Spiritual awakening
So, there I was, Kangaroo Quest book(s) all done and finished. Hooray!
Time for a little rest after all the very enjoyable - but definitely long - hours of hard work. Symbolic cup of tea made, I take a little sip, smile as I lean back to relax... and then...
I woke up one morning. Literally just woke up, as usual, but with a very unusual feeling.
Something is wrong in my body. Something is wrong in me.
What is it? Where is it? The feeling grows. Getting stronger still... Oh wow, get out of bed... Quick, ok think, what's happening, hurried scan of feelings and thoughts, c'mon what's happening... Ok Melissa, here we are, I'm 50 years old and true, yes, I've been just sitting on my butt typing for months, but hey I'm generally pretty fit... A heart attack? A stroke? Phone someone, quickly! The anxiety crushed my chest and I genuinely felt like I couldn't breathe.
Suddenly, my thinking brain kicked in with a possible answer. I stopped reaching for my phone.
I forced myself to lay back in the bed.
Ok, damn, dammit, slowly but surely I turn my attention inward. Bugger. So it looks like it's "hello" again, my old friend. Oh dammit I really wasn't expecting this.
"Yes, I see you", I say out loud, spoken grimly from behind gritted teeth.
My first words of the day. Great. I recognise you, even though you haven't been here for many years. You have a name. Panic attack.
I keep talking, keep the narrator observing and naming things and trying to calmly find a perspective.... "Hey, you weren't around while I was caring for my father at home, who died only a couple of years ago? For years, you've only showed yourself a little, from time to time, like maybe when I first got on a highway for an extended trip away, or a plane bound for the other side of the world, or if I was seriously exhausted or very stressed... So, I've met you perhaps once or twice a year, in the last couple of decades? But not strong. And not for long either; I could get rid of you easily, in minutes, with all the tricks I picked up from dealing with you when you were at your strongest, twenty years ago..."
What on earth were you doing here now?
Not to worry. I knew what to do. So I did it.
It didn't work.
I did it more. I shuffled through all my learned skills, previous experiences, things I'd picked up in conversations with friends that had worked for them but I'd not tried... Ok, try them now! Try everything. Try ANYTHING! Help... please... someone catch me, someone grab my hand or wring my neck, I don't care what you do, but I'm actually drowning here, for real...
For "no reason", on a bright beautiful sunny morning, I suddenly found myself at the start of what became the easily the most intense, frightening and painful journey of my life. Words cannot adequately describe what was happening to me, nor how powerless I seemed to be to change or stop it.
For several months I struggled to survive. I still can't bring myself to fully write about that, to read the words, to relive the agony.
Then, for many months after that, I counted the passing of time (minutes, then hours, then days) between "survivable" and back to "desperate" again... I kept a diary to prove to myself the anxiety was lessening in strength, in frequency, in power.
Many dear friends and colleagues I'd known for most of my life rallied to help. I was familiar with, and had always championed against, the stigma attached to mental health problems in the community, and so I was very comfortable in loudly sharing with anyone who loved me and knew me well... What's happening to me?
Day One. First stop was the doctor to rule out any physical emergency, followed by phone calls to crisis helplines while I waited for the next available, soon-as-possible appointment with a psychologist. I lay down, flat, all over the house. I'd never done it before, and I didn't know why I was doing it now, but I just knew I had to do it. Put the kettle on? Lie down on the kitchen floor while waiting for the water to boil. Try to watch TV? Lie completely flat on the big sofa. Make a phone call? Lie down on the bed to speak. Have a shower, I might feel a bit better? Sit in the bottom of the shower recess on the hard tiles. Too cold to lie down. But down, flat, as low as possible, that's all I wanted to be. This lasted for months.
Day Two. A dead whale carcass washed up on the beach in front of my house. Never seen that before. The council came and cut it up with bulldozers, pushed and rolled the sections into giant slings, lifted the sling netting with a crane into the back of the big dump trucks that normally relocate sand after a big storm, then took it all away within hours, long before the afternoon beach rush started. A sad and shockingly efficient sight to witness. Some days are stranger than others, and somehow the whale carcass seemed to fit in perfectly with my current situation. I still "couldn't breathe" but surprisingly I'd slept very well. I felt good first thing in the morning, in that twilight between sleep and awake, but within minutes of waking it was back again. So strong. So frightening. My step-mother came to stay overnight, her first visit in more than a decade since she and my father separated. We'd spoken at Dad's funeral and agreed to make a time to share each other's company. How strange that she was arriving now, on this day. Her visit was planned many months ago. But hey, some company was definitely what I needed.
