Witness to Withness

A break in the Action

A break in the Action:
         I found myself wondering why I even continue to write such a piece. Maybe a backdrop of sorts would help:
I walked in Darlene Demmer’s office one day. She was my first therapist after I came to Kansas City. I was in my freshman year of seminary and wondering what the point of my mental illness was. It was in those days that I berated myself constantly for becoming mentally ill. I am sure this day was no different. Except that an interesting twist was added.
DD: So how are you doing today?
GP: I guess things are okay. My classes are kind of tough. My roommate keeps telling me over and over that I will never make it through seminary because he didn’t.
DD: What do you think about that?
GP: I sometimes wonder what I am doing here. I intend to give it my best shot. After all it is my fault that I have got myself in this position at all. It was about a year ago today that I became emotionally ill. There is even one hospital that is threatening to end me back to Massachusetts if I do not pay my medical bill.
DD: We have talked about this before. What happened to you has nothing to do with fault. (We had been looking up all my mental illness terms in dictionaries as I brought them up.)
GP: You do not get it. If I do not think of this as my fault than I will never take responsibility and will never get better. I cannot help thinking that I could have prevented what happened. It nearly destroyed my life and not only that, it affected the lives of those around me.
DD: Gary what if you took this experience and looked at it from the viewpoint as needful so that you might grow….. (I was wide eyed inside-WHAT) We all have rites of passage from which that we can learn. What if this is something unique to you that allowed you to grow in ways that you would not grow otherwise?
The conversation dragged on for a bit longer. I was definitely captivated by the idea of what she presented. It certainly gave me food for thought.
         I still look back and wonder if it made any difference in my growth process even now. Before the illness I looked back at what happened to my brother and was in a state of fear that his fate would be my own. Well, I was not afraid anymore and for whatever reason my life was headed in a different direction that his went in. I was a survivor and I hoped to do something with my life. I was thankful, that I had something to offer, that Kurt was unable to offer. Before the illness, I would have never left Massachusetts. My life was too tied up in helping Kurt be well. Even today whenever anyone back East refers to me it is always as “Gary and Kurt”… It was as if our lives became intertwined and I am very sure that they were. When I left Massachusetts, I thought of leaving behind something that had stifling me. There is some song that speaks to this: Did anyone tell you that you’re my hero, you are everything I had hope to be…You are the wind beneath my wings. And so the journey went, because of love free rather than caught and never able to get loose. Maybe I could take knowledge of what happened to help others get free like I had? A novel idea!!!
         My home life was anything, but functional in those days. I made mom angry all the time. At least she said so. I was forever acting like a two year old. The bottom line was that everything was my fault. Many of my memories revolve around mom and dad using me as a counselor. They could not get along with each other. They would talk and talk and as I kid I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Take sides?! You have got to be kidding me. My entire dad wanted is for my mother to be happy and my entire mom wanted was for my dad to romance her and treat her like she deserved to be treated. If they could only talk with each other, now that was a novel thought. This is another place I was caught. I did not realize to what degree until soon before my dad died I was given the phone. My brother in law said I needed to talk with them. They were talking about getting a divorce. Hey, this was at least forty years removed from when they talked through me. I told my mom to go ahead and get divorced. If they could not think about what brought them together in the first place “Divorce”: There I said it… If that is growth, maybe mental illness is not so insane. It was not my responsibility to keep them together. It was hard enough to keep my own marriage intact!!
         There were a lot of other areas in my life that were stifling and stuck, because constipated developmental issues. Before the emotional crisis, I had little or no contact with women. I was a loner afraid of my ill effect potential on the opposite sex. Maybe some of it stemmed from my mom’s secret about my birth revealed. I was freed from thinking that I had a reason for my crazy obsessions about ruining the lives of woman. It is strange but true. It takes two in order that birth takes place. I could not drive a car; my studies were mired in endless studying with little time to play. I had never been far from home for any length of time without family. Even living in the dorms was a stretch for me! After all I was twenty miles from home!! I needed mom and dad to do my clothes and do not forget to call them. I was stifled in almost every respect. I even had this penchant for wanting to teach my mentally ill brother about my faith. Now that was crazy!! He was hearing voices and they had nothing to do with my theology. I could go on and on. I was not working during my college experience, had few friends and too much time to think about me and my need to be a pastor. The year before my mental illness I made the dean’s list, but the cost was way too high. I was digging a hole for myself inside of myself. I rarely if ever talked about Kurt, despite how he affected me. Something real monumental was needed to break me loose from all this crap. And even as I type I feel a lot of anger toward the chaplain supervisor who let me know that I had come a long way….. “Unfortunately you are far from being ready for the task of being a supervisor”. Boy did I want to stick something big up his ass! Forgive me Lord! He had no idea!!! Well I digress. It is time to get on with the story. I hope you will forgive my meandering in the darkness and high life. If looking at all this helps, I continue!!