During sessions I could see her intermingle like a ghost spirit, in and out of the walls and around the room, staring at me with those eyes of truth and danger. Sometimes, she sat beside me like a warrior in full armor ready to fight battles and other times, she floated above me, a weeping angel, tarred and black from the life I put her through. Her hot tears would drip and land on my skin, disbursing into tiny smoke angels dismissed to Heaven.
There were times I left therapy reassured and ready to face the world, and a day, a week, a month later—I’d crack under pressure. The world turned, the world broke and I broke with it. A stress factor, a work drama, seeing couples in love, a trauma trigger, a word, a memory, a flashback. Minor things set me in motion. Anything that reminded me of my marriage would send me into orbit. I’d find myself calling Doc’s office and talking to a machine. “Tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do?” On rare occasions she’d return my call. Her calming voice was like a tranquilizer gun on a wild elephant.
“You have the skills, Cass. I taught you what to do. I gave you the tools necessary to work the problem out. Stop being irrational in your thinking. Stop reacting to each situation. Take a step back. Renew your mind. Detach.”
“But…but that bastard…,” I’d stutter.
“No buts or bastards Cass. This is about you. Not Sam. Do the work. You cannot depend on me, Cass. I am not your savior. This is part of the cycle of co-dependency. You are the one to break it. You can’t move on until then. Do the work. Yes, it is painful. It’s brutal and hard. But your alternative is staying sick and in the same place. And aren’t you sick and tired of being in that place, Cass?”
“Yes…,” I’d blubber like a child.
“Well, then do the work. Practice the twelve steps. Stop reacting. Believe in yourself.” Her manner of calmness irritated me to no end. Her poker face could stare down Charles Manson without a twitch and offer him tea without so much as a blink. These twelve steps that Doc referred to had changed me, made me accept and try a new way of life. They didn’t work unless I practiced them, and applied them to my life, every single day, hour, minute. God. It was work. A lot of work. Hence, steps. Baby steps, all twelve of them. Over and over. Repeat, backtrack, mess-up, steps, move forward, back, repeat. They did work. Problem was—it was WORK. Hard work. It was like learning to walk and talk again. Re-live. Re-learn. Re-love. Re-form. Re-do. Basically, learn how to do life differently than before. The steps helped me to balance, focus, and reclaim my life when it tipped over too far to the left or right. And when I was done wrestling with myself and the uncontrollable world around me, I finally surrendered my messed-up, chaotic, reactionary life to a higher power. I even named my madness. The broken knob. My mind. My messed up, irrational brain is my broken knob. It’s the only term I could come up with to explain what happens when I lose control. A knob inside my mind randomly turns on and off at will, and I can no more control it than I can control the earth spinning.
And that broken knob kept doing its damage. Appointments came and went but one day out of nowhere, a shift. I felt the knob turn. Click. Rattle. That had never happened before. It occured when the loud, clanging bell timer went off signaling the end of my session.
“So, Cass, next time we’ll dive deeper into family, maybe talk about your relationship with your parents, and we’ll start with your mother.”
I gave Doc a deer-in-the-headlights, horns-in-the-windshield, blood-and-guts face. I let out a long, exhausting, terrible gust of wind and dust particles left over from 1970-something. Perhaps, a breath I’d be holding since childhood. No memories came, but the weight of their presence was heavy and pending. My mind flashed only mere snapshots, the parents, threats of divorce, drinking and fighting, barefoot feet in pine straw, tree limbs swaying, flames, screams. It was enough to make me withdraw.
Maw Sue said I was a Seeker, but I was beginning to think I was a keeper instead. I internalize stuff, other people’s stuff. I take it in and touch it, feel it, wear it, keep it and make it my own. I keep stuff I should have let go of a long, long time ago. I hold it to my chest. I swaddle it and give it comfort and try to understand it until it soaks inside me. Layer after layer, it becomes a part of me. And now I don’t know how to peel back the layers.
Therapy sessions came and went. Doc never forced the “mother” from me. Forcing her from my lips was a call to arms, as we both discovered. Someone else would rise up in me, an angry shadow, a scared little girl, a fearful woman. Doc made the mistake of pushing too far once and I cracked. The next thing we knew I was crouched in the corner by the window, my arms locked around my knees and my face wild and in fury, repeating the same words over and over again. “Don’t burn it. No Mother, noooo.”
And the worse part is I don’t remember it, nor what I was referring to. Another gap of time to add to the lost archives of the broken knob. Doc used caution when discussing the mother after that incident. For me, each time, it provoked a memory emerging over which I had no control. And it was then I realized I had more than myself for company. Long ago, when war was declared amongst the Collard family, my heart summoned a protector, inside the house within me. A dark House of Seven guarded by a shadow warrior to protect the little girl who resided there. The knighted warrior swore my allegiance to silence in her name. I only spoke of the things she told me. Sometimes, she surprised me with her words, her stories, the things she remembered I had forgotten. Slowly, as I began to listen and trust her more, I raised the pine curtain to peek into my childhood. I discovered even though my mother and I were separate, cut at the umbilical cord, and different in every way imaginable, we were inexplicably bound to a darkness neither of us would identify until it was too late.
