We don’t talk about the past, Dr. Shoja and I. Ten years of therapy boils down to one word: Neglect.
I experienced seeing a long string of images of my life; what I saw in those images was that in every memory I was alone. I was 45 then, but that experience is what makes me believe in Dr. Shoja’s skill and diagnoses.
Neglect. It hurts. The truth hurts. It is really hurting me. Seizures, a nasty speech disorder. Truth is a burden for me.
I have been looking back and seeing the past through a new lens. Specifically, I feel that neglect, unknown to my conscious self, distrustful of people. I feel it doomed me to be single, that’s what I knew. I’d never been completely open with anyone until I met Dwight and Steve in my early thirties.
We lasted 14 years, Steve and I. And we are in constant contact with each other still. I’m good at friendship. Love at a distance.
I love this house, having pets, having space and total quiet. I love my spa and the forest. I really love living in a log home right against the forest. It’s perfection. But I don’t feel it was my choice to live here. My breakdown made the overwhelmingly stimulating environment of downtown Vancouver unbearable.
My condition drove me here.
I have a speech capacity that enables conversation but not discourse. I only have a speech disorder when I am with people. I have seizures when I’m with people. It seems to me that my condition wants me to be alone.
It’s fucking chilling to understand that ‘neglect’ is the engine of my life. Ove and over and over I say to myself, ‘I’m somebody I don’t want to be.’ I’ve been through this before, being born when being out took guts that I didn’t have, and it was a mortal sin in my faith.
It’s so fucking ironic that when I moved into the basement of the Tyrell’s house, the collected works of Charles Dickens was on the bookshelf. His works were full of orphans.
Walking yesterday afternoon in the sunshine with Sheba, on trails that are constantly changing in slow motion, and alone. We saw no one. It intoxicates me. I feel like the happiest, luckiest guy alive. I forget my troubles. I don’t hear my broken voice. I hear birds, I hear Sheba panting, so I know she’s close when she’s behind me. It’s a spiritually cleansing experience. It’s a healing experience.
My symptoms and my comfort only in solitude are driven by the constant of my narrative: neglect.
Given up by my birth mother, in an orphanage overwhelmed with unwanted babies, and then the Tyrells. I was doomed.
All my life, I protected them. I always said, ‘I don’t want to judge them. I don’t know their story. They have me a dreadful legacy, but the neglect by the Tyrells made me, more than anything, want to belong. I wanted to join the West Van Band because of the uniform. I valued love, and to be love, I felt I needed to try always to be ethical. I got a good moral education from my church.
That’s why I don’t defend The Tyrells anymore. They should have known better. If I can be loving, they could have been.
There was a time when I looked back on my life, I thought of the public theatre I design, and built with money I raised, a show, of my conception that toured Canada and got a review in Variety, and I was very proud of a series of four lectures that I presented in a large Vancouver venue, of outstanding female curators/creators, and with each speaker, I presented a twenty-minute playlet performed by professional actors I loved and respected, speaking lines extracted from the writings of four great female artists. It sold out.
Sadly, I think instead about this neuro-psychological mess I’m in, and that often makes me think about why I got it and how neglect affected by relationships. Yes, those things I did, happened. But they were things I did. Dr. S. attributes “compartmentalizing’ for allowing me to function well professionally.
So, this is understanding myself. And that is the result of the onset of my condition. It truly has changed my life and my life story, these two diagnoses.
I was watching a movie last night, and I was interrupted by whimpering from her highness. I stopped the movie and gave her a hearty massage back, neck and head massage. She begs for more. Instead, I propose that we go outside. I go out onto the courtyard, and I look at my landscaping, done without research or knowledge, just winging it, and now, eight years on, it is looking pretty damn good.
There’s variance of colour and height in the plantings, lots of open space left to nature, and I’m particularly pleased with the pathway and courtyard with its fountain and trellis.
I look at it all, and everything I see, other than plant the trees and some of the other natural shrubbery, everything is done by me. When I finally get the studio of my dreams, instead I create a mini park. And that makes me feel as good as I do on the trails. In the Winter, its books, pets and the fireplace that fulfil me.
What a ride my life has been, but it ends in paradise on earth: Pinecone Park.
Glass half full.
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I got an email from one of the women in my dog walking group. It said: “I found an engorged tick in the sink drain when I was plunging that bathroom sink.”
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