The Shadow

She sat in the smallest, darkest room she could find—her closet. She likened the darkness to numbness and that was preferable to the turmoil that she was always trying to outrun.

She wasn’t always this way because she was—if only for a brief time—a child, a little creature full of wonder, excitement and imagination. She was the ringleader in the neighborhood. She was the one that made the creek a whole new world where vampires, fairies and unicorns lived and she gave each kid and roll and they all played together in the world her mind created.  Her imagination was powerful but not powerful enough to hide the circumstances of her childhood for very long.

The gift of her imagination came from her mother, a woman who loved to write stories and spin tales of fantasy. She kept these half written stories in various notebooks lying in corners around the house. A collection of grand adventures that never came to fruition—all stuck on the page, stopping abruptly when real life would not be ignored any longer.

This woman she called mother never finished anything she wrote but that didn’t stop the fantasy from creeping into reality as she would tell her children, “Some day I will publish a book and we will be able to get a car so we won’t have to walk everywhere.” Hearing her mother say this gave her and her siblings hope and their eyes would light up at the thought of not having to carry groceries back every week from the store.  Over time this line would change and vary with her mother’s thunderous moods, “If your father hadn’t left, things wouldn’t be this way“, “Your grandparents have money but they won’t get us a car because if I write a book, they know I’ll leave this shit-hole of a city“, and finally the one that would sting her—a child who believed her mother—the most, “If you kids would leave me alone, I could write this book. It’s your fault I don’t have time to do this. I’m too busy taking care of you all.”

Looking for a place to hide from her mother’s rant, she sat in her dark closet for the first time and allowed the tears to spring forth, running uncontrollably down her rounded ten year old cheeks. She buried her face in the clothes and felt her gut clenching and releasing with waves of sobs. She didn’t understand it. Why was her mother always so angry? This was just one of the reoccurring thoughts in her mind as a young girl struggling with a harsh reality that she wasn’t yet old enough to understand. A deep sadness was growing within her and starting to eat away at her.

She sensed something was terribly wrong but couldn’t identify it. She felt it building, a turmoil overtaking her gut. This feeling begins to follow her around like a shadow. It’s hidden in the corner when she’s playing with her friends and lays beside her paralyzing her in the moments before she rises from bed to go to school. She closes her eyes tight and tries to will it away but it always creeps back.

The shadow would whisper to her that life wasn’t worth it and that no one loved her. She would fight this shadow with barbies and baby-dolls and books. She would attempt to lose herself in her childhood world, a world that she belonged in but was constantly being pulled out of.

This shadow lived in the most inconspicuous places and seemingly innocent chores like checking the mailbox became a terrifying thing. She would lace up her skates and glide down to the apartment mailbox and the shadow would leap out from the business sized envelope with the yellow slip inside that said “Final Notice”. She would skate back, terrified and place the mail on the counter. Rushing up to her bedroom she would attempt to hold the shadow at bay by losing herself in a daydream but when it was time for dinner the shadow would stare back at her from her own mother’s eyes; eyes that had seen the mail but chose to ignore it.

She would stare at the envelope and its urgent message—an uneasy feeling growing in the pit of her stomach. What would happen now? She would ask her mother, who would answer, “I don’t have the money so I guess we won’t have power unless they can wait until I get paid.” Her mother never opened the mail and she reasoned that maybe her mother knew the shadow too.

Her mother began to fly into fits and rages and would tell her children that she didn’t have the money to pay the bills and that she didn’t know how she was going to buy food or keep a roof over everyone’s head. She painted pictures of a home on the streets and threatened her children with them. Her mother’s rages seemed to feed the shadow and it was growing in response.

The shadow was strongest in the early morning before school. It would tell her that she shouldn’t go and her gut would clench in terror. It told her that school wasn’t safe and that everyone would know that she didn’t have a car or money for chocolate milk in the cafeteria line. The shadow told her that everyone would stare at her and know that her family was different. The shadow would win most days and she would hide, trying to find a way out of going to school.

Worry became her constant companion and after recognizing that her mother wasn’t prepared to do deal with life or even the mail, her belief in her mother dwindled and soon vanished. She had no protection. Life became empty and very dark but she was practical in her pain and understood that if she ran away that the shadow would follow her – it seemed to live within that clenching feeling in her gut. She loved her mother and would miss her if she ran away so she tried to cope with the growing darkness.