Week Two. I've met the psychologist. She's local, and wonderful, and hopefully we can get to the bottom of this. I felt my first relief in days as I cried solidly throughout the hour, describing who I was and what was happening to me. But as I got back to the car to go home, I had to force myself to keep driving in the right direction. I just wanted to pull over and spontaneously die. Not sure how I would manage to die, but I hoped for it, I wanted it, surely dying would bring me relief? I don't think I can withstand this much longer. I can't seem to find an escape anywhere. Every hour, every minute of my waking day is spent trying to breathe in, breath out... It's been more than a week now. I step back and observe my own thoughts... I am overwhelmed and terrified and I want to die? Wow, I've never been here before, and I never thought I would be thinking and saying and feeling these things. What's going on??? My step-mother had suggested I explore some spiritual alternatives as well as the conventional psychologist's treatment, maybe take a look to see if anything appealed to me. She'd always been into spiritual things. She was very kind and loving with me, chatting and listening and gently distracting me, reminding me of happy times and offering sympathy at the current state I was in, but somehow she didn't seem too worried... I couldn't easily work her out. Did she maybe know something I didn't?
Week Three. Alongside the weekly psychologist, and another visit to the doctor for blood and test results (everything is perfectly fine? really?), the first of my "spiritual healing" appointments are finally here. Crystal light bed therapy. Ancient Hawaiian soul healing massage. Reiki energy work on my chakras. I'll do everything, anything, whatever it takes! And as I start to explore, I'm surprised to discover that very few therapists even raise an eyebrow when they meet me. They are compassionate and caring, yes, but most of all, once they've heard some of my story, they just want to get to work. Straight away. I get the feeling that they've identified what's happening to me, and want to help, not by talking anymore, but by doing. Don't get me wrong, I didn't feel dismissed by them, and they were happy to talk long enough to make sure I was comfortable, but it was very noticeable to me that they got to a certain point and they'd heard enough. Time to start the healing. I surrender to them. I was comfortable with the idea that things are in levels... Levels of understanding, layers of meaning, coating over membrane over sheeting over crust over core... Maybe it was my "spirit" that needed healing, and with all the talking my "head" could be blocking things and getting in the way?!? Besides, after the first two weeks of absolute terror, I've now started to see, hear and feel things that are forcing me to look very carefully at what is "real." Maybe there's something more I have to learn. Ok. I'll try. I've got no choice. At this stage I feel completely abandoned and lost in the depths of something I don't understand, I'm terrified almost all of the time, and I still can't breathe.
Week Four. Literally hundreds of birds have arrived. Every dusk they come in by the dozens, from all directions, and so they're reasonably easy to count that way. And we did count! It was such a sight, and such a sound! "Add these up... 10, 8, 20, 8, 6, 20..." They'd never come before, not in the five years at this house, and now here they were in massive numbers squawking and screaming and making themselves known to the entire neighbourhood. It was literally incredible, from zero (that is, never!) to four or five hundred every night. We have six huge 150 year old Norfolk Pines in our front yard. The birds tightly packed every branch, and stayed until dawn. It happened every night for a couple of months, and then, just as suddenly, they never came back again. Remarkable. I was telling the Hawaiian massage woman about the birds, as she nodded towards the two kookaburras who'd just flown in and were now sitting on the windowsill looking in to her treatment room where we sat inside, only an arm's length away. "Oh look, hello, what are they doing, I've not seen birds here for a very long time?" she observed. I agreed and told her that the birds were doing very strange things at the moment. Not only at my home, but yes I knew that the kookaburras were around here today because one had swooped me so low, as I drove in for my appointment, that I feared I was actually going to have it splattered over my windscreen. She smiled gently. She encouraged me to write an email to the ancestors. I said I'd be delighted to, and we both laughed when I asked her to forward me their email address. At least I haven't lost my sense of humour, or my imagination. Which is odd in itself, because surely those two things are among the luxuries of life, and therefore the first things to go when we are in stress or crisis?
TO: Ancestors. FROM: me. SUBJECT: help!!!!! BODY: Dear ancestors, I'm writing to you because I don't know what else to do. I don't even know if you're my actual ancestors, or if it's just a name given to anyone who lives in the spirit world. But anyway, please help? I'm really, really, really struggling here... And I've been told that if I ask for your help, you are able to give me help. So, please, can you help? I need it. I don't think I can stay here much longer. I just keep crying all the time, I can't breathe, I'm terrified constantly and for no good reason, and I've started having this feeling that I really, really, really just want to "go home." Are you home? Are you there? Are you real, and can you help? Thank you in hope and anticipation, Melissa Xx SEND: Press my finger on the send button that exists wherever I want it to be. Kitchen bench, sofa arm, side of my leg, wherever.
