Monday, November 7<\/p>\n
My friends Judith and Sharon and I are doing a writing group together on Monday nights. I wanted to work on the understanding that what looks like a failure might actually be following the voice of your soul. \u00a0Judith does a weekly comment on the Torah, and I found this week’s suggestion for writing beautifully appropriate.<\/p>\n
From Judith\u2019s commentary on the Torah:
\nDo you know of this voice that comes to you and says:
\nLeave the home known to you, leave the self known to you, go to search for the land of your soul?
\nOften this voice comes in the form of a crisis, a tantrum, a sudden life upset from without or within.
\nDid this voice call you one time or several in your lifetime?
\nIs this voice calling to you now?<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWritten in Monday night\u2019s writing group, with Judith and Sharon:<\/p>\n
I was in Davis, California, at the University.\u00a0 <\/span>I was seeing a therapist.\u00a0 <\/span>One day I told him about my childhood.\u00a0 <\/span>He said \u201cYou must have been very frightened.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>In fact, I had been given far too much responsibility for the younger kids.\u00a0 <\/span>I went back to my apartment and wrote in my journal \u201cIt was OK to be frightened!\u00a0 <\/span>It was OK to be frightened!\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Later I thought that must have freed something in me.\u00a0 <\/span>The next day, since I hadn\u2019t heard from my boyfriend since I got back from Christmas, I decided I was fed up with him, but I wanted to borrow his truck to take home a door I had bought to make a big table with.\u00a0 <\/span>I went to where he lived and knocked on his door.\u00a0 <\/span>But he wouldn\u2019t come to the door.\u00a0 <\/span>I could see that he had another woman with him.\u00a0 <\/span>I went to my car, got the jack and started breaking his windows.\u00a0 <\/span>Two cops came walking up the street.\u00a0 <\/span>I knew that would be upsetting for David because he was dealing drugs \u2014 something I had tried hard not to know, but did know.\u00a0 <\/span>I went back to my car.\u00a0 <\/span>I heard David telling the cops he wouldn\u2019t press charges.<\/p>\n
I went to my friend Kathi\u2019s and told her what I\u2019d done.\u00a0 <\/span>She said \u201cBut, Jenny, you can\u2019t do that.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I freaked out, and took myself to the Student Health Center.\u00a0 <\/span>They took me in, and put me on Mellaril.\u00a0 <\/span>They kept a very close eye on me, I think they were afraid I was going to commit suicide.\u00a0 <\/span>I was freaked out \u2014 some combination of excitement and fear.\u00a0 <\/span>I kept going to classes, but the medication was really slowing me down.\u00a0 <\/span>When I finally got out, I stopped taking the medication cold turkey, and had a rather freaky withdrawal.\u00a0 <\/span>But I survived. and decided that I had had enough of California and that I would go back to New England.<\/p>\n
I kept what was left of the bottle of Mellaril.\u00a0 <\/span>I thought it was a tranquilizer but in fact it\u2019s an anti-psychotic.\u00a0 <\/span>It turned out to be a good thing I thought it was a tranquilizer, because that first winter in Portland Maine I was suicidal.\u00a0 <\/span>But I had been told of someone who tried to commit suicide by taking a whole bottle of a tranquilizer.\u00a0 <\/span>He didn\u2019t die, but just got very tranquil.\u00a0 <\/span>Years later, I worked on a suicide hotline and discovered that the minimum lethal dose of Mellaril was 600 mg.\u00a0 <\/span>I had been taking 300 mg a day when I was on it.\u00a0 <\/span>I had easily had enough to kill myself but fortunately didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
I think now that this whole experience was my soul saying \u201cCalifornia is the wrong place for you.\u00a0 <\/span>Let\u2019s go back to Maine.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Monday, November 7 My friends Judith and Sharon and I are doing a writing group together on Monday nights. I wanted to work on the understanding that what looks like a failure might actually be following the voice of your … Continue reading