After the End: Yggdrasil

I finally managed to begin getting through to and integrating the six-year old part of myself after ten years of some of the darkest, worst struggle of my life. How am I supposed to squeeze that kind of struggle and change into the next few hours?

And the truth is, I can't. It will take the time it takes. I will succeed on my own terms, in my own time and there is no fast forward button. A life is lived out over the course of a lifetime.

So, this wonderful woman will have to be wonderful just a bit more and make room for me falling to pieces as my internal Ragnarok knocks my foundations out from under me. But then, I don't suppose there's any other time Ragnarok can be expected to arrive.

She's the perfect chaos, the beautiful upheaval of love that makes me feel so safe my demons storm down from my mountaintops and knock everything down. Looking inside I understood, I choose her over stable stasis. And I realized, that's the point. With her, and with that ten year old in me. Kids, pets, friends, lovers, spouses—they make one's life messy. Your cats destroy your sofas, your dogs destroy your carpets, your kids destroy every material object you have and even the least friend brings a mess into an otherwise orderly little life.

And so, yes, the ten year old is Loki, is Fenris, and is Ragnarok. But after Ragnarok, Baldr and his brother return from Hel and the spring follows winter. Love is giving those you love the power to destroy parts of your life, with the confidence and faith that you both can rebuild whatever is shaken to ground.

So, I know the ten year old needs an opponent. Someone to face off against, and hold the line against him. Someone who will oppose without being an enemy. He needs a father. He needs me to stand up. And the little wolf being what he is, he needs me to finally embrace that wolf energy inside and stand in front of him, on four legs, head down, shoulders up.

On the day all this started to fall into place, I rode my bike across town. Twice I saw prairie dogs. Close at hand, not fleeing, which is uncommon. Regarding me as I passed within two feet of them. They were burrowing under a new bike path, the one I was riding on. They'd hollowed out underneath the path enough that the concrete had begun to collapse, so that their burrows peeked out from rubble. They'd destroyed a paved road. They suddenly seemed like that ten year old in me, not strictly the squirrel he'd wanted to be when younger, but close. Prairie dog and squirrel—not the same, but ringing the same bell inside me. And being a force for Ragnarok as he was, he was also the squirrel Ratatoskr slowly destroying the world tree, which would herald the coming apocalypse. And that nevertheless, he was joy and triumph, embodied. That one thing could be both.

Because the forces of life are the forces of death. Autumn leaves and the winter's Ragnarok unmakes the whole of nature's bounty, until Baldr returns to herald the spring.

And I knew then, I could rebuild. And welcome the uncertainty of the coming winter, when all my best laid plans will crumble. Even, perhaps, my own Yggdrasil, the very center of my own world. I might lose my center, entirely. But so be it.

S, I very much hope you're still with me at that point—I'd like very much to plant a new world tree with you.

After the End: Time Travel

It occurred to me, just last week actually, that finally, ten years on, I'd managed to figure out what “I want to go home” meant and how to go about giving it to myself. The boy wanted out of the hallway, had wanted to be invited into the light in the center of my life again, the living room. And I'd told him that was his right forever. Integration had finally begun.

In April, I met an amazing woman. I've tried to put in words how I feel about her, describe here or sitting with others what she means to me. And I can't do it. She inspires me, certainly. She makes me feel like striving as hard as I can, and settling in, snug and safe, both at once. And I can describe why, maybe, but it wouldn't capture it, so I've lapsed into silence around it, outwardly, for the most part. What's to say?

Last year, I turned my depression around and finally clawed out of that despair that haunted much of my life. But in doing so, I didn't reach for success. I redefined what I was doing AS success. Not having a job was success. Not having a car was success. Because I couldn't manage trying to reach for them, and the only way I was going to feel good was by celebrating what I had accomplished, with no anxiety over what I was externally expected to accomplish, but had failed to achieve. Life is full of what you haven't managed to do yet. Life's fuller still of what you'll never manage. Why bother with that stuff? Better to celebrate what you are doing, here and now, that brings you joy and real, visceral contentment.

And that was me enlisting the ten year old me to assist. By undermining the expectations of success, I was on his side. And with us on the same side, I had his passion and focus at my disposal.

So, redefining success, I began to feel so good that I contemplated moving. And beyond that, I felt so good I was in a perfect place to meet S, and that's when I did. And I was ludicrously happy.

We planned a trip. A trip after months of waiting for, we'll be off on this weekend.