7
Black Angels & Blue Lines
Know thyself
KNOW THYSELF
~ Inscription in the forecourt of the
Temple of Apollo at Delphi
Doc wanted me to start journaling. She thought it would help me channel all the feelings, thoughts and chaos in my head. Get it out of me, look at it, observe it, study it, and then let it go. I tried it a few times, but all I could do was stare at the blue lines of notebook paper until they ran blurry. Then as if summoned from a deep place inside me, everything changed. I wrote down the beginnings, my first appointment, meeting Doc, even Pearl, the bland coffee-table receptionist, to Edna the old gossiping goat from the Gazette, to all my newfound memories of Maw Sue and the beloved forest we called the pine curtain. Time passed quickly and before I realized, I had finished an entire notebook. I had fallen into a trance unlike anything I had known before. Words poured out of me onto paper. It was strange, beyond me, as if the broken knob in my mind clicked and the pen obeyed, writing the words on the blue lines. They found their place. Out of my mind. A peaceful home on paper and no longer controlling me. I was amazed. It was just beginning. I drove to the nearest store and filled up a buggy full of notebooks and pens. I sat down and wrote, as if some mystical convergence occurred and I was a tool. I thought of Maw Sue and her teachings. There were no coincidences in life, only crumbs. Fate, messages, intervention, circumstance, part of the journey to wholeness and being seven. On the blue line I poured out my crumbs of life to decipher, internally consume and work out. I ended each writing session with Maw Sue’s words. A signature, so to speak. A plea. A hope. A divine prayer. I wanted it more than anything.
Make lovely your losses.
Once the broken knob in me found the blue line, nothing was off limits. I wrote about my initial diagnosis; major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, and level one bipolar disorder. A few attachments, partners in crime, and mild tendencies like self-defeating behaviors. I have family of origin issues, along with major co-dependency which is a need for dysfunctional relationships and reliance on others for approval and identity. Ha. No surprise there. Doc spoke of clusters too. People have one or more personality clusters. Turns out I have some borderline personality traits, plus I’m a highly functioning bipolar with h
ighs and lows, but I’m an overachiever, over-doer, overkill until I crash and burn. Which is exactly what happened. I crashed and the town burned. This memory has yet to surface. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind a fire is burning and I can smell the smoke. It’s coming and when it does, I pray to God, it doesn’t consume me.
Before I tell Doc all the memories I’ve written down, the ones I’m scared to talk about, of Maw Sue, the family gifts and curses, the seventh tribe, the ceremonies and rituals, the times she disappeared to Castle Pines, all of it, I have to ask her a question. Then I’ll decide what secrets to reveal and what to keep hidden.
“Doc, before we begin, can…” I stopped mid-sentence and sighed. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything. What’s on your mind, Cass?”
“So, I don’t know how to say this, other than just say it. But I also don’t want you to think I’m totally crazy when I tell you. Like lock-me-up crazy. You know?”
“Let me stop you right there, Cass. Let me clarify my methodology of healing. The word crazy is a label I rarely use. Others do, but I do not because of the stigma related to it. Mental illness in whatever form it may arise is a manageable disease, with medication, and self-help and doing the work it requires to understand the inner child, the family trees, and much more. I believe crazy is a superpower if one uses it to bring good”—she smiled and I saw a twinkle in her eyes— “I don’t like the word, but if you are going to use it, use it for a superpower. Not like you’ll don a cape and fly around the town saving people, superhero kind of power, but real power, the power of the mind. So, with that being said, if there is anything you are hesitant to tell me, I promise we will work it out.”
“Okay, Doc.” I sighed and blurted out, “Do you believe in magic, not the witchy movie stuff, but the unexplainable, the otherworldly, the supernatural, the mystical connection between this world and the next?”
“I do,” Doc said without blinking an eye, “Is there something specific you’re referring to?”
“Uhm, yes and no. Honestly, Doc, I’m scared to death to tell you. I’m scared you’ll lock me in a psych ward and I’ll be labeled mentally insane.”
“Cass, hold on,” Doc said setting my thick file on her desk. “I have seen a lot of mental illness cases. Extremely sick, sick people. But you are far from that. Yes, you have mental illness in several forms, but they are manageable if you stay on your medication, and do the work. From what I’ve observed from all our sessions, you have the potential to rise above all of this. Now, let me dive a little deeper into your question so we’re on the same page and you feel comfortable telling me whatever you are hesitant to share.”
I nodded. Doc seemed sincere but it could be a trick. Spill my secrets, then boom, lock me away. I wasn’t sure.
