bloodteethandflame

I suppose that I should point out that I did do a little personal ritual last night.  As described in a friend’s post, I asked Loki to come to me in whatever face that He chose.

I promised that I wouldn’t question it, and I promised that I wouldn’t dispute it, so here I am on what was delivered.

I have been told that I am with-holding.  I am told that I refuse to be generous.

I find the most profound insult in being labeled selfish, in being considered self-centered.

I don’t like to be selfish, and I balk at being called self-centered, but sometimes I am.

Madness is a kind of selfishness.  Madness has a certain air of self-centeredness.

Or at least, it does for me.

I went insane in 1997.  I think that I may have always been, but I received a diagnosis of Bipolar Axis I – later changed to Bipolar Axis II – in 1997.  The axis never mattered to me because what followed that diagnosis was an intense 3 years of self-examination in my life, broken into 50 minute hours that occurred three, sometimes four times a week.

And I hated every minute of it.  Therapy felt like a terrifying exposure in front of a stranger -an educated stranger whom I was paying to stand emotionally naked in front of  – a session with an inquisitor for no reason but to punish and perpetuate the theory that I needed to learn how to fit in with a world that I didn’t fit into, that I never fit into.  I had to learn how to deal with others, but mostly, it felt like I was learning to sublimate myself.

It’s funny when I consider that I felt more feeling in my madness than I did in the 26 years that I had lived up to that point.

I suppose that I would have been considered mad as a child too, always being told how strange I was, how bad I was, how I had failed to be what was expected.  There was definitely a disorder to my life, to my thinking – even if no one was calling it bipolar back then – that’s what I felt was reality.  My struggle arose out of this desire to not be ‘disordered’, to not be separate.

To this day, I still feel separate.  It is still a struggle at times to convince myself that if I am myself, if I show others who I really am, I can still be loved.

I’ve no doubt that my husband thinks that I am mad, crazy, out of my mind.  But I believe that there are concessions that he’s willing to make until he gets tired of making them.  But, to take a page from my madness, it is likely me who will tire of making concessions first.  When we get tired of making concessions for each other, we’ve told each other, we have promised to move along.  We have promised to separate.

But I am nothing if not determined.  Some would call that loyal.

I know that we will separate someday.  I know that I will be alone.

Because we live as we die – alone.

It is interesting to consider that concept now that I’ve written it there.  Did I ever believe that?  Do I believe that now?

Because, even as a child, I felt that no one should be alone in death.  I used to wander around the most decrepit sections of New England cemeteries, inwardly noting dates and reading the names of those longest dead.  Sometimes I would simply recite their names aloud, but mostly, I would whisper greetings to them, because it hurt me to think that they may have been forgotten.  As far back as I can recall, I thought it the worst of all to be a person that had been forgotten, who had been ignored, simply because time had passed.

While it might be hardly surprising that I am estranged from my family today, I  imagine that it could also be perhaps that I was a little girl that was feeling somewhat forgotten, possibly even ignored by those who claimed to love me, albeit often dysfunctionally.

I have trust issues.  I have abandonment issues.  And the madness that grows from the pit of my soul was screaming to be seen:

See me! Hear me!   My emotions were a whirlwind, a storm that had been brewing for a long, long time.  My anger was a beast in chains that was demanding for release.  This is why the story of Fenrir appealed to that part of me.

There was nothing wrong with Fenrir; He is what He is.  There isn’t any shame in what He represents.  He is Madness.  He is emotion unchecked, hunger unfulfilled, the forces of Nature out of control.   He is Nature itself, the nature of all that we attempt to control.