Elvis, too, was a seemingly ALIVE person, filled with energy; and yet he died on a toilet, of the acute effects of chronic drug consumption. In important respects, he killed himself too.
For me, though, it has been therapeutic. It was like somebody tore a veil off of something I needed to see. I was dreaming, in coded language, last night of a move that was very traumatic for me in my teen years, something I have never been able to mourn properly. The feelings were overwhelming. I woke in a state of unreality: so much pain–how can anyone take it?
Well, I don’t know. But I can. Most qualitative break-throughs are not like the sky opening and rainbows coming down. What happens is that POSSIBILITY emerges into consciousness, where it was not before.
But I felt what I think these poor people in Iraq are feeling, abandoned by America, abandoned specifically by Obama–who is comfortably thinking about his approach on Hole 15, and wondering what they will serve for lunch. I felt sleeping in a home I knew I had to leave forever at dawn, hearing gunshots in the distance, wondering if some monster would suddenly come bursting in. I packed all my stuff, the things I loved, and when we finally ran from the house, I forgot them. Everything I knew, every connection with home and that life was gone.
I understood, on a deep level, the connection of Peter Quill, in Guardians of the Galaxy, to his Walkman.
And we got to a crowded depot, filled with people, and I lost my family. They put me right to work, with a new group of people, and I grieved that I may never see my family again. EVERYTHING was lost. Everything. I did not know if I could ever get it back.
But you go on, do you not? We all do.
Feeling love in the abstract has never been a problem for me. Neither has expressing it with individuals, for limited periods of time. What is hard is feeling that sense of embeddedness, of belonging, when you have been ripped apart multiple times, and never fully integrated those horrible feelings. I lost my first best friend suddenly, when I was 3, when we moved. I lost my second best friend suddenly, when I was 7, when we moved. I lost my third and last best friend suddenly, when I was 14, when we moved.
Some part of me has apparently never recovered. That is a lot of loss, and I am at heart a very sensitive person. I need to recover, and I think typing this will help.
I understand, though, on a deeply personal level, how Robin Williams could be simultaneously so caring and available, and yet so alone. He killed himself with his wife in the house. How horrible must it have been for her to know that despite all their good times, he found himself unable to open up fully even to her, to cry, to mourn, to access those antique, primitive child states, that primal horror and confusion and loss, meaninglessness, vertigo, and loss of self.
I feel all these things; and I think in feeling them claim them and create the possibility of growing beyond them.
If I could offer any motto, any summation of what matters to me, it would be Churchill’s “Never quit. Never, never, never, never.”
Life is an exercise, nothing more, but nothing less. You win by continuing.
I say again: I will be human someday.