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“Many psychologists use the term existential to describe the fact that all human beings are subject to painful events. These are the normal recurring afflictions that everyone suffers from time to time. Horrible world events, difficult choices, illnesses and periodic feelings go abject loneliness are common examples of existential pain. Existential calamities can be especially triggering for survivors, because we typically have so much family-of-origin calamity for them to trigger us into reliving.”
― Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
― Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
“I like the comfort in knowing that the Afro American invented rock and roll yet has only been rewarded or awarded for their accomplishments when conforming to the white man's standards. I like the comfort in knowing that the Afro American has once again been the only race that has brought a new form of original music to this decade: hip-hop/rap.”
― Journals
― Journals
“I like the comfort in knowing that women are generally superior and naturally less violent than men. I like the comfort in knowing that women are the only future in rock and roll.”
― Journals
― Journals
“Feeling is the antithesis of pain…the more pain one feels, the less pain one suffers” – Arthur Janov”
― Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
― Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
“At Gayhead point, I wondered what it would feel like to fall.
If you raised your arms above your head like you were diving and you aimed true for the waves, wouldn’t you experience perfect freedom? That the body would land broken on the rocks below didn’t matter, because you wouldn’t be there for the landing. So you would experience only that single moment of clean, pure freedom and grace.
But then, that would be it. There would be no chance to remember that feeling and strive, for the rest of your life, to feel it again. Or to surpass it. Or to pull somebody aside and tell them what it had felt like.
There would be nothing. It reminded me of when I wanted to find out about the universe and I’d asked my father, “What was there before there was everything?”
He said, “There was nothing.”
“But what is nothing?”
“Nothing is nothing,” he said.
It was so difficult to picture. Because wasn’t nothing something too? Wasn’t the thick silence and blackness of nothing actually a place you could be?
Son, I’m tired. Please just go outside and play.
Is that what death was like?
But no, it wouldn’t be “like” anything.
I was desperate to discover what nothing felt like. It was the absence of something that attracted me. It was the start. Everything important originated with nothingness.
At Christmas, the floor could be spread with gifts, but I would be concerned only with what I didn’t get. Not pouting because I didn’t get a sweater vest, but wondering, What would have been in the box that isn’t here?
My brother inspired awe in me because he wasn’t there anymore.
I loved my mother most when she was locked behind her door, writing. Because I couldn’t have her. And because I never hugged my father, it was his embrace I sought most of all.
Where there is nothing, absolutely anything is possible. And this thrilled me. It gave me hope.
In a way, if I wasn’t having a happy childhood right now, I could have one later.”
― A Wolf at the Table
If you raised your arms above your head like you were diving and you aimed true for the waves, wouldn’t you experience perfect freedom? That the body would land broken on the rocks below didn’t matter, because you wouldn’t be there for the landing. So you would experience only that single moment of clean, pure freedom and grace.
But then, that would be it. There would be no chance to remember that feeling and strive, for the rest of your life, to feel it again. Or to surpass it. Or to pull somebody aside and tell them what it had felt like.
There would be nothing. It reminded me of when I wanted to find out about the universe and I’d asked my father, “What was there before there was everything?”
He said, “There was nothing.”
“But what is nothing?”
“Nothing is nothing,” he said.
It was so difficult to picture. Because wasn’t nothing something too? Wasn’t the thick silence and blackness of nothing actually a place you could be?
Son, I’m tired. Please just go outside and play.
Is that what death was like?
But no, it wouldn’t be “like” anything.
I was desperate to discover what nothing felt like. It was the absence of something that attracted me. It was the start. Everything important originated with nothingness.
At Christmas, the floor could be spread with gifts, but I would be concerned only with what I didn’t get. Not pouting because I didn’t get a sweater vest, but wondering, What would have been in the box that isn’t here?
My brother inspired awe in me because he wasn’t there anymore.
I loved my mother most when she was locked behind her door, writing. Because I couldn’t have her. And because I never hugged my father, it was his embrace I sought most of all.
Where there is nothing, absolutely anything is possible. And this thrilled me. It gave me hope.
In a way, if I wasn’t having a happy childhood right now, I could have one later.”
― A Wolf at the Table
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