Mother’s Day 2021 Part I
I heard this phrase when I was four years old in my head spacing out in the mirrors in my mother’s office before I given away to a total stranger.
“Re-member me.”
“The mirror stage,” a hypnotherapist said.
“You just, well, were naturally doing these things.”
“Probable future events can affect the past.”
It is an extraordinary thing to know. I hope others might benefit from that knowledge I seemed to naturally experience. I think we all do. The human being is extraordinary—the resources available to them that they might not even be aware of. I know that the human being is beyond the labels you might attach to them or any concept of what psychology is.
Luckily, I met a hypnotherapist. I needed that kind of support coming out of Mother’s Day 2021. Some years before, I had been his “guinea pig.” The extraordinary work he did with me was part of how I got through it. Our first meeting—I was psychic. It was a battle for me—I do not use this term—because of “my crazy” yet “prodigal” mother.
“Everyone is,” he said.
This was my point.
“But you’re more.”
I had major storytelling problems—let me tell you. I needed big guns to help me outta this one. Enter—a wise screenwriter, the hypnotherapist’s brother. He was kind enough, after knowing me for a few years, to mentor my drafts when I finally began writing my story at the top of quarantine: March 2020. It would lead to a series of realizations that would change my life. The “final blow,” as he would call it, would come a year later.
A world renown shaman called Mother’s Day 2021 an ego death. The Wise Screenwriter called it “The Red Book.” His brother added: “meets a psychological horror.” I prefer that because it gives an idea of the scope of what that therapeutic event was. All the same, an ego death is not New Age. An ego is not casual. We have more than one ego-state, too. I came into awareness of those—key ages in my childhood. I hadn’t even seen these children—period, let alone embodied them. It was quite shocking.
The New Age, if you would, question of “what is normal?” It would not apply here. I couldn’t complete sentences or use nouns in college. I would use hand gestures like a baby, and so I inspired laughter. My mother especially did. It was all I could do, really, though that would be simplistic. Not so funny to me anymore, especially considering that my father had dementia the entire time. I felt time bend at nine years old. Those were just the words that came into my head, having never thought of “time bending“ before. Now let me stipulate that I would hope you would be able to detect a shift of consciousness like this. My mother was not solid, my father was not solid. I came from a more fluid psychology. I don’t know what to say about myself before Mother’s Day 2021. I am just grateful to be here. My family was my greatest obstacle.
I cannot change the time that it took for me to show up as a real adult for myself. I used characters to help me do that. For example, the character of Death. The Wise Screenwriter sparked this one, but he would have more significance that I expected because I had made a decision when I was a child to “befriend” this concept. I believed, very seriously, that my father’s fear of death was the real root of whatever was happening to him. Death was my blade. What did my friend say? The universe was like my parent. I didn’t say that. She also said — I know your power. I didn’t. But thank you.
“Why don’t you call me?”
She asked.
I was eight years old, having been used as a toy in a “destroy the child molester” game. My father was accused of being a child molester and rapist, not officially, but I am using this language because it’s serious and it should be considered as such. This man was looking at me on the phone with her — disappointed — like I was the problem. I didn’t have a room in this house when I returned after four years of being in this woman’s house because my mother manipulated her (to manipulate me) with money and these tales.
My father’s note to my mother after all this?
“I wrote her a note!”
It took him four years to pick me up—why? You see, in writing my story, I had to really contend with these questions.
“We could still be a family for you.”
This woman lied about my father to a criminal degree. Vicious lies! He would cry. She ripped it up! On what planet would this note to her make sense? I was a child so there was so much that was beyond my grasp. Given the accusations — what would this have meant for an innocent man? It is a legitimate question. I have heard stories about vicious, truly vicious lies, that have resulted in the unlawful death and incarceration of human beings.
March 2020—I began working on my first draft. In the late summer, I spent a night of holding a baby (my inner child) through a harrowing experience — just confronting that lie. I felt chords snap off my body — many, many chords. There was a spot of blood in my underwear the next morning. Into this architect’s chair — not mine — facing the Flatiron building, I didn’t even know I had these chords. That afternoon, I happened to go out for a drink as New York was opening up a little. I was able to sit in front of a human being for the first time without these chords that I didn’t know existed. All I could think was — what about for those who have really gone through this?
I wasn’t even at the point of being able to consider that maybe I had. If you read my story, that’s a real question that someone might ask me. I was writing, I was imagining the people who would read this. I wanted to connect with my audience or else, why was I writing? Lies are real, that I can say. What I went through in my body, this is where the field of psychology and others that deal with this subject would come in.
“I have seen Gods die to become ordinary men and I have seen ordinary men die to become extraordinary men.”
In the fall of 2020, in a large amount of pain, the line rose from a place in my belly so deep, I interpreted it as the future. 100 years — to be specific. There’s a reason why. It catapulted me out of Virgil Thompson’s bed — the physical sensation of it resonating from that profound of a place, for one, and the power of the voice of the man reverberating through my body. By its magnitude, a huge crowd came with it.
I ran into a column, clutching onto Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin.
I was in the last original apartment in The Chelsea Hotel. A family had allowed me to stay there for free as I got on my feet. And I made a vow to Virgil Thompson that I would do everything I could. It should not be destroyed. I asked his spirit to help me.
I am going to have to write the Mother’s Day 2021 experience in parts, but there is a reason why the line felt like it came from the future, and maybe the past, too. I have seen Gods die to become extraordinary men, and I have seen ordinary men die to become extraordinary men.
“Good line,” a wise screenwriter said.
Part I.
