The Heart of the Problem
I started three-day-a-week psychoanalysis at the age of six. Yes, three days a week a lady my parents hired (both parents worked during the day) picked me up from first grade in a big old car that smelled of gasoline and drove me to the psychiatrist's office where I talked about--what? What does a six year old tell his analyst? I'd give anything to get hold of his notes and find out.
That's not the point: the point, as I noted in my last post, is that the inside of my head has never been a nice place to be, and clearly that fact became apparent at an early age. I'm now approaching this blog in much the way one of my favorite bloggers approaches his: as a way of telling his own story to himself in the hope that as it unfolds he will have a better understanding of how he got to where he is now and how he should face the present. For me, I would add another dreadedly overused and loaded word: I want to heal. I don't want broken glass in my head anymore. And whatever turns out not to be sickness, but is just the workings of me, I want to be able to serenely accept.
To that end, I'm going to tell a story which, though it took place 33 years ago, illustrates the nefarious workings of my brain more graphically than some of the more complicated and multi-faceted battles of adulthood.
It was the summer after my sophomore year in college. My parents had offered me as a graduation present from high school a thousand dollars to be used for a trip anywhere in the world I wanted to go. (If any of you ever hear me complaining about my parents, you are under orders to kill me at once.) I didn't take it right after graduation because I was in the seriously dark period that descended on me in senior year of high school and I didn't want to waste my big trip being near-suicidally depressed. But two years later I was beginning to feel good enough, or more accurately resigned enough, to say hell with it, I'll take the chance, and I went to Europe, alone, on a budget, after airfare, of exactly five dollars per day, all in: food, lodging, transportation, drinks. As part of the trip I spent three weeks on an archaeological dig in northern England and there I met Mary--that's her real name--a shy, beautiful red-headed artist from Philadelphia with a great imagination, a fanatical devotion to the paintings of Egon Schiele, and just as much insecurity and trepidation about sex as I had at the time--in short, a perfect match. We hitchiked to Edinburgh and arrived there just as a band of a hundred bagpipers were marching out from the castle gate in the golden light of a summer evening, pipes blasting a Highland tune... We found cheap lodgings at the out-of-term university and bought strawberries and thick fresh Scottish cream and a bottle of the local whiskey and poured all the above ingredients into a bowl to let them soak while we went hiking to the top of Arthur's Seat, the great green sheep-dotted hill that overlooks the city, and we kissed and looked out at the crags and battlements of the castle, and then we we went back to the room and ate the scotch-soaked strawberries and drank the cream and the whiskey and made love. We had no condoms so there was no penetration allowed which took all the pressure off and we did absolutely everything else and woke up both feeling that we had passed the fiery gate, alive.
This went on for a couple of spectacular days, and then it came time to go our separate ways. She went south to catch her flight back home and I went north, to the Highlands. And as I hitchhiked out of the city I felt, for the first time maybe ever, just plain simply boringly good.
That lasted for about a minute.
A few days later I spent a day hiking in the magnificent valley of Glen Coe. There were signs posted all over the youth hostel that said SCOTLAND'S MOUNTAINS ARE KILLERS: DO NOT HIKE ALONE but I was young and invincible and had just had a passionate romance so I went hiking alone anyway. I got way up high to a waterfall that fell into a deep pool and took off my clothes and swam in it, freezing cold, fantastic, and then a fog came up and I was trapped on a very steep slope, couldn't see to go up or down, and I took out a pen and paper and wrote a letter to a girl I had met back home the summer before, and seen on vacations home from college, and to whom I've now been married for almost 25 years, and told her I was trapped in the fog on a high Scottish peak and would she still like me with two broken legs? (She still has this letter.) Finally the fog cleared and I got down the hill and headed back to the youth hostel, exhausted, happy, my mind clear, my future ahead of me.
Then:
I heard a voice calling from the mountain above me, like somebody calling out "Orin!" or "Go on!" and the thought came to me: is that somebody calling for help? I couldn't see anybody on the mountain at all. I decided to tell the warden at the youth hostel what I had heard but when I got back to the hostel I ran into some people I had met in another youth hostel, and made dinner with them, and then went to write postcards on my bunk in the dorm, and an hour and a half had passed before I suddenly remembered the voice. I went downstairs and told the warden what I had heard, and where. This was the man in charge of mountain rescue operations for the valley so he took what I said seriously. He asked me, very solemnly: did it sound like a cry for help? I thought hard for a moment and said: no. Then I went to sleep.
The next day, hitchiking back to Edinburgh, the mental hurricane hit. Clearly, obviously, a fallen climber had died on that mountain last night because I had forgotten to tell the warden what I had heard right away. I tried to reason with myself: it hadn't sounded like a cry for help, certainly not in English. But reason, you see, has no power whatsoever against those kinds of voices. None. Right there, with my thumb out on a Highlands road, Loch Lomond on one side, the mountains on the other, I sank into a nightmare state of blackest guilt: how could I possibly enjoy my trip? What right did I have?
After all, I had murdered somebody.
