On The Bridge
So crazy, beat the strain. Too lazy, shake the gray. So as she willed the rain. So let me be defamed. Your redundancy stains. Tired of infantile claims. Like puppets on a string. Untangle you from me...
So crazy, feel the hate. Yeah, I've got years to wait. I know it's not too late. Lending clean hands of fate. Rise from the dirt I'm in. Hide in another's skin. Stick black dress doll with pin. Your mouth takes on my grin...
Time to call the doggies off. Tired of the shadowin'. Slide me to the side again. Slapped in the face again....
One day my plane leaves. Some way my head creeps. Some way my way leads. Some way my head creeps...
-- From "Head Creeps", by Alice in Chains
It had been a month or so, perhaps, since the sudden onset of my break. I was driving. I was completely emotionally unregulated. I was, and had been for a while, in complete mental crisis. That day was especially tough. I was angry. There was a confluence of frustration from a number of issues. I wasn't handling it well. I was becoming a bother at home with my daily meltdowns and epiphanies and dramas. So I drove. I had an hour's route- it was generally enough to get me out of the house and calmed down enough to function at home without crying or otherwise being a nuisance. I drove, I smoked a joint, usually grabbed a drink from a gas station in Slidell and listened to music....and just drove. It was generally adequate to reduce my nerves to the point where I wasn't visibly shaking or deep-breathing every 5th breath.
That day it was all hitting me hard. I don't remember even what it was that had me so bothered. I do recall that I had a rising awareness in those months that many of the issues facing our family at the time were spiritual ones. We were in a spiritual battle, I believed. I had been very vocal about that. I also was coming to understand that many of my own personal struggles were spiritual in nature. So, I was in a spiritual frame of mind and also in immense pain and grief.
At some point on I10 West coming up on the big bridge, I became aware I did not feel alone in the car. I was crying. The music was loud and dark. I became keenly aware of other intentions in the car with me. As I've recounted over the years since, I used that word "intentions" to describe what I felt. It's the best word I can conjure- then and now.
They didn't have faces, but they had facial expressions. They didn't have voices or words, but I could intuit and feel what they intended of me. I won't call them angels or demons or spirits or ghosts or anything with a label. Won't now, wouldn't then. All I knew is what they intended of me.
We often think of a spiritual battle in terms of a tug of war with ourselves pulling one way and something else pulling another way. Or in terms of an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. Would that it were so simple.
I became aware that I was being surrounded and assaulted from all sides by these 3 entities or whatever they were. It wasn't clear or linear. It was as though the 3 were orbiting me on different axis's like protons and neutrons around a nucleus. Chaos. And it was getting faster. Intentions were becoming clearer.
One intended that I change my facial expression...close my eyes. I felt it was trying to make my face match its own. Then came the next, and it intended to move my hands to the right. This was problematic because I was driving 80mph on the interstate. But then the 3rd came, and it intended to move my head to the left. Also equally problematic. It was beginning to feel very, very Real.
I was on the bridge at this point, headed up. It never occurred to me to stop or take my foot off the gas or breathe or anything at all. Every ounce of energy I had was fast becoming consumed with holding those intentions at bay. It got faster and faster. I began to feel actual, physical effects of my head being turned and my face moving or contorting.
I was scared shitless. I was losing control. I was panicking. I didn't want to do any of these things. I felt coerced. I went through every tool in my mental toolbox to counter and address what I was experiencing. Every ounce of my capacity was dialed in but I was losing fast. I couldn't keep up. It was too much. Every cord I grasped for evaporated. I was falling, and at the last second, I cried out, almost while inhaling the last bit of air I could...
I didn't mean to call out. I didn't think about it or plan it. This whole episode lasted maybe 15 seconds. The final crescendo, maybe 4 or 5 seconds. I was overwhelmed and could not defend myself against what I was experiencing. I cried out the only word I had left that had not already vaporized as my reality broke. I simply said "Jesus..."
That's it. It's all I had. It was enough. All intentions other than my own rational ones vanished. Just like that. I could breathe again. It was just me in the car with the loud music and my beating heart. And the life-long-lasting impression of the feel of the power of that name in that instant.
You can be damn sure I picked up that drink in Slidell.
My memory has a lot of gaps in it, but I think I went straight to see an old customer of mine from my POS Sales days. She was a Shaman or a Spiritualist or a Voodoo Priestess, depending on which business card she hands you. She bought a credit card machine from me nearly two years before that date. One hustler to another.
She always felt like the real deal to me. When I first visited her about the credit card machine, I noticed something. Her shop was in the heart of New Orleans East. It was broad daylight and all other doors in the strip mall were barred and locked and owners would come to the door with the key and a gun to let you in. Miss Ola's door was propped open with a box fan. I figured no one messed with Miss Ola for good enough reason.
Two years later, coming off that bridge towards Slidell, I don't know why I went there. Clearly I was not in my right mind, but I need hard and fast answers. I needed something to make sense. More than anything, I needed someone to tell me that I was ok.
I knew already that my battle was a spiritual one, but I had no idea how to do this. I went straight to her shop and walked right in through the same open door and plopped down on a stool in front of her counter and said, simply, "I need help. I was just spiritually attacked. I don't know what to do." I told her the entire story, word by word, tear by tear.
Now, it is a true statement that my Angels of Wisdom have always been black women. I had 4 in my lifetime up to that day. Miss Ola is number five. When I looked at her that day, her aura shone brighter and whiter than the sun at high noon. I'd never seen an aura before. I saw hers.
That woman closed and locked her door and took time to gently walk me step by step through the journey that lay ahead of me. She spoke of the hand of God, living in one's purpose, and of dealing with energies that we carry from our past that can manifest in many ways. She told me her story and her experience. She spoke of prayer. She spoke of peace. And that day, she set the tone for the duration of my Psychotic Break. It would be about getting to the bottom of my spiritual struggle, breaking those bonds for the sake of my children, and about finding peace in and understanding of the Power that I felt that day in that Name. And so it was...
Readers may connect their own dots here about what I experienced that day. For the record, it happened twice more on the same day. I knew what cord to grasp those times and it wasn't a problem...more of a curiosity. Also for the record, I shared this story with Miss Ola, a priest (for good measure), a pastor in the context of a marriage counseling appointment, 2 different therapists, my doctor, my wife, and my parents. You can also see how, because it is framed as a positive outcome, a more dramatic turn was not taken in my care and recovery. I should've been hospitalized.
I've read that those who experience a psychotic break of a religious or spiritual nature often encounter what they deem to be Truth. They often spend much of the remainder of their lives trying to reconcile the realness of the experience. I've read that these individuals often cling to many things they learned or saw or felt while in psychosis, and ultimately settle somewhere in between what they experienced and what they believed before the break.
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