, and so forth.
I agreed, and disagreed. My mind oscillated back and forth over whether or not I needed such treatment.
At the behest of my family, I entered a psychiatric hospitalization program.
I was diagnosed by my Indian psychiatrist as suffering from schizoaffective disorder, depression with mild psychosis.
I was told there was an imbalance of dopamine in my brain that needed to be counteracted with psychiatric drugs.
More or less, I acquiesed. Surrendering, while in the hospital, in lack of loved ones, in lack of ministers, I agreed to take some very powerful psychiatric drugs, and be monitored to see how I would respond.
While in the hospital, I met others, not unlike me, who were going through the same as I. Depression, Paranoia and Anxiety that completely blindsided folks in the middle of a summer day.
They, like me, lived garden variety lives. They were married. They had children. They had extended family members whom they loved. They went to work during the day and came home at night. They attended church. They tried to lead decent, moral lives.
I was taught, through workshops in the hospital, cognitive techniques to cope with anxiety and depression. Thankfully, I responded well to the medication I was given by my Indian doctor, who I still see.
After several days of drug therapy and behavioural workshops, I was sent home, to be seen by the psychiatrist within the week.
My wife and son were glad to have me home. They had visited while I was in the hospital, but it was not the same family life we were accustomed to. At home, things were more normal.
I landed, through a newspaper ad of all places, a job as an inventory supervisor at the bookstore I work at now. After two years, I was promoted to my current position of inventory manager.
I work forty hours a week. No more loads of overtime and tight deadlines, for the time being anyway.
Forty hours is just enough to have plenty of time well spent with the family and my friends.
I suffered nervous breakdowns July 2001, December 2001 followed by a small recurrence in April 2005.
I take my medications daily, as well as nightly, and see my Indian psychiatrist on a regular basis. I understand my schizoaffective disorder, depression and anxiety are being managed and not cured.
Every day, I try to keep things in balance and in perspective.
This is for those who are fighting the good fight.
Peace.