In Edinburgh I looked up the word for "Help!" in various languages in a book store and found soccore in Italian. Yes, it could have been "Soccore!" that I had heard. S0 now I had more information: I had murdered an Italian climber.
Why didn't I just call the youth hostel and see if any climber had been reported missing? Because I knew it wouldn't have done any good. If there was no report, that's because it was a solo Italian climber, none of his friends or family knew he was even in Scotland and his body wouldn't turn up until spring. I sat in my room in Edinburgh for a couple of days shivering and weeping and wanting to die. Then it came time to catch my flight to Rome for the next chapter of my trip.
I had another month to go. Rome, Florence, the Italian Riviera, the Swiss alps. All the places I had spent my childhood dreaming of visiting. And not one of them could I enjoy. Because always between me and the Colosseum or me and the clear emerald waters of Portofino or me and the flowering meadows of the high Alps was the face of the Italian climber whose death I had caused. I cried every few nights. I couldn't make friends--I didn't deserve them. I doggedly kept trying to enjoy myself and to be fair there were some good days in there, when the beauty of what was around me somehow burned through the veil. But all in all? I was a murderer who deserved no joy or pleasure.
It took me A YEAR AND A HALF--until well into my senior year in college--and that includes a summer living with my future wife back home--to come to the simple thought that may have occurred to some of you already, and which finally set me free:
If had told the warden the second I got back to the hostel he would have asked me the same question, and I would have to have given him the same answer: no, sir, it didn't sound like a cry for help. To do otherwise would have sent search parties up a mountain for nothing, with night coming on. Which meant that the hour and a half delay which was Exhibit A in the murder case against me meant nothing. As soon as that thought came to me--suddenly, out of nowhere, while rushing to a class--the whole thing went away like smoke. A year and a half after the fact.
Unforunately that was far from the last incidence of my brain taking revenge on me for feeling good, happy and free. That's how my mind works, in large and small ways, way too much of the time. It turns out there's a name for it: OCD. Obsessive compulsive disorder.
And as I hope I've just demonstrated to you, it's a soul-killing demon.
That's not the point: the point, as I noted in my last post, is that the inside of my head has never been a nice place to be, and clearly that fact became apparent at an early age. I'm now approaching this blog in much the way one of my favorite bloggers approaches his: as a way of telling his own story to himself in the hope that as it unfolds he will have a better understanding of how he got to where he is now and how he should face the present. For me, I would add another dreadedly overused and loaded word: I want to heal. I don't want broken glass in my head anymore. And whatever turns out not to be sickness, but is just the workings of me, I want to be able to serenely accept.
To that end, I'm going to tell a story which, though it took place 33 years ago, illustrates the nefarious workings of my brain more graphically than some of the more complicated and multi-faceted battles of adulthood.
It was the summer after my sophomore year in college. My parents had offered me as a graduation present from high school a thousand dollars to be used for a trip anywhere in the world I wanted to go. (If any of you ever hear me complaining about my parents, you are under orders to kill me at once.) I didn't take it right after graduation because I was in the seriously dark period that descended on me in senior year of high school and I didn't want to waste my big trip being near-suicidally depressed. But two years later I was beginning to feel good enough, or more accurately resigned enough, to say hell with it, I'll take the chance, and I went to Europe, alone, on a budget, after airfare, of exactly five dollars per day, all in: food, lodging, transportation, drinks. As part of the trip I spent three weeks on an archaeological dig in northern England and there I met Mary--that's her real name--a shy, beautiful red-headed artist from Philadelphia with a great imagination, a fanatical devotion to the paintings of Egon Schiele, and just as much insecurity and trepidation about sex as I had at the time--in short, a perfect match. We hitchiked to Edinburgh and arrived there just as a band of a hundred bagpipers were marching out from the castle gate in the golden light of a summer evening, pipes blasting a Highland tune... We found cheap lodgings at the out-of-term university and bought strawberries and thick fresh Scottish cream and a bottle of the local whiskey and poured all the above ingredients into a bowl to let them soak while we went hiking to the top of Arthur's Seat, the great green sheep-dotted hill that overlooks the city, and we kissed and looked out at the crags and battlements of the castle, and then we we went back to the room and ate the scotch-soaked strawberries and drank the cream and the whiskey and made love. We had no condoms so there was no penetration allowed which took all the pressure off and we did absolutely everything else and woke up both feeling that we had passed the fiery gate, alive.
This went on for a couple of spectacular days, and then it came time to go our separate ways. She went south to catch her flight back home and I went north, to the Highlands. And as I hitchhiked out of the city I felt, for the first time maybe ever, just plain simply boringly good.
That lasted for about a minute.
A few days later I spent a day hiking in the magnificent valley of Glen Coe. There were signs posted all over the youth hostel that said SCOTLAND'S MOUNTAINS ARE KILLERS: DO NOT HIKE ALONE but I was young and invincible and had just had a passionate romance so I went hiking alone anyway. I got way up high to a waterfall that fell into a deep pool and took off my clothes and swam in it, freezing cold, fantastic, and then a fog came up and I was trapped on a very steep slope, couldn't see to go up or down, and I took out a pen and paper and wrote a letter to a girl I had met back home the summer before, and seen on vacations home from college, and to whom I've now been married for almost 25 years, and told her I was trapped in the fog on a high Scottish peak and would she still like me with two broken legs? (She still has this letter.) Finally the fog cleared and I got down the hill and headed back to the youth hostel, exhausted, happy, my mind clear, my future ahead of me.
