Sexeteria

When I was younger
I lived in fear
That incarceration of some kind is near
I checked my head in tact with rules
I nearly became
A goddamn fool
But I heard voices--not in the head
Out in the air
They called ahead
Through ripped out speakers
Through thick and thin
They found a shelter
Under my skin

I was an...interesting...child. I initially wanted to say "unusual," but I'm not sure if what I'm about to say is unusual or not. Certainly I've never heard anyone talk about it except for, say, religious mystics and occasionally someone like Eugene Hütz up above in those lyrics there. It is possible, though, if these people have mentioned it, that this is a common experience but no one talks about it. Or it may be in fact somewhat unusual. Regardless, let me get there already.

I've told many of what used to be my secrets in this blog, but this is one I have rarely confided to another person, and of the very few I've mentioned it to, I don't think I've ever mentioned the full breadth of it. I used to keep it to myself for fear it would be misunderstood or ridiculed or attempted to be over analyzed and explained away with logic or psychology, but now, today, I find I just don't care.

So. When I was younger, I was an interesting child. Just walking around in the world--and especially when I was on my own--I could hear and converse with things things most people don't think talk. Trees, for instance. Or the ocean. Or voices of people who weren't there. And I could have entire conversations with these things, if I was in the mood and if conditions were right.

I'm not talking here about schizophrenia. These things didn't tell me what to do or try to control my psyche. They weren't scary, angry, or destructive. And they didn't in any way take over my personality. Just the opposite--they were quite separate from me; they had nothing to do with me, and yet, I was aware in some way they were also a part of me, in that I was a conduit for them. I knew only I could hear them, and I knew others couldn't. Like Hütz says, not voices in my head, but out in the air. I heard them "in my head" the same way you would hear voices "in your head" if I were standing next to you and speaking and you heard the sound of my voice in your head. I processed them like speech, so they were in my head, but they weren't OF me, exactly--though, I guess I understood that without me they wouldn't be heard, sort of like that tree falling in the forest Zen koan. And I guess, thinking about it more, I also understood on some natural level, just by the fact of the way these voices transmitted, that everything IS "of" everything else--so in this way, of course, these voices were me and "of" me, at the same time they were also not. This probably sounds confusing, but that's the best I can do to explain it.

They also weren't voices like normal voices, exactly; particularly not the nature-based ones. Trees and water don't speak with human voices. Which makes perfect sense if you think about it. (And by the way, I don't necessarily think this is a "special skill,"--I maintain anyone can hear and speak with these things, if they want to; and if they listen carefully enough. The only perhaps special part of my story is that I happened to be able to connect to it without trying much. Which I'd described more accurately as "lucky" than "special.")

The more "human"-like voices--the ones I can best describe as seeming like invisible individuals (although that's not entirely accurate--I didn't and don't think they were human) were always to me the voices of friendly companions. They just showed up sometimes; for instance, to keep me company when I was walking home from school, or when I was thinking through a particularly knotty problem, or when they wanted to point out and share something particularly cool that was worth absorbing that I might not have focused on on my own. But sometimes they just showed up for the hell of it, just to say hi and just hang out and joke around and chat and...be cheerful and encouraging, I guess.

And that's what they were at almost all points, whether the human voices, or the nature voices; they were calm, open, supportive, inclusive, familiar. Most spoke to me like they'd known me a long time already; sometimes the human-like voices in particular took on tones that felt as if they considered themselves like affectionate aunts, or friends, or even occasionally a former lover from another life (by that I don't mean sexual, just casually affectionate in the special somewhat-romantic-tinged way an old-lover-turned-friend tends to be). Actually, I suppose some of the nature voices weren't always quite as casual. Trees, for instance, tended to be somewhat formal initially, in a "pleased to make your acquaintance, small thing from another species" kind of way, but even they still had that sense of familiarity and connectedness--as if they recognized the ability to exchange and it was no real surprise to them. In any case, they were all positive and I was glad to communicate with them.

It didn't happen all the time, every minute, by the way. It's not like every time I walked by a tree I could hear it talking or that all of nature or invisible voices were randomly screaming out at me at all times. Not at all. But if I took the time to slow down and WANT to talk to it, or to just to listen or happen to be quieter, I could. And when it did happen, it was a very quiet, calm experience, like passing a neighbor or friend on the street. An exchange was had and recognized and then we both moved on to do whatever it was we were there to do in life.