“I am not a religious person. I was raised Catholic but I don’t attend services. Growing up I had my own spiritual experiences which led to my belief in a higher power. I believe there is a world beyond us, seen and unseen, and unexplained. I believe in good and in evil, in gifts and curses, I’ve seen both, but I also believe in the mind. The power of thoughts, and how those thoughts shape our reality, and we are the master of them. Say, for instance, I give you a present. It’s a blue basket. Inside is an ancient hand-carved stick and the tales of it speak of anyone who touches it has the power to make the wooden stick do magic. You try. You attempt many times to make the stick create something but it fails. You begin to believe you have no power and no magic. But it’s not true. You have power. You have magic. The power is not in the wooden stick, the ancient tales of the stick or the blue basket it came in. The power and the magic are in the holder. It’s in you. We are the little blue basket and we hold the power of our gifts, our thoughts and our future within us. This, to me, is the magic. We fail when we believe other people who point us to the wrong magic, the wrong basket. But when we believe in the power inside us—it opens up the whole universe and its magic pours into us, because our thought process has changed. We can still use the basket and the wooden stick, because we know the magic is in us. It’s like the blending of all things connecting, us to animals, and the earth, water, sky, wind, fire… all the elements swirling and coming together to make up life as we know it. Do we get sidetracked, lose our way, experience trials and pain and loss? Yes. It’s the journey. We apply the magic of healing and move forward. I’m not sure this helps you, Cass, because I have no idea what you are struggling to tell me, but I assure you I will examine it with an open mind. Will I have you locked up in Castle Pines? Highly unlikely, unless your destructive behavior takes a turn, or if you are a danger to yourself or others. The fire? It was destructive behavior which we’ll discuss and get to as we go along, but I have to put all cards on the table, Cass. It’s my job. It’s my work. My passion is to help others get better. Now, what I have to do, to make it happen, is up to you.”
I sat tangled in her words, wondering if I should tell her everything, or nothing. Her last sentence set me on edge. My mind spun. Doc pardoned herself and left the room. I didn’t trust myself, my mind, my behavior, my dreams or my thoughts. I didn’t know what to do. It seemed the only option was to trust Doc, even in my worst fears that I shouldn’t. She returned a few minutes later.
“You okay, Cass? Any questions, anything you want to tell me? I see you brought a notebook.”
“Yes, I did. It helps me in a weird kind of way. But yeah, Doc, I’m good. Thank you for answering my question. I appreciate your candor.” I squirmed while my journal sat in my lap like an elephant. Weighted with my memories, my secrets, the gifts, the curses and the magic. If there was magic in me, and I had the power to use it by compiling my thoughts with pen and ink, then this notebook was full of life, my life, my so-called troubled, distorted and mysterious past. I took a deep sigh, because I knew what I had to do. Come what may.
I poured out all the memories I had filled my journal with. The wild, and eccentric memories of Maw Sue, what she taught me and my sister, the family stories, what I could remember of them, along with the rituals, the manic phone call with my mother, my meltdown in her disapproval, followed by the disturbing appearance of the little girls, and what they might mean, the bloodline, the House of Seven, all the stories I heard growing up, my parents, my distant relationship with my mother, how it pained me, how I coped, how I lost myself, created another version of me, my imagination, my inner house, my disturbed mental status, the pine forest and the magical, mystical elements of those things I felt, but could not see, the otherworldly, the stories told to me as a child, along with the delicate, fragile things from birth because of the mirror bin, the Ainsley clan, their beliefs, and how all these things shaped and impacted my life.
The whole time I talked, Doc scribbled. In her own special way, she picked apart my regurgitated monologues with meticulous candor and sorted the clusters into a category. So many layers of Cass, the inner child, the broken woman. I let a stranger inside my head. I showed her my dark inner house. The one I’m so afraid of. Doc’s wholehearted belief in her craft made me want to believe it too. She believed she could help me to help myself. Her insight into the crazy me, the sane me, the broken me, the seek-to-be whole me, the little girl me, the adult woman me—all of me—gave me hope. My listening ears. My keeper of secrets. Doc accepted me as I was, all of me without judgment. Cassidy Cleo Collard may be a total clusterfuck, but in Doc’s eyes she was a constellation with promise. After I was totally emptied of all thoughts, I felt exhausted. The bell timer went off as usual and I bid my goodbyes and scheduled another appointment. As I was leaving the lobby, I stopped to look at the painting. It was oddly different, as if the brushstrokes had changed from the first day. I knew it wasn’t the painting at all, but me. I had changed, and therefore my perception of the world around me had changed. I read the inscription of Edvard Munch again.
“My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder … my sufferings are part of mysel
f and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art.” In one of his journals, he wrote, “Illness, insanity and death were the black angels that kept watch over my cradle and accompanied me all my life.”
I read it twice, letting the words sink deeply inside me, finding their place inside the House of Seven. The broken knob in my head clicked and turned and burned hot. Black angels, I thought. That’s it. The broken knob is my broken mind, but it also is my black angel and the blue line of my journal is the art it creates. “Oh My God!” I blurted out loud and put my hands to my face. “It’s mine. It’s all mine. It’s me.”
Pearl looked up from the desk with an odd expression as if she wasn’t sure what to say or do.
THE HOUSE INSIDE ME Page 8
