Enemy at the Door

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

[Update: 19th July 2020]: The Covid-19 coronavirus is putting people under various degrees of  stress affecting their mental health - among all ages - around the world. We all need to be mindful of this and support each other long after the pandemic has run its course which is unlikely to be any time soon. Mental illness, to whatever degree, can wreck lives if left unchecked and untreated. Sadly, there remains a stigma attached to mental health and many people are reluctant to come forward and seek help; if you sense a loved one, friend or workmate is suffering, don't wait to be asked, but find a tactful way to offer help  and don't take 'no thanks, I'm fine' for an answer. It's never easy, especially as people with mental health problems invariably suffer mood swings and can be rude, even aggressive sometimes. I've been there, still got the tee shirt, and only survived with the support of some wonderful people who believed in me when I had all but stopped believing in myself.] RNT

Mental health is something that is finally coming out of the closet here in the UK, but here and the world over, still has a long way to go before everyone feels at ease with the subject. From time to time, I get emails from men, women and young people struggling to recover from what is referred to as a nervous breakdown, but doesn’t even come close to describing the sheer intensity of a roller coaster of emotions as likely as not ending in a nasty crash.

Sadly, more often than not when we try to explain bad, even criminal behaviour, it is seen as making excuses rather than a genuine attempt to understand; not only for the benefit of others but also, possibly primarily, ourselves.

I will be 75 later this year. Regular readers will know that I had a bad nervous breakdown some 40 years ago; although it continues to haunt me, I feel I’ve come to terms with its multiple causes which, in turn, has helped me achieve (in part, at least) a sense of atonement for its effects on others.

‘Work out your own Salvation. Do not depend on others’. – Buddha

While I agree with the Buddha that we need to work out our own salvation, accepting help should not be seen as a form of dependency, rather as a learning tool necessary to see us back on terra firma after going into free fall. It was nearly 4 years before I was able to start looking for and eventually got a job in which I would stay for the next 25 years. I could not have achieved this without the help and support of certain people to whom I am more grateful than words can begin to express.

My Good Samaritans did not include any family members, I suspect because they saw my need to discuss my behaviour at the time as an attempt to excuse it, and had neither the patience, empathy nor inclination to listen. Fair enough, but fortunately, not everyone turned a deaf ear, and in trying to explain, I, too, began, slowly but surely, to understand. Once there, I had foundations upon which to rebuild my life, and proceeded to work through what I saw as a form of salvation; in my case, through writing, for others as much as for myself, trying to share something of the lessons I had learned. (Coming to terms with being gay was a part of a learning curve I still see myself on some 40 years later.)

A thousand rights cannot compensate for a single wrong, but a sense of atonement, even if no one else sees it as such, does wonders in restoring a shattered self-confidence and faith in oneself. How far I have been successful has to be for others to assess, but I am more at ease with myself now than I ever thought to be again, hopefully deservedly so.

I once commented to an actor friend at the end of a play's successful run how well he and his fellow actors had performed, and how wonderful it must feel to be part of a close-knit team. He laughed. "You wouldn't say that if you had the faintest idea what goes on backstage!" he said with such feeling that I found myself reflecting how true of life in so far as it is too often the case that what we see is but part of a whole; the more important latter lies in what we don't see. I found that out the hard way while recovering from a mental breakdown some 40 years ago. Most friends and colleagues assumed I was perfectly well again years before that was true.

‘Mental illness is a very powerful thing. If it is with you it is probably going to be there until the day you die. I am trying so hard to break mine, but it is not easy. It is my toughest fight ever.’ - Frank Bruno [Former British professional boxer.]

Few if any of us have the moral courage to freely acknowledge our worst fears, but until we do, we risk their getting the better of us; we need to share them with someone, give it a voice (even a poem) and the chances are it it will be our turn to have the last laugh. Mental illness is made all the worse for the stigma (still) attached to it, but all enemies have their own worst fears, of which by far the greatest is the power of the human spirit to overcome...whatever.

'Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.' - Socrates

This poem is a kenning.

ENEMY AT THE DOOR

I crawl passages
of mind-body-spirit,
less frightened
of the dark than daylight
where pain
lies in wait, ready to strip
and humiliate me
in its contempt for the vagaries
of human nature

I pause now and then
to read writing on walls
over centuries
sure to keep the likes of me
well out of sight
of any too close for comfort
to such cause-effect
likely to point fingers of blame
at human nature

They beckon me on.
the disembodied victims
of a vulnerability
considered (even by those
in the know)
best left to their own devices
as if life were a game
of Consequences, and the Devil
take the hindmost

I am Fear, common enemy
of the human spirit


Copyright R. N. Taber 2018