As a little kid, this was quite natural to me and I never thought anything about it. I never mentioned it to anyone else, but I don't think this was because I thought I had to keep it secret; it just seemed beside the point, and not important to bring up. As I got older, though, I began to realize other people thought that kind of stuff was weird. Talking or showing respect to trees like they were neighbors (or even, in the case of forests, like they were inhabitants of their own special "kingdom" that I just got the privilege to visit)? Uh, no, other kids didn't do that. And as I got older and the voices moved from just natural-based things to more...what...spiritual?...I don't like that word, but whatever the human voices were...I realized this was something that--though again it felt fine and natural to me--other people were not going to get, and might be alarmed by. So I did become conscious that it was better not to mention it to others. But given I'd never felt any need to share these experiences with other people--it had never occurred to me before I realized other people didn't hear this stuff to care if they could, or to try to bring someone else into these conversations---I decided to be, as before, just happy to experience them whenever I did and then just move on with my life as normal the way I would if I met any old person or friend on the street.

So I went along just quietly enjoying the company of this special gift I had. And I did think of it as that sometimes, a gift--particularly when it came to the nature-based stuff, which I could tell most people didn't easily experience. But then, as I closed in on my teenange years, I started to get concerned. At that time, I tended to have one particular voice companion more often than the others, and I was used to him, and I somehow decided that having these conversations, or this connection to other worlds or whatever it was, was going to be problematic for me as I grew into an adult. I also remember worrying for some reason that it would be hard to have boyfriends as long as this one particular "companion" was hanging around. I don't even know why--there was no connection to real life dating or romance in the conversations. But I suppose I was concerned the affection I felt in that "relationship," which was sort of a Buddhist-type divine, universal, limitless love sort of thing, wouldn't ever allow real-life love to measure up. And so I reasoned that if I wanted to have real, human love in the corporeal world, I needed all of this go. Let go of both the feeling of "other worldly" beings following me, offering me love and support, and of the natural world talking to me, connecting with me. I felt I needed it all gone to become the kind of "normal" that was necessary to succeed in the somewhat dry, rules-bound adult world I was destined to have to live in. That world didn't have time or patience for adults who had "fairy-tale" conversations with rocks and streams.

How many darkest moments and traps
Still lay ahead of us
How many final frontiers
We gonna mount
And maybe no victory laps

So, I had one last conversation. And I told my current most frequent "companion" voice that I needed him to go. That I needed it all to go, that I needed to just be a normal girl now, like everyone else. And he was very compassionate about it, if a little sad, and then...he left. Poof, just like that. It all left. And though I felt the absence from time to time--it was WEIRD to look at the world and not hear it talking back--I convinced myself it was the best thing and I moved forward into teen and adult life like a normal girl. Because--from limited view of adulthood garnered in the suburbs--well, voices, they weren't part of the rules of growing up. Adults didn't talk to the ocean. And they definitely didn't hear disembodied voices (if they didn't want to end up in the nuthouse).

I guess I don't want to judge the choice I made back then. I don't want to say it wasn't all for the best. Because at the time, it was what I needed; so it's what was meant to be. But I do think in making that choice/request, I chose to cut off something that was a vital piece of who I was. And with it, other vital connections to myself and the world around me might have gotten lost for a good long time.

At some point in my late thirties, I thought better of my choice to tell it all to go away. And I tried to bring it all back and found I couldn't. I'd look at a tree and feel...nothing. Almost less than nothing. I felt blocked. And it felt like I'd blown it; like I'd had one special chance and I'd thrown it away. I'd been given a gift and I chose to return it, and now it wasn't up for offer anymore. But there was nothing to be done about it, so I became resigned to the fact it was gone.

But if you stepped on path of sacred art
and stuck it out through thick and thin
God knows you become one
With undestructable

Around that time is when the beginnings of a pretty deep depressive period began to set in (seemingly unrelated to me at that time). It started small, grew slowly and steadily bigger and lasted and worsened for many years, until I could no longer bear it and sought out help. And this resulted in my finally realizing that for these and many more years the self I thought defined who I was wasn't a self at all, but an amalgam of the selves I thought other people thought a self should be for a girl like me.

And it's been a slow journey towards first realizing that, and now it feels like a slow journey towards deconstructing the false selves and finding out the true core that's been buried underneath. But I think the voices may be part of what's underneath.

I say this because I stayed home from work today. And after an inexplicable episode of joyful laughter that took over me this morning from the moment I looked in the mirror and said good morning to myself, I went and took a walk along the river in the sunlight of almost-spring. And I turned off my iPod and just listened. And the trees and water started talking to me. For the first time in such a long time.

And I think...no, I feel...this is a very good sign.

And so no longer live I in fear
Them are too greedy to pay my asylum bills
This is my life
And freedom's my profession
This is my mission throughout all flight duration
There is a core
And it's hardcore
All is hardcore when made with love
The love is voice of savage soul
This savage love is
Undestructable