Okay. I'm not going to be able to be fixed. But in order to be fixed, something has to be broken. I just don't feel like I am broken, even though I keep hearing that I am. I hear that I have an illness. A disease. A genetic abnormality. A disorder.
But I don't think those words fit. Disease means something that has invaded and causes problems. A cold is a disease that is considered an illness. It makes you miserable until it is over and done with. Syphilis is a disease. Cancer is a disease. They maim and kill. A genetic abnormality isn't a disease... it is something that you are born with, something that is in your makeup. And a disorder indicates something out of whack somewhere.
But this is different.
Who wouldn't want something that makes you feel good? Something that increases energy and creativity and productivity? Something that makes people like to be around you, that makes you happy? Something that gives you the courage to do things that other people can't, or won't?
So in that respect, this is a gift.
William Blake.
Wordsworth.
Schumann.
Georgia O'Keefe.
Gaugin.
Herman Hesse.
Hemingway.
Michelangelo.
Mark Twain.
Hans Christian Anderson.
Graham Greene.
Theodore Roethke.
Walt Whitman.
And a multitude of others.
All have - or had - this same gift.
I am in good company.
Don't try to fix me. I am not broken. I am different, unique, one of a kind. And I demand to be respected for my differences. I demand not to be treated as if I am diseased. I demand the right to privacy, the right to think and speak as I wish, the right to chart my own course in life. I demand the right to live and to exercise my free will.
I demand the right to have my life back.
My belief is that we go through these stages and will, finally, come to the place we need to be. I cannot remember it correctly, but I think it was a PP&M song that ended with something like this "and we come down to where we need to be."
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for those words. Life seems to be a series of interlocking circles, and each has a transitory phase. Eventually they all become a part of one perfect circle, like a great mandala, and that is where the journey has ended.
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