Death, Transfiguration, and the one person I can count on

Death and Transfiguration, by Richard Strauss. What I am listening to today. This piece has tremendous significance for me. It literally helped me survive the most difficult time in my life, when the earth seemed to be falling away from under my feet. This is the Hero’s Journey, through trials and travails and even outright horrors, but through it all there is dignity, courage and hope.

This music lifted me up and over the worst of the predator-infested swamp I was slogging through. They call it “mental illness”, but that isn’t the half of it. Someone who hasn’t experienced it has no idea. It would be so much more survivable if the culture weren’t so full of hypocrisy about it. People banter and chatter about “mental health”, and it really doesn’t mean anything at all except virtue-signalling. In the next breath, these same people will throw poison darts at the mentally ill, calling them “whack jobs” and “nut bars”, without one single twinge of conscience.

Why does this bother me so much? You hear it every day. It doesn’t mean anything, does it? It’s only words! But they are talking about ME, an actual, breathing, sensate being. Why don’t they see that? They don’t, and they won’t, not in my lifetime anyway, but I’ve decided I’m not waiting for it.

In spite of everything, and because of everything, I am still on the Hero’s Journey. I need to refill at this well over and over again, and once more it will lift me up when I can barely walk on my own. It has made me realize something. I am still here. Why? Because there has always been someone on my side. One who unfailingly was there, even when I was in the worst kind of dire trouble. Who was it who helped me get back on my feet when I was (once again) lying face-down on the ground, when everyone else had virtually given up on me?

It was, quite simply, me. Even when I felt completely alone, even when there was no one else in sight or even in my hopes, I had the most loyal helper I have ever had, and one that I will have until I draw my last breath: myself.

(I just posted this on Facebook, and even though it's going to go the way of everything else I ever write or post - total obscurity - something in me just won't quit, and THAT IS WHY I AM STILL HERE TODAY.)