I don't drive my car
as much as I used to, but when I do, I often drive my passengers
bonkers with my automotive equivalent of “channel
surfing,” flipping from one radio station to the next in search
of the elusive, mystical "Best Song.” With the dexterity
of a safe-cracker, my fingers twirl the dial up and down the bandwidths
looking for old favorites.
In the early '70's,
the song writing team of Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote a beautiful
tune called “Daniel,” and
I always listen to it when I find it and I always get a lump in
my throat when I hear it.
Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane.
I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain,
And I can see Daniel waving goodbye.
God, it looks like Daniel. Must be the clouds in my eyes.
Daniel my brother you are older than me.
Do you still feel the
pain of the scars that won’t heal?
Your eyes have died. Do you see more than I?
Daniel you're a star in the face of the sky.
Bernie Taupin has said that the song was written during the Vietnam
War. It is about a young soldier who is terribly wounded and blinded
in the war. When he finally returns home, he is unable to live with
the pity and sadness of his family, so he flies away to spend his last
days with old friends in another country.
In 1972, I returned home at the age of 16 after being locked away
for almost a year in a closed mental ward in another city. My friends
and family, not knowing what to do or say, and with no education or
information to help them, seemed uncertain how to act around me. In
their confusion, they made things worse, and I felt isolated and alienated.
I felt like an ex-con, let out of prison for some unknown crime that
I had committed, making me unfit for human company. In my sadness and
despair, unable to live with their pity and shame, I dropped out of
high school and left my family and home town almost never to return,
living for almost twenty years in self-imposed exile.
Through my life I have
had a lot of bitterness and anger at real and perceived injustices.
I carried grudges against the people that I felt were responsible
for hurting or humiliating me, against the multiple sclerosis that
crippled my body, against the depression that crippled my soul,
against myself for what I perceived as weakness, laziness and flaws
of character. I've held on to pains and wounds and never allowed
them to heal. I believed that the suffering they gave me was the
only thing I was permitted to own. As Carly Simon sang, "Suffering
was the only thing made me feel I was alive...” And I've let
songs like "Daniel'' wound me again and again.
Many of us have been
abandoned, actually or emotionally, because of mental illness.
We know what it feels like to have people we love pity us and feel
ashamed of us. Many of us have spent years in exile, in prisons
of our own despair, jailed by our own “Inner Tyrants.” Like
Edmund Dante, the hero of Alexandre Dumas' classic "The Count
of Monte Cristo," we have been arrested and given life sentences
for crimes we never committed.
When Edmund escapes
from prison, he uses the knowledge and treasure he's gained to
recreate himself into the powerful but emotionless Count of Monte
Cristo, and dedicates his life to exacting terrible revenge on
those who wronged and imprisoned him, who betrayed and abandoned
him. It's a fantasy I've entertained over the years, too. But by
taking his revenge, he destroys the last and best of himself, and
learns that vengeance, fueled by hate, is truly a double-edged
sword. "Luke,
don't give in to the Dark Side!"
For years I trapped myself in a dance of suffering with what had hurt
me by holding grudges, by hanging on to old wounds and pains. Again
and again I called up those hurts, somehow believing that I could change
or erase those old tapes. But it never worked that way. Each repetition
only strengthened the habit of the pain. My anger was at times rocket
fuel that helped me to survive, but for me, that rocket fuel has now
turned to poison, to something that holds me back.
What I'm trying to do
now, (and I don't feel this way every day, believe me) is to forgive
those who shamed or abandoned me in some way. I’m
not doing this to let them off the hook, but to let me off the
hook. Forgiving them frees me, it allows me the chance for a fresh
beginning. I don't forgive the acts, but the actors. I forgive them
their clumsiness, their desperation, their unskillfulness, their
humanity. As I hope they can also forgive me.
I'm also trying to forgive my body, forgive the MS. I want to understand
and accept all that it's taught me-- that my worth is not just connected
with my physical prowess or looks; that by having certain physical
limitations, my heart and eyes have been opened in new ways, with hopeful
insights into life.
I'm trying to forgive my mental illness, to understand that it hasn't
crippled my soul. On the contrary, it's given me a chance to discover
my center of courage, opened new paths of creativity, allowed me to
find different ways of solving problems and looking at the world, others
and myself.
Mostly, I’m trying
to forgive myself and believe that I didn't do anything wrong by
being depressed. I've done the best I could, and all those years
of suffering and loneliness in exile were not wasted. I deserve
a real life--with purpose, balance and happiness. And I don't have
to buy that happiness with suffering. Like Daniel, I'm important
and wonderful to the world and my family, and no one needs to either
pity me or be ashamed of me. I don't always have to ache every
time I hear that song on the radio. I can be touched, or moved,
but I don't have to always relive those wounds of my past.
I'm not there yet, but I'm on my way.
