Why reading and writing literally saved my life.
At least for now.
I am a little over my 50’s and I’ve moved at least 17 times in my life. When I was younger I was asking friends to help me out with my things, of course they were nice and gave me a huge help the first times, then all became a bit less easy because I got to move again and again. I had with me just two suitcases with clothes but hundreds of books and the number was increasing each time. I don’t know if you can relate, after a while people began to gently disappear, they had enough and I got it.
I never moved my diaries instead, I was too scared about other people to read them so I kept them in a secret place at my uncle’s home until few years ago when, in a moment of fear and shame, they all ended up in the garbage. That was a big mistake, but I didn’t know yet.
I was somehow nomadic since I left my parent’s home at 17, all I got was inside those books: my strength, my awareness, my growth, my weakness. My identity was born in there, in those kilos of paper: from my youth and the Dada period to the surrealistic one, from the modal logic illumination forward to the zen aptitude and then and then and then until the trauma period that is now. Yes, the trauma period, you’ve read well. Books didn’t save me from my ghosts but allowed me to set a place for them, they gave me the amplitude to accept the incredible and the creativity to make it work so to be able to survive, escape and build my life as I could.
I didn’t realize entirely the depth meaning of this until an year ago when, after a major breakdown, I finally got the courage to look at myself and decided to understand why I was having these people in my head since I was a child; yes I knew this, I knew I was not alone but not how to explain this imaginary reality of mine that, at times, seemed to me to be more truthful than the real world. I’ve lived more than a half of my life being in parallel worlds without crushing, not too much and not too soon at least. At the beginning, when I was a child, it wasn’t easy, I wasn’t even very conscious of what was happening inside me, I thought they were just dreams, weird violent dreams undoubtedly, but dreams. And in dreams, as in fictions or fairytales, all is possible, isn’t it? So I became a kind of living book for the well being of none but me; it was surely bizzarre and sometimes scaring to know that my existence wasn’t simply on earth but also very much in my mind. I guess I was unconsciously following the fact that there were a story that needed to be tell. So I let this story grow inside me and live with me and pace with me. How can I explain it to you? It was like I was the writer and in the same time the characters and the reader of my own inner world. I was acting my own novel. What I didn’t really figured out was why it had to be so dramatic and violent but so essential for my balance. I was comforting myself with the fact that in literature there were plenty of freaky novels so somehow I felt I was not alone in my strange world.
In time things became more complicated, a great confusion was taking place in my life, but yet I was able to invent a way to manage my different inner souls. I was at the university at the time and I was eating philosophy for breakfast, so to say. Who am I? Why am I here? Does objective reality exist? Where are my boundaries? What defines who I am? What is consciousness? I don’t know if you ever spent time on those kind of so deeply human questions, sure I always lost myself inside. Why wasn’t I born a cat? Why wasn’t I able to just live and be? Briefly speaking, I was falling in an endless chain of doubts when some lighted a sparkle inside me. What was it? The will of being the best version of myself I could be so not to feel ashamed of my own actions, the will to dare myself to be as complicate as I was but in a way that I wouldn’t have hurt none for my being so weird. I will say that from that moment on, slowly but undauntedly, two of us took care to live in this real world and handle normal things like finding a job, being a parent, paying the bills while two other souls were allowed to live only when I was alone at home or in my inner space, a place in my mind where they were free to speak and act. Another soul, now I know, was going back and forth between outside reality and inside reality, he was and still is my counselor, my guide, someone of you could say my angel. Was not perfect but it was a compromise that hold on very well for more than 20 years.
How was I able to live this kind of strange life without collapsing? What was the magic tool that kept me going for so many years without freaking out about being partially conscious of all that mess inside me?
Now I believe that literature was the magic tool. I’ve learnt justice and set up my ethic codes, I’ve trained my souls to be less judgmental, I was able to give to each side of me the nourishment they were looking for so to help them grow and, most of all, I found new perspectives to challenge my mind and comprehension, a lot of comprehension and support, when I was alone and in doubt. And I was often alone and in doubt. How could I have spoken about what was going on inside myself? It was so awkward and difficult to believe it even for me that I never found a proper way to be real open about it until few times ago when things went very bad. But this is another story.
I think I can say books were my parents, my friends and my teachers. That’s why I was caring about them first when I was moving in a new house. They were my real family, they were and are my experiences and my references; they were the only way I could embrace what I was without being too ashamed or terrified. If I had lost them I would have been disintegrated, this was my feeling and probably I was right.
And what about writing? What about filling pages and pages with thoughts and novels and letters? They were my way to communicate inside out myself, journaling was also my safety as a way to express all my souls and as a way to keep memories and share some of them between my different selves. That’s why I was so scared and horrified about those old diaries, they were ‘not me’ but indeed they were mine. Thousand of words that didn’t sound real, like I was another person or more than one. I was never good in remembering, many moments of my past life still are totally blank or look like a faraway movie that doesn’t concern me too much; it’s always been like this but diaries were and are the other magic tool that helps me building a kind of coherent narrative about myself. Do you get why I feel so stupid to have thrown them away? I probably will never be able to recall the feelings and the moments of life that were written inside and I am deeply sorry about this, even if in time I forgave myself for this impulsive act. Because yes, I knew I was not alone in my head but fronting the concrete reality of written pages that I didn’t recognize as mine was in that moment a turmoil I wasn’t prepare to have. I believe all things has a right time to reveal itself in order to be better handled and this for sure was my case, the very truth of my inner state came to me when I was somehow ready to see it. This doesn’t mean that it was or it is less painful, no it isn’t, it only means that I have a broader universe where to place it and more tools to defend myself from myself and from the ignorance of professionals and people.
Now I have a name to frame my condition, Dissociative Identity Disorder, and my gratitude for the written words is even more than before. If I am still here, if I still want to wonder and search and understand and live and accept and love all the souls that compose who I am is because books have taught me to open my mind and my heart in order to make the world a wider space where almost anything is possible. If I still wanna fight is because of other humans that were sharing their ghosts, doubts, worlds, obsessions, strategies, visions and nightmares by writing them down. Down there, in the words of others, you can find pieces of yourself and the feeling of not being alone.
If you are struggling with a mental condition the better help you can offer to yourself is to be curious about your deeper self, is to investigate your core with sincere compassion, is to read as much as you can to guide professionals to see who you really are in your specific nuances and not just in the frame of a diagnosis. Read, write down your history and your emotions, go deeper, be creative, let none defines you in your singular beauty, cause who you are took a toll on you to develop and to find strategies to survive until now. Don’t deny your truth in front of none, please, because your story is unique and deserve to be told to help other people to reach and understand who they really are.
