Anyway, please feel free to write about Buddhism or any other topics as long as you like in my diary. I really like reading what you write. Sorry not to get to your diary lately. I am just so worried about the move, I am being careful to only spend a little time here on the forum until we are out of here.
Don't worry about responding to my diary at all, I understand how taxing it is to have to deal with IRL issues and it makes sense to only have time and energy for so much online stuff. I'm mostly MIA from all of my online friend's diaries however much I would like to contribute and keep up with their stuff.
However, your post here inspired me - I have had a pretty intense past few days, psychotherapy on Friday and a talk with my priest today. And it's pretty much a year to date when I got released from the psych/ neuropsych ward. And it's October, so it's the perfect time for some spooky goodness. While I'm making light of this, it actually did affect me spiritually and made me question some of my ideas about what "health" looks like.
I know this might seem odd or even gross, and it certainly is nutty by definition, but as I was going through my several month long breakdown last year, I was first staying in an acute psych ward and was then transferred to a neuro-psych ward. My stay in the acute ward was pretty chaotic, and at one point I was roomed in with an older lady who stayed up all night talking to herself, making arts and crafts, and complaining how she wasn't allowed to have scissors so she had to rip all her materials by hand. I would ask her to please stop with the arts and crafts and kill the lights as I needed to sleep, but any time I fell asleep, she would put the lights back on and start doing her arts and crafts again, yammering vaguely about all sorts of things... Some of which were pretty queer and occult. Then again, you have to remember I was heavily drugged and sleep deprived, so what seemed very dramatic to me would probably just sound and look embarassing to others.
I was fully aware in that moment that I was a mentally ill person locked in a room with another mentally ill person; but something about this old woman - an archetypal hag, really, with her droning voice and messy long hair - kept captivating my attention to the point that I could not go to the staff and ask to be transferred elsewhere. I thought to myself that if I'm so pulled in by this odd and creepy lady, maybe I should listen and listen well. And behold; maybe it was by accident or by her sensing I was being sucked into her delusion, she asked me to go to the window and look at the words carved into the window frame. It spelled "APUA", "help" in Finnish. Rationally speaking, this is one of the most likely things a psychotic person would carve into a window frame; my only concern in that moment was that she had done it herself and were still in possession of a sharp object she could attack me with. Maybe she had done it herself with scissors that were later confiscated; maybe it was done by someone else way before. I just kept staring at the markings and wondering how come it is possible that being so insane I was in the moment, I was still kind of forced to look after myself...?
As I was standing by the window, the woman asked out of nowhere whether I saw a tree outside. Of course I did; the window was facing a beautiful courtyard with old, lush trees, well cared for and protected from the elements by the architecture and heat from the hospital complex. But I also had a feeling she was referring to _a_ tree, not the bunch of them. I responded with "yeah, an oak tree", as one was so close I could have touched the leaves dancing in the wind if it weren't for the glass between us. The old woman kept ripping her paper craft stuff and nonchalantly informed me, in an unctuous voice _(*sorry I had to Google what the adjective "mairea" could best be transferred to in English, and this was the best I could do)_ , that the oak tree is my tree.
I shit you not. In that moment, sleep deprived, medicated out of my wits, in green hospital pajamas, looking at the tree... It felt like some grimdark rendition of the Arthurian legend. Of course the oak tree was my destiny, as little as I understood the prophecy itself! The conviction in her voice was not only real to her, it felt... Meaningful. Even after she left the ward, I could not completely shake the sense that she was something more than just a kooky old lady who would hang her - frankly, strikingly beautiful and strange - artwork all over the walls where it stuck after her transfer, only to be trashed a few days later by the personnel. (BTW, imagine if psych wards archived all the art done by patients; there are true artists out there.)
Well, in a few weeks I was finally transferred to a neuropsych ward and taken off antipsychotics, which made me feel a lot better in a matter of days. To my shock and surprise, the witchy lady was there, as well. Considering that this was the only neuropsych ward in my area, not really surprising, but to me it felt really impactful to the point I felt uneasy around her. Once, after dinner, as everyone was watching TV, I approached her and asked her if she remembered me. She said she did. I asked whether she remembered the night she told me the oak was my tree and what she meant by it. And she clearly did remember. Which in the context of psych wards is quite something else. I forced out a laugh and tild her I don't really feel strong at all, to which she gave me the deadest of stares, like she was bored out of her wits, and said - "you just need the growth".
Do you understand how huge it is that she could remember me and our first encounter?
In that moment I giggled to kind of distract myself from the emotional impact, and told her "don't we all?", and she just looked at me all frustrated, as if she knew I knew what she really meant. And, yes, all of this took place in a hospital, but this is the closest thing I have ever come to a genuine shaman or wise person. Like, I know plenty of folks who are educated into the dogma of different religions, and I have no issue with that. But this one woman whom the world will always label as "crazy" provided me with probably the deepest spiritual encounter I could ever dream of, and it was specifically because we both existed in a space where normal courtesy no longer exists.
Maybe my willingness to look at the world from the point of view of this strange old woman had, at least partially, to do with the fact that I kept telling the nurses I'm trans and they called me psychotic for that. And then this holy hag came along and basically assigned a sacred tree for me. Both viewpoints are probably skewed and false, but I choose the oak instead of the sterile and automated system of modern psychiatry.
Sorry about the strange ramble and I will remove it if it's too odd! Think of it as a storytime. I actually really want to write into some of my fiction projects, but it has been way too hard to grasp so putting it into words here really mattered to me.
Take care everyone!