Then:
I heard a voice calling from the mountain above me, like somebody calling out "Orin!" or "Go on!" and the thought came to me: is that somebody calling for help? I couldn't see anybody on the mountain at all. I decided to tell the warden at the youth hostel what I had heard but when I got back to the hostel I ran into some people I had met in another youth hostel, and made dinner with them, and then went to write postcards on my bunk in the dorm, and an hour and a half had passed before I suddenly remembered the voice. I went downstairs and told the warden what I had heard, and where. This was the man in charge of mountain rescue operations for the valley so he took what I said seriously. He asked me, very solemnly: did it sound like a cry for help? I thought hard for a moment and said: no. Then I went to sleep.
The next day, hitchiking back to Edinburgh, the mental hurricane hit. Clearly, obviously, a fallen climber had died on that mountain last night because I had forgotten to tell the warden what I had heard right away. I tried to reason with myself: it hadn't sounded like a cry for help, certainly not in English. But reason, you see, has no power whatsoever against those kinds of voices. None. Right there, with my thumb out on a Highlands road, Loch Lomond on one side, the mountains on the other, I sank into a nightmare state of blackest guilt: how could I possibly enjoy my trip? What right did I have?
After all, I had murdered somebody.
In Edinburgh I looked up the word for "Help!" in various languages in a book store and found soccore in Italian. Yes, it could have been "Soccore!" that I had heard. S0 now I had more information: I had murdered an Italian climber.
Why didn't I just call the youth hostel and see if any climber had been reported missing? Because I knew it wouldn't have done any good. If there was no report, that's because it was a solo Italian climber, none of his friends or family knew he was even in Scotland and his body wouldn't turn up until spring. I sat in my room in Edinburgh for a couple of days shivering and weeping and wanting to die. Then it came time to catch my flight to Rome for the next chapter of my trip.
I had another month to go. Rome, Florence, the Italian Riviera, the Swiss alps. All the places I had spent my childhood dreaming of visiting. And not one of them could I enjoy. Because always between me and the Colosseum or me and the clear emerald waters of Portofino or me and the flowering meadows of the high Alps was the face of the Italian climber whose death I had caused. I cried every few nights. I couldn't make friends--I didn't deserve them. I doggedly kept trying to enjoy myself and to be fair there were some good days in there, when the beauty of what was around me somehow burned through the veil. But all in all? I was a murderer who deserved no joy or pleasure.
It took me A YEAR AND A HALF--until well into my senior year in college--and that includes a summer living with my future wife back home--to come to the simple thought that may have occurred to some of you already, and which finally set me free:
If had told the warden the second I got back to the hostel he would have asked me the same question, and I would have to have given him the same answer: no, sir, it didn't sound like a cry for help. To do otherwise would have sent search parties up a mountain for nothing, with night coming on. Which meant that the hour and a half delay which was Exhibit A in the murder case against me meant nothing. As soon as that thought came to me--suddenly, out of nowhere, while rushing to a class--the whole thing went away like smoke. A year and a half after the fact.
Unforunately that was far from the last incidence of my brain taking revenge on me for feeling good, happy and free. That's how my mind works, in large and small ways, way too much of the time. It turns out there's a name for it: OCD. Obsessive compulsive disorder.
And as I hope I've just demonstrated to you, it's a soul-killing demon.
posted by Tom at 10:11 PM
7 Comments:
Hi Tom. Unfortunately, I completely understand this. I've never taken it to this extreme and your obsessions sound much more noble than mine - but I do identify with the feeling.
Of course this comment can provide you no comfort since I am crazy as a shithouse rat. Sorry.
Thank you for the props and the link, Tom -- I heart you too, as my kids would say.
I can't imagine how hard it must be to have the sort of unending compulsion that would tie up my thoughts and emotions for a year and a half. I would love to give you words of advice that could clear it all up for you -- but all I can do is offer my support, and also my praise: in spite of it, you're an amazing and fascinating person. I look forward to reading more as you try to untangle your knots -- believe me, it works.
Hi it's me the dead Italian, and you were right the first time. It's lonely here in purgatory, but I'm saving you a place.
P.S. Us murdered people can only post anonymously, it's part of our punishment.
Dean Anonymous,
I should tell you that there was a time some years ago when your posts would have sent me into a year long OCD tailspin. I'm glad you posted because I get to see that however bad the guilt obsession used to be, it's not that bad now.
I'm sorry if my previous post seemed callus..failed attempt at humor. I will continue to read but maybe quietly from the corner of ignorance.
Dear Facets of V--
No apologies necessary whatsoever! I actually thought it was really funny. What good is humor if it doesn't go for the throat? Please, all callousness is happily accepted at all times.
Tom
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