Cavernous Light

Sometimes there is a need to find the good in everything. Even in things we don’t understand, we can find purpose, hope, or a deeper resolve within ourselves.

I sat in a lovely garden yesterday around a fire pit with some awesome people and some good barbecue. I miss a little backyard sanctuary, like one I had in my quaint Columbia City home seven years ago. I thought I would never move from that house, that Steve’s mother would come live with us one day as we would make a little spiral staircase to a renovated attic and third bedroom. I stripped all of the crown molding in my two bedroom house from the early 1900’s, and spent hours in my small square yard, planting vegetables, making paths and borders around a small patio and fireplace and many plantings I so loved to buy or transplant from my mother’s ‘arboretum’ hear on Lopez Island.

Unfortunately about seven years ago, after half finishing Massage School, I spun into a full blown Psychotic break. I just couldn't bear to return to my beloved home after alienating so many people, smashing windows, and months spent in those walls and wandering the neighborhood dreaming of Vampires, Serial Killers, Dinosaurs, Spiders, and the story of Jesus, Hidden Treasure, Angels, Cromagnons, and the end of the world. One final day I covered my house and things with a fire extinguisher, the neighbors called the cops because I was throwing my makeup at their window, and I was hauled away strapped to a stretcher to Harborview. I waited hours in a mental holding cell with a wailing woman and many other crazies as I was hydrate intravenously, until a room was available in the ward. The stories that live in my brain could fill three 500 page volumes if written in their fullness, while describing all of the details to the false realities I was living in.

Faith brought me through. I may have not known it at the time, but now I know that there was no other way. Some folks only describe Faith as in a context of God and Jesus, Buddha, or a format of some type of religion, yet it can exist without this knowledge or definition as it arises in a person without always showing the face of a well-accepted story. I believe in God and Jesus now, and yet back then I was able to get through and surpass a huge cavern that I nearly fell into, of which many never return; just following what already lives inside of me innately.

As years and episodes pass for those of us who suffer from Bipolar disorder and psychosis, the episodes grow worse with the more you experience. I myself could never imagine anything worse than what I went through seven years ago, and so I will persevere with pursuing and strengthening my health and wellness. I am unsure I could withstand another break, and yet I am ever grateful and amazed I survived the last three. Thanks again to God in your infinite nature for finding a way to reach me in my anguish and teaching me what true faith is all about.