Moving? Relationship? Those are success. And once again I wasn't on the same team as the ten year old me anymore, we were butting heads. I felt him, sowing doubt, muttering, glaring, plotting. I grew numb with worry and felt...not so much depressed like I'd been so many years, but...off.

He'd remade himself in my father's image with me as the enemy, or maybe it was the other way around.

Whatever way it was, I realized: I'm tired of fighting. For one thing, I know if we play it by my father's rules, I'll never beat him. And what use would life be without the generative spark that ten year old carries, if I did manage to win?

That ten year old me is devious, adaptive, fiendishly tireless, exuberantly focused, unflappable, unstoppable and while I was depressed when he stepped in to run the show, that part of me that was effecting my “failing my way” plan was not itself depressed. Angry, oh yes. But never depressed. So, why would I want to crush that?

But now the relationship, that part of me is up in arms against, has me on a trip with S for the first time, in less than two days.

After the End: Howl

Three months ago, I got the image of that four year old in the hallway, hopeless. I pictured myself as an adult sitting in the living room. I looked to the hallway, and saw the boy curled up in a fetal position at the edge of the light, the longing shining in his eyes. I invited him to come into living room and sit with me. He got up and ran in to jump onto the couch. But while he was happy, he eyed the door to the hall he'd left.

“Are you afraid of the Wolf?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he can't come in here. Watch.” And I pictured a clear shield going down over the door and the windows and keeping the Wolf out. “Whenever you want to come in here, you can, ok? You're never not allowed to be in here, ever again. And whenever you need that and don't feel safe, we can think up a word that when you say it, I'll know you need to be safe in this space, ok?”

The relief told me it was better than ok.

A few weeks after that conversation, I was in a class and I was having a difficult time of it. I was fighting the urge to flee the class in fear. I scrambled for a tool to help me stay. I'd been using the image of a bear last year. I tried it and it didn't do the trick. And there close at hand was the wolf. I turned my head up and closed my eyes and imagined myself gearing up for a first-class howl. And suddenly there was the safe word echoing within me, loudly.

I pictured the little four year old again. “Erik, go sit in the living room now. Me, I need to spend some time running with the wolf and I know you need to feel safe. So go be safe. I'll be back when class is over.” And he was gone. Inside, I howled. Outside, I ran that class down to ground and sank my teeth in. I rode home that night, fiercely proud, howling still, and this time, the picture of the boy was back, on my shoulders, howling with me.

After the End: Checking In

Today, I've grown in many areas of my life. But even now, I cannot hold a job because that is success. I cannot write a book or find a partner or buy a car or a house or start a family because they are all flavors of success, and to that ten year old they would be set ups for a worse fall, so even without consciously doing it, even while consciously realizing it makes no sense, I opt out.

Ten years ago, I was still working, but I was restless. My job was vaguely prestigious, and paid very well. I had enough money to get the house, the car, support a family. It scared the Hell out of me and I stumbled. I found myself sinking into fugue states again.

Even before I melted down, I knew I needed a change. I tried, ten years ago, to reach through the walls I'd built up within myself, thrown up to keep not merely my father from me, but me from Me.

“How's it going, Erik?”

“I want to go home.”

“Where's home? What does that mean? Is there anything I can do to get what I want right now?”

“I want to go home.”

“I hear that, but what does that mean? What do I need, to make that happen?”

“I WANT TO GO HOME.”

“I know. I want to get me home. Please, tell me how that works?”

“IWANTTOGOHOMEIWANTTOGOHOMEIWANTTOGOHOMEIWANTTOGOHOMEIWANTTOGOHOMEIWANTTOGOHOME....!”

And for perhaps eight years, that was all I heard rattling inside me, when I turned inward to ask what I needed for me to be happier being me.

About two years ago, I started getting a few other short answers, when times were calm. But if I asked about what something meant, or if things got tense in life, everything would again retract into the endlessly run-on litany of I-Want-To-Go-Home.

After the End: The Vow

At age nine, I was tested and found to be very intelligent. My parents scrambled to get me into an accelerated academic program. By this point I was already part of the way into the second semester of fourth grade. We toured the school and the class I'd be in. I hated the place. My parents asked me what I thought of it. I said I didn't know. They suggested I try it, and if I didn't like it, when the school year was over, I could go back to my old school for fifth grade. The idea sounded stupid to me. I said that sounded ok.