Ok, so I've sent the email. What now? Start crying again. Breathe in. Breathe out. See, I CAN breathe, the doctor said there's nothing physically wrong, so it must be anxiety... BUT I'VE GOT NOTHING TO BE ANXIOUS ABOUT... I don't even have anxious thoughts. Unless it's about the fact that I can't breathe. Which I clearly am doing, otherwise I would be passed out on the floor.
Nothing I've ever experienced comes close to this.
Ever.
I'm in a fight for my life.
Week Five. I'm back in the shower. I'm writing to the ancestors on the tiled wall every day. I can now go three hours before having to lie down. I'm not physically tired as such, because THANK GOODNESS I've been sleeping really well ever since this thing began, a lovely blissful seven or eight hours, but only a couple of minutes after I wake up the whole nightmare starts again. Sitting down doesn't cut it. Being on a slight slope, maybe reclining the driver's seat in the car, or on the sofa, just isn't the same. I've climbed onto the backseat in shopping centre carparks to get flat. I've told friends my lower back is a bit sore, so I can justify lying on the loungeroom floor while we talk together. I mention the bizarre impulse I have about "being flat" to the crystal light therapy chakra healing lady.
She casually says "Oh, you're just grounding yourself" and I look at her sideways.
When I ask "What's grounding?" she gives me a stare of sympathy, compassion, pity and just a touch of urgency...
Week Eight. I'm at the peak of the mountain. Or the bottom of the pit. Whichever way you want to look at it. So much has happened in just two months. It feels like a lifetime. I know I'm still me, but it all feels so unrecognisable in many ways. Is this who I am now? Can I ever go back, or is forward the only option? My stamina is being supported by some new things that have arrived, and being ripped apart by the old things that are as frightening as ever. Sometimes I feel and look like I've aged twenty years. I can see in all directions now. The beauty and the terror.
And, importantly, it may have taken a few months, but I can finally name what's happening to me.
Although it looks slightly different for each person, yes, people have been through this before. This thing has a name.
They call it "spiritual awakening".
Time for a little rest after all the very enjoyable - but definitely long - hours of hard work. Symbolic cup of tea made, I take a little sip, smile as I lean back to relax... and then...
I woke up one morning. Literally just woke up, as usual, but with a very unusual feeling.
Something is wrong in my body. Something is wrong in me.
What is it? Where is it? The feeling grows. Getting stronger still... Oh wow, get out of bed... Quick, ok think, what's happening, hurried scan of feelings and thoughts, c'mon what's happening... Ok Melissa, here we are, I'm 50 years old and true, yes, I've been just sitting on my butt typing for months, but hey I'm generally pretty fit... A heart attack? A stroke? Phone someone, quickly! The anxiety crushed my chest and I genuinely felt like I couldn't breathe.
Suddenly, my thinking brain kicked in with a possible answer. I stopped reaching for my phone.
I forced myself to lay back in the bed.
Ok, damn, dammit, slowly but surely I turn my attention inward. Bugger. So it looks like it's "hello" again, my old friend. Oh dammit I really wasn't expecting this.
"Yes, I see you", I say out loud, spoken grimly from behind gritted teeth.
My first words of the day. Great. I recognise you, even though you haven't been here for many years. You have a name. Panic attack.
I keep talking, keep the narrator observing and naming things and trying to calmly find a perspective.... "Hey, you weren't around while I was caring for my father at home, who died only a couple of years ago? For years, you've only showed yourself a little, from time to time, like maybe when I first got on a highway for an extended trip away, or a plane bound for the other side of the world, or if I was seriously exhausted or very stressed... So, I've met you perhaps once or twice a year, in the last couple of decades? But not strong. And not for long either; I could get rid of you easily, in minutes, with all the tricks I picked up from dealing with you when you were at your strongest, twenty years ago..."
What on earth were you doing here now?
Not to worry. I knew what to do. So I did it.
It didn't work.
I did it more. I shuffled through all my learned skills, previous experiences, things I'd picked up in conversations with friends that had worked for them but I'd not tried... Ok, try them now! Try everything. Try ANYTHING! Help... please... someone catch me, someone grab my hand or wring my neck, I don't care what you do, but I'm actually drowning here, for real...
