In Search of Silence

I am looking for silence. I have been looking everywhere for a long time.

Not the silence that falls between two people in the middle of a fight. That is fraught with unspoken words, prickly ones in the air like allergens, irritating all the psychic senses. It is a relief when someone finally snatches at the subtext and speaks.

And not the silence of Nature, though a quiet forest is a great relief. But that is a silence filled with living. That is beetles and boughs and rodents going about their business with no regard to the mute observer.

And not the silence of cities, the void that yawns beneath traffic noises and jackhammers, beneath change machines and coffee cups clinking, beneath jukeboxes and beer bottles - the sterile emptiness where no communication is going on, no one is really connecting.

I mean the deeper inner silence of the soul, something that could speak but chooses not to. I mean the silence of a peaceful mind. It is something the mentally ill seldom experience. I haven’t seen it since childhood, myself.

I remember watching dust motes as they danced peacefully in a window embrasure. I must have done it for minutes on end. Just looking, fulfilled and timeless, my mind suspended and turning slowly, like they were doing. Nothing else existed at that moment.

I remember sinking backwards beneath the bath water, eyes open to the wavering fairy light, ears reverberating with the amplified tap of my fingers on the tub wall.

I was not thinking then. I did not have to. Those were good days. But they ended with the advent of hormones, for me. I became bipolar at puberty.

The mystics say that the true center of every soul is a vast and spacious stillness, laced with stars and smelling of forever. I have lain in meditation time after time and tried to reach it, following my breath, counting inhale and exhale, shut off from everything else in the world. There comes a moment when that silence sidles up to me, nudges me softly and whispers, “Stop counting.”

Maybe, for an instant, I do.

Immediately the brain starts screaming in terror. “My God!” it says, “We’ll explode out of our body and disappear! Don’t do it!” And then the yammering starts again, the ceaseless yammering on any subject and none - the aimless, hopeless, pointless gossip of the mind that drove me to meditation in the first place.

I have looked for silence in anti-psychotics, but the moment I seem to grasp it, savor its  texture, I fall asleep. So I search for it in sleep, but I dream and snore. I have listened for it under great music, and sometimes heard it between two beats.

And I wonder if the brain is right, if I really would pull up anchor from my body and sail away if I found that still center. Leaving the chattering brain behind, all by itself in a jar, spinning wave after wave of spurious story, believing itself an ocean.

(Thanks to the women in my creative writing group, who nominated this piece for my blog)

Deborah is a public speaker and the author of Is There Room for Me, Too? 12 Steps & 12 Strategies for Coping with Mental Illness. She is currently recording it as an audiobook and CD set.  Deborah has also published two novels. Her books are available at Amazon.com, Kindle Editions, iBookstore, and other major vendors; or you can order them from your local bookstore. Visit her web page at www.lafruche.net, or see her catalog at www.lastlaughproductions.net. She has also narrated a guided meditation CD with her husband, musician Robert Hamaker. Check out sound samples at www.islandjourneyCD.com.
www.islandjourneycd.com

My Diagnosis

My astrology chart shows Neptune in the 6th House at the time of my birth. In other words, I was born to have a mysterious illness that would be difficult to diagnose. I was 26 when at last someone told me I was manic depressive.

My response was, “Finally! Something that makes sense!” Because I had known for a long time that the world I saw and reacted to was not the same as the one everyone else did.

Insanity, if one dares to use the word, is hard to pin down, hard to tell someone, and usually hard for them to hear, my experience not withstanding. Some people will be told over and over for the rest of their lives without ever believing that it’s true. Hardest of all, even if they do believe, is to get them to start treatment.

Why is this? Why do we find it so hard to believe that the world inside one person’s mind is not the same as that of everybody they are standing with?

I remember long summer gabfests between college semesters. We were always batting ideas back and forth languidly, like a ping pong game where nobody was keeping score. The only point was to stay out in the garage away from the ‘old’ people. Time and again the conversation turned on existence and perception: how do we know that anything outside us exists? How do we know that we exist? How do we know that two people who say “blue” are actually seeing the same color? Maybe their blue is my green, or puce for that matter. All we know is that we are giving it the same name, that we both perceive something.