The school was worse than I'd feared. I was ostracized. I went from the smartest kid in my class on Friday to the lost moron in my new class on Monday. The teacher had no interest in getting me up to speed with the class. She assigned another student who wasn't fond of me to tutor me up to what they were learning. He did his best to fail and he did. And I learned in first grade not to bring my homework to my father. So I suffered feeling like I was stupid for the first time in my life in silence and went again into a fugue state. I suffered the ridicule from my classmates—and believe me, smart kids are the meanest kids there are—mostly in a fugue state, too.

The year ended and I told my parents I wanted to go back to my old school like they promised I could. They said tough, I was staying.

Fifth grade was very little but a red mist of anger and resentment. I realized then that opportunities that looked like potentials for happiness or success were a trap set to hurt me. They led to failure. And I realized that I had no recourse, no power to make it otherwise. I only had one source of power—the ability to sabotage my set ups for failure with a more fundamental failure. I could only choose to give into my father's failures for me, or opt out and set up my own failures.

So again, I made an oath. I vowed I would fail at everything in life, unravel every success. Partly to escape the traps set for me, and partly to illustrate to my father that he was a failure as a parent. Dark? Yes, it really was. But it was my only sense of personal efficacy. And for several years, it was the only thing that kept me alive. And it was another oath I took very, very seriously. And I proved to be VERY good at carrying it out. I was Fenris, swallowing the sun, and bringing about my own daily Ragnarok.

After the End: Confidence

When I was six, I was angry. I remember arguing with my father over math homework I insisted I didn't know how to do, even though I did. I remember again being spanked a lot with a belt and a lot of yelling and insults being hurled at me. What I don't remember is anything else from age six. It's a blank. I recall back to the crib at six months of age and forward from age eight. I'm told I changed at age six, and went from being happy, talkative, and agreeable to being surly, secretive, and argumentative. But six and seven are almost entirely blank otherwise. Aside from my father and the belt, I get a mental image of an uncle by marriage who I feel did something terrible, and a lot of anger and very little else.

I recall the fighting with my dad and the realization that I couldn't trust him. That I wanted to trust him, to tell him about my uncle, but I couldn't and I felt that despondency from four again, but constantly. I was angry, but to show that to my father was to get a beating. I was afraid but to show him that was to get a beating. I was deep in grief, but to share that with him that was to get a beating. I couldn't talk to him. My parents tried to get me to talk. The feeling that I couldn't trust them deepened, so that one of the few things from six I do recall is vowing to never tell them another thing about myself again in my life. It was a vow I took very seriously. I didn't have parents; I had enemies. I put on a mask and lapsed into silence. If they insisted I talk, I tried very hard to figure out what they wanted to hear, and parrot the expected words when I could. My own self-image on that level became a desperate attempt to mirror what was expected of me. I set my own gauge of safety and success outside myself.

By seven the despair from the isolation, the confinement, and the loss of a sense of self was overwhelming, and the only thing at all from age seven I remember is standing in a friend's back yard. Whoever the friend was, was inside, as were his parents. I stood at the edge of their pool, at the deep end and went into a fugue state staring into the depths of the water. And, staring thus, I leaned forward and dropped myself into the water and forced all the air from my lungs, and willed myself down. I recall looking up through the water and seeing a blur of shapes running around the pool, then diving in to pull me out, and that's all of age seven I have left anymore.

After the End: The Squirrel

When I was four, I dreamt every night a wolf was coming to eat me. I lived in terror of the coming night and when put to bed, I pulled my eyelids open with my hands and begged the Universe to permit me not to sleep. Every night my pleas were denied and I'd dream it again. And again.

I remember begging to be allowed to stay up. I remember being yelled at for doing so. I remember being spanked a lot with a belt. I stopped asking. But I couldn't give in to sleep. I'd creep from my room, down the dark hallway to the living room on hands and knees. As I approached the end of the hall and the door to the living room, I'd slink lower, and lower, making myself smaller, the closer I got to the warmth of the light, the sight of my parents settled in on the coach, the sound of them talking and the television burbling. I yearned. I couldn't go back to my room. I couldn't go any further forward. I lay on the floor at the end of the hallway, desperately silent, desperately small, and I wept without any sound, trapped.

I fell into a lifelong pattern of severe depression at age six, but there in the hallway at age four, was when I first experienced it, the hopelessness of being pinned between two flavors of loss.

If you asked me then what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd have answered I wanted to be a squirrel. High above the dogs and wolves, of course, but more than that, they were motive, antic, playful, watchful, and simple. They leapt and ran. They were nimble. They were free.