For "no reason", on a bright beautiful sunny morning, I suddenly found myself at the start of what became the easily the most intense, frightening and painful journey of my life. Words cannot adequately describe what was happening to me, nor how powerless I seemed to be to change or stop it.
For several months I struggled to survive. I still can't bring myself to fully write about that, to read the words, to relive the agony.
Then, for many months after that, I counted the passing of time (minutes, then hours, then days) between "survivable" and back to "desperate" again... I kept a diary to prove to myself the anxiety was lessening in strength, in frequency, in power.
Many dear friends and colleagues I'd known for most of my life rallied to help. I was familiar with, and had always championed against, the stigma attached to mental health problems in the community, and so I was very comfortable in loudly sharing with anyone who loved me and knew me well... What's happening to me?
Day One. First stop was the doctor to rule out any physical emergency, followed by phone calls to crisis helplines while I waited for the next available, soon-as-possible appointment with a psychologist. I lay down, flat, all over the house. I'd never done it before, and I didn't know why I was doing it now, but I just knew I had to do it. Put the kettle on? Lie down on the kitchen floor while waiting for the water to boil. Try to watch TV? Lie completely flat on the big sofa. Make a phone call? Lie down on the bed to speak. Have a shower, I might feel a bit better? Sit in the bottom of the shower recess on the hard tiles. Too cold to lie down. But down, flat, as low as possible, that's all I wanted to be. This lasted for months.
Day Two. A dead whale carcass washed up on the beach in front of my house. Never seen that before. The council came and cut it up with bulldozers, pushed and rolled the sections into giant slings, lifted the sling netting with a crane into the back of the big dump trucks that normally relocate sand after a big storm, then took it all away within hours, long before the afternoon beach rush started. A sad and shockingly efficient sight to witness. Some days are stranger than others, and somehow the whale carcass seemed to fit in perfectly with my current situation. I still "couldn't breathe" but surprisingly I'd slept very well. I felt good first thing in the morning, in that twilight between sleep and awake, but within minutes of waking it was back again. So strong. So frightening. My step-mother came to stay overnight, her first visit in more than a decade since she and my father separated. We'd spoken at Dad's funeral and agreed to make a time to share each other's company. How strange that she was arriving now, on this day. Her visit was planned many months ago. But hey, some company was definitely what I needed.
Week Two. I've met the psychologist. She's local, and wonderful, and hopefully we can get to the bottom of this. I felt my first relief in days as I cried solidly throughout the hour, describing who I was and what was happening to me. But as I got back to the car to go home, I had to force myself to keep driving in the right direction. I just wanted to pull over and spontaneously die. Not sure how I would manage to die, but I hoped for it, I wanted it, surely dying would bring me relief? I don't think I can withstand this much longer. I can't seem to find an escape anywhere. Every hour, every minute of my waking day is spent trying to breathe in, breath out... It's been more than a week now. I step back and observe my own thoughts... I am overwhelmed and terrified and I want to die? Wow, I've never been here before, and I never thought I would be thinking and saying and feeling these things. What's going on??? My step-mother had suggested I explore some spiritual alternatives as well as the conventional psychologist's treatment, maybe take a look to see if anything appealed to me. She'd always been into spiritual things. She was very kind and loving with me, chatting and listening and gently distracting me, reminding me of happy times and offering sympathy at the current state I was in, but somehow she didn't seem too worried... I couldn't easily work her out. Did she maybe know something I didn't?
Week Three. Alongside the weekly psychologist, and another visit to the doctor for blood and test results (everything is perfectly fine? really?), the first of my "spiritual healing" appointments are finally here. Crystal light bed therapy. Ancient Hawaiian soul healing massage. Reiki energy work on my chakras. I'll do everything, anything, whatever it takes! And as I start to explore, I'm surprised to discover that very few therapists even raise an eyebrow when they meet me. They are compassionate and caring, yes, but most of all, once they've heard some of my story, they just want to get to work. Straight away. I get the feeling that they've identified what's happening to me, and want to help, not by talking anymore, but by doing. Don't get me wrong, I didn't feel dismissed by them, and they were happy to talk long enough to make sure I was comfortable, but it was very noticeable to me that they got to a certain point and they'd heard enough. Time to start the healing. I surrender to them. I was comfortable with the idea that things are in levels... Levels of understanding, layers of meaning, coating over membrane over sheeting over crust over core... Maybe it was my "spirit" that needed healing, and with all the talking my "head" could be blocking things and getting in the way?!? Besides, after the first two weeks of absolute terror, I've now started to see, hear and feel things that are forcing me to look very carefully at what is "real." Maybe there's something more I have to learn. Ok. I'll try. I've got no choice. At this stage I feel completely abandoned and lost in the depths of something I don't understand, I'm terrified almost all of the time, and I still can't breathe.