I never found it much of a stretch to believe that my head was different. After all, I’d been told over and over again that I was too sensitive - that I was uptight - that I was too serious - that I was way too dramatic - no matter what the stimulus, someone somewhere would say my response was too big, too little, or flat out wrong. Yet I was only reacting naturally to what I saw and heard. Obviously they were seeing, hearing, feeling something different. Theirs was a blander, less upsetting world, without tricky double meanings and barbs in every casual glance.

With time, with medicine, I learned to react less, to pretend to be less upset and in pain. Within a few decades, I was able to convince the most exacting critics that I was no longer scary and abnormal. And now, with 40 years practice, I have come to understand that everybody’s universe is different, that no one lives on the same planet, that our entire lives are a holodeck geared to the needs of just one person. The miracle is that any of us see anything remotely the same. And language, a shaky tool at best, is often the only thing that allows us to think we have so much in common.

Deborah is a public speaker and the author of Is There Room for Me, Too? 12 Steps & 12 Strategies for Coping with Mental Illness. She is currently recording it as an audiobook and CD set.  Deborah has also published two novels. Her books are available at Amazon.com, Kindle Editions, iBookstore, and other major vendors; or you can order them from your local bookstore. Visit her web page at www.lafruche.net, or see her catalog at www.lastlaughproductions.net. She has also narrated a guided meditation CD with her husband, musician Robert Hamaker. Check out sound samples at www.islandjourneyCD.com.

Info for the Bipolar

This week I just want to tell you about a resource, International Bipolar Foundation. They’ve been around since 2006, but they’re new to me. The website address is exactly what you would expect it to be: www.internationalbipolarfoundation.org. They are involved in supporting bipolar education and research, and enhancing various support services such as housing. Such enhancement includes support groups per se, if you happen to live near San Diego, California. They also list some interesting sounding online communities to check out.

I am impressed by their monthly newsletter, which is full of ideas, tips, news about bipolar people in the public eye, and updates on the latest research in the field (see my previous blog for a sample topic). You can subscribe at: http://conta.cc/eyK0ra.

They also have a book, Healthy Living with Bipolar Disorder, which you can get FREE as a pdf for the asking. It’s also available on kindle for $1.99 - there’s a long URL but if you type the title in Amazon’s book search box it comes up right at the top.You can also get a hard copy, but for that you need to pay shipping, which comes to $12 U.S. and $25 international. I’ve downloaded this book, and I have to say what I’ve read is quite factual. There is a good section on the drugs commonly used, how they operate, what their drawbacks are, and even how they work in the body if that is known. They don’t stint on including side effects, either. If what you want is solid information on standard treatment, this is a good place to start. And what can you lose when it’s free, right? (If what you want is more practical, how-do-I- LIVE-with-this advice, though, you’d be better off reading Is There Room for Me, Too? Just saying).

Here’s their snail address, and I’ll add their link to my list on the right:

International Bipolar Foundation
8895 Towne Centre Drive, Suite 105-360
San Diego, CA  92122

 They host lectures and post them on the website the following week, hold webinars, have a buddy program, speakers bureau and outreach and referral program, anti-stigma campaigns, and more. Seems to me with this much activity, they must have something you could use... if bipolar is your thing, check them out.


Deborah is a public speaker and the author of Is There Room for Me, Too? 12 Steps & 12 Strategies for Coping with Mental Illness. She is currently recording it as an audiobook and CD set.  Deborah has also published two novels. Her books are available at Amazon.com, Kindle Editions, iBooks, and other major vendors; or you can order them from your local bookstore. Visit her web page at www.lafruche.net, or see her catalog at www.lastlaughproductions.net. She has also narrated a guided meditation CD with her husband, musician Robert Hamaker. Check out sound samples at www.islandjourneyCD.com.