When she couldn’t handle it, she retreated in to the numbness of the dark closet. She couldn’t see anything or hear anything and tried her best to absorb this nothingness. She would sob until she fell asleep. She awoke one day and realized that for a tiny instant that the pain wasn’t there—she had had a wonderful dream and for a second forgot about her waking life. That dream had given her relief. She no longer wished to be happy, she just didn’t want to feel and that’s when the shadow pointed to the bottle of sleeping pills on her mother’s bedside table. This was the first time that she realized that she wanted to die.

She sat trembling on her bed, bottle in hand and prayed for the will to take the pills but also prayed at the same time for something or someone to stop her from taking them. It was an odd moment because she could hear the world going on all around her, the sounds of kids playing outside and a ball being kicked back and forth just a mere fifty feet from the dark drama that was unfolding in her bedroom.  She turned up the bottle but only four pills landed in her palm, she swallowed them down and buried herself in the blankets to wait for the freeing darkness to come and warm her. A few short minutes later, her mother burst into the room and eyed the empty bottle on the floor.

“There wasn’t enough in the bottle to do what you’re trying to do.” Her mother glared at her smugly.

She stared at her mother as her eyes filled with tears, “I think I need help. I don’t want to be awake anymore.”

“There is nothing wrong with you. You can live here but you’re not my daughter anymore.” and with that her mother walked out and closed the door behind her.

She was on her own.

She fought the shadow off for years to come, finding little bits of hope hidden in books, writing and music. Her family life only grew more difficult with the financial demands of four growing children but it became somewhat easier to deal with as she got older and understood that her mother was ill and that she and her siblings were not to blame.

She stared at her mother’s notebooks, grand stories scrawled out across the pages and felt sorry for such a talented writer whose life was being stolen away by mental illness. She felt incredible compassion for her mother who wasn’t capable of realizing her dreams and who crushed her children’s dreams in retaliation. The blame that her mother placed on her children suddenly became easier to bear when it was viewed through the face of compassion.

And then one day brought with it a moment of awakening as she sat in her room painting her nails. She was thirteen and her family had just moved to a really rough neighborhood, running from her old apartments where they had been evicted for not being able to pay the rent. She felt a tingling and looked up as her room seemed to fill with light. Everything took on a different hue and seemed much more vivid and alive. She spotted her shadow hiding in the corner, trying to find safety from the light. She stared it right in the eye and realized that when she looked at it, it lost its power to scare her. She was hit with the silent knowing that everything was going to be alright.

Over time she learned that this shadow was depression brought on by an environment that she had no control over. She found freedom in knowing that she didn’t do anything wrong and that she was just a child caught in a bad situation.

That one moment of grace was enough to plant a seed of faith that would be able to sustain her for the rest of her life and her closet soon became just that—a closet.

Gigi Ochs

Drop the Storyline

“No way”, murmured my intuition as my date excused his self to go to the restroom.

 “Ah, but don’t you see? Isn’t this the perfect start to a romantic story? Just imagine, two people who appear to be all wrong for each other falling in love despite”, said the Hopeless Romantic running loose inside my mind.

“Who let her out?” asks my sturdy guide, Intuition.

Will you two shut up! I command as I shake my head back and forth slightly trying to loosen their grip on my mind. I quickly look around the coffee shop to see if anyone notices me and my apparent multiple-personality disorder. No one seems to care that I am on a first date or if he is or isn’t “the one”.  And thank God there don’t appear to be any mind-readers present to overhear the voices arguing in my head.

I find myself at home later that evening trying to sort out the voices in my head, after another failed attempt at finding love with a member of the male species. I think over the last month of my life and I keep finding myself arriving at the same point – confusion, disappointment, frustration and in a couple of cases---in tears. I seem to seesaw back and forth between my intuition and some hopeless romantic idea that goes something like this:

“It could be him” Hopeless Romantic says as she rides up and down on a beautiful carousel horse.

“Nope”, says Intuition as she sits looking un-impressed with hands around her crystal ball.

“But you should always expect the unexpected” says Hopeless Romantic as she gestures to a unicorn making its way across the sky.

“Wishful thinking, you romantic fool” Intuition says as a points to a picture in her crystal ball of a drunken Prince Charming falling off his white horse.

Suddenly, the conversation playing out in my mind is interrupted, “Drop the storyline”. The voice is male, aged and everything you would imagine a man of profound wisdom to sound like. I think to myself, Great, another personality to join the party. The thought echoes again and this time, I take a minute to ponder it. There does seem to be some off-the-wall soap opera storyline wreaking havoc on my seemingly rational, normal and composed self. Just what exactly is going on here?, I begin to wonder.