Week Four. Literally hundreds of birds have arrived. Every dusk they come in by the dozens, from all directions, and so they're reasonably easy to count that way. And we did count! It was such a sight, and such a sound! "Add these up... 10, 8, 20, 8, 6, 20..." They'd never come before, not in the five years at this house, and now here they were in massive numbers squawking and screaming and making themselves known to the entire neighbourhood. It was literally incredible, from zero (that is, never!) to four or five hundred every night. We have six huge 150 year old Norfolk Pines in our front yard. The birds tightly packed every branch, and stayed until dawn. It happened every night for a couple of months, and then, just as suddenly, they never came back again. Remarkable. I was telling the Hawaiian massage woman about the birds, as she nodded towards the two kookaburras who'd just flown in and were now sitting on the windowsill looking in to her treatment room where we sat inside, only an arm's length away. "Oh look, hello, what are they doing, I've not seen birds here for a very long time?" she observed. I agreed and told her that the birds were doing very strange things at the moment. Not only at my home, but yes I knew that the kookaburras were around here today because one had swooped me so low, as I drove in for my appointment, that I feared I was actually going to have it splattered over my windscreen. She smiled gently. She encouraged me to write an email to the ancestors. I said I'd be delighted to, and we both laughed when I asked her to forward me their email address. At least I haven't lost my sense of humour, or my imagination. Which is odd in itself, because surely those two things are among the luxuries of life, and therefore the first things to go when we are in stress or crisis?
TO: Ancestors. FROM: me. SUBJECT: help!!!!! BODY: Dear ancestors, I'm writing to you because I don't know what else to do. I don't even know if you're my actual ancestors, or if it's just a name given to anyone who lives in the spirit world. But anyway, please help? I'm really, really, really struggling here... And I've been told that if I ask for your help, you are able to give me help. So, please, can you help? I need it. I don't think I can stay here much longer. I just keep crying all the time, I can't breathe, I'm terrified constantly and for no good reason, and I've started having this feeling that I really, really, really just want to "go home." Are you home? Are you there? Are you real, and can you help? Thank you in hope and anticipation, Melissa Xx SEND: Press my finger on the send button that exists wherever I want it to be. Kitchen bench, sofa arm, side of my leg, wherever.
Ok, so I've sent the email. What now? Start crying again. Breathe in. Breathe out. See, I CAN breathe, the doctor said there's nothing physically wrong, so it must be anxiety... BUT I'VE GOT NOTHING TO BE ANXIOUS ABOUT... I don't even have anxious thoughts. Unless it's about the fact that I can't breathe. Which I clearly am doing, otherwise I would be passed out on the floor.
Nothing I've ever experienced comes close to this.
Ever.
I'm in a fight for my life.
Week Five. I'm back in the shower. I'm writing to the ancestors on the tiled wall every day. I can now go three hours before having to lie down. I'm not physically tired as such, because THANK GOODNESS I've been sleeping really well ever since this thing began, a lovely blissful seven or eight hours, but only a couple of minutes after I wake up the whole nightmare starts again. Sitting down doesn't cut it. Being on a slight slope, maybe reclining the driver's seat in the car, or on the sofa, just isn't the same. I've climbed onto the backseat in shopping centre carparks to get flat. I've told friends my lower back is a bit sore, so I can justify lying on the loungeroom floor while we talk together. I mention the bizarre impulse I have about "being flat" to the crystal light therapy chakra healing lady.
She casually says "Oh, you're just grounding yourself" and I look at her sideways.
When I ask "What's grounding?" she gives me a stare of sympathy, compassion, pity and just a touch of urgency...
Week Eight. I'm at the peak of the mountain. Or the bottom of the pit. Whichever way you want to look at it. So much has happened in just two months. It feels like a lifetime. I know I'm still me, but it all feels so unrecognisable in many ways. Is this who I am now? Can I ever go back, or is forward the only option? My stamina is being supported by some new things that have arrived, and being ripped apart by the old things that are as frightening as ever. Sometimes I feel and look like I've aged twenty years. I can see in all directions now. The beauty and the terror.
And, importantly, it may have taken a few months, but I can finally name what's happening to me.
Although it looks slightly different for each person, yes, people have been through this before. This thing has a name.
They call it "spiritual awakening".