I dash into my back bedroom and riffle through the pile of books sitting next to the exercise bike. I know that one of these books planted this ‘storyline’ seed in my mind and now it has decided to sprout just in time to save my sanity. I locate a book of Buddhist wisdom for challenging times and quickly flip to the folded down page marking where I left off. I retrace the steps of wisdom until I locate the passage that apparently took root in my subconscious.

A quick review of the chapter tells me that the only way to get to the root of my suffering is meditation—something that I am very familiar with but have been lacking the discipline to properly practice lately.

I plop down in my living room; legs crossed and begin to focus on my breath. It takes a while to settle my mind but when I do, I feel myself dissolving into the earth. The sound of the birds and a heartbeat—mine or the earth’s?—are all I seem to be aware of for some time. But then out of the darkness comes a taste of truth:

Hopeless Romantic sits in a beautiful garden and continually works on a romantic storyline starring--who else--but yours truly. Her storyline includes our good pals, “wishful thinking’ and “happily ever after”. She crafts her stories to follow these themes. She uses her magic wand to tap each character with a little fairly dust and then carefully poses them, making sure that their good side is all that is seen. She looks familiar and very similar to me but with several enhancements. She is like the “supermodel” version of me.

I start to feel slightly disturbed by this vision but I locate my breath and feel my ribcage rising and falling and ease once again comes over me. I realize that I have officially been introduced to the person that is wreaking havoc on my life—me.

Wait, what?! But before I can really settle into that realization, out of the darkness comes more truth:

Intuition sits quietly in a darkened house atop a hill. She peeks from behind the curtain and waits for Hopeless Romantic to wonder off chasing a butterfly or unicorn so she can introduce her storyline that includes our practical friends: “doubt” and “human-nature”. She uses her keen human insight to blow away some of that fairy dust to expose the smallest bit of imperfection in our characters. She also has a nasty habit of saying “I knew it”—repeatedly. She seems to resemble me but the dark veil she wears makes it hard to see her clearly.

The vision continues:

Into my neighborhood comes a handsome man. He has an easy smile and a certain charm about him. Hopeless Romantic scribbles away, scripting a grand story that includes romantic walks in the park and long conversations over coffee. She smiles over at me, winking. I look at the handsome man and the fairy dust sparkles so stunningly in the sunlight--on our perfect day in the park--that it’s blinding me. I sigh to myself as I think, I love this story!

Suddenly the wind picks up and the water in the pond (complete with swans) ripples ever so slightly. Some of the fairy dust blows away and I see that our handsome man has a few scars---deep scars and festering wounds. I look over expectedly at Hopeless Romantic as she bangs her magic wand against a tree, wondering how it could have possibly failed her, failed us. Out of the corner of my eye I see the curtain drop back into place in the house atop the hill. And I think to myself, that wench has messed with my perfect story—again.

And that wench is also me. Wait, what?!

My meditation timer beeps and startles me out of my observations. I let my newfound knowledge sink in. I want so badly to believe in “happily ever after” and I want even more to believe that “happily ever after” can be mine so I reach for it. And that desire is all the fuel that Hopeless Romanic needs to begin weaving her story. I sit there surprised that I am the one allowing this storyline to be written. My little flame of hope is being overshadowed by a greedy desire to have a happily-ever-after and have it now. My intuition seems to show up in an effort to restore some balance and show me that hope is enough—I don’t need some fantastical love story.

My thoughts seem to wander to the next natural thing: How do I stop myself from writing a storyline? How do I keep myself from getting caught up in my own desire? The sudden caw of a crow pierces the silence and cuts into my thoughts like a knife through butter. I focus on the crow and wonder if he is capable of producing a storyline in his life? I watch as he shifts his wings slightly when the wind picks up. He lives in nature—a moment to moment manifestation of life and death. I feel pretty certain that there isn’t a “happily ever after” being sold to him.

Storylines are pre-written but I can’t possibly live in the future because it hasn’t happened yet. Therein lays the key—live in the now. There can’t possibly be a storyline because our lives unfold moment to moment—just like the crow’s.

I realize that I find comfort in the idea that I already know what is going to happen in my life and that I can be prepared for when the winds shift—again, composing a storyline. But when the wind shifts and it isn’t in the direction that I scripted, my story no longer makes sense—bring on the turmoil.

Although, I think it would be nearly impossible to banish Hopeless Romantic from my life altogether, I make a promise to myself to learn to live in the groundlessness of now. If I can learn to participate in life as its unfolding, moment-to-moment, I just might be able to “Drop the storyline” and live happily ever after.