Of a Different Deconstruction; Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Summer Church Camp

Hello My Dear One,

I apologize for my delay in correspondence.  Summer ended, school and teaching duties resumed, and I found myself in the beginning of a new realm of reality that includes re-entering theological school.  Crazy, huh? 

Of course, in the Jewish calendar we have experienced Rosh Hashanah, a nearing of newness with every breath, and as we welcome a new year of new opportunities, we will also be called to look back over the past year and make our atonement, our at-one-ment with G-d, ourselves, and our neighbors.  Yom Kippur will figuratively and literally bring us back in time to see where we slipped away from our connection to G-d, those times when we shoved our relationship with G-d as far away as possible, and those times that we shoved our neighbors as far away from ourselves as possible.  It is the season of letting go of the past and getting ready for what is to come.  

View from camp.

Not surprisingly, I experience this spiritual process more often than just once a year.  In particular, one of the times I experience this is during a family tradition of the past 7 years or so, where we spend the last weekend of summer at a summer camp, owned and operated by the state level organization of our denomination.  Yep, it’s summer church camp.  And it is a place that I first came to when I was 14 years old, the summer that my life first began to break apart.  So, coming here as an adult with my own children who love this place, who dream about it, who experience enormous spiritual joy here, I suffer an intense inner conflict because I am often disappointed and depressed throughout most of the weekend.  I don’t find the peace that they do, and this makes me even more susceptible to the doldrums that I am prone to slogging through.

The summer that I was 14, the entire year of 1989, really, was a defining one for me and for my family.  I finished junior high school a month after my grandfather had died of complications of Type 2 Diabetes.  I was about to enter high school and the ongoing stress of being transgender and intersex, in a culture that didn’t even have those words in its vocabulary yet, was greater than the weight of the world on my shoulders.  I identified as gay, but I knew that it wasn't who I really was.  But, it was better than trying to convince others and myself that I was a heterosexual female.  Point of note: I did consider myself to be a heterosexual male, I just couldn't figure out how to get other people to see this.  I was also beginning to exhibit the signs and symptoms of Bipolar 1 Disorder, however that diagnosis was another 12 years away.  I saw the tiny fractures in my being, delicate, yet sharp, and there wasn’t anyone or anything that could keep the breakage from spreading that year.  

That summer it was here at this summer camp that the beast of my mental illness made its first real appearance.  Here in the darkness of my own madness, I fell headlong into the pit I didn’t even know was in front of me.  I will always remember that Alice in Wonderland descent, and the strange world I found inside my mind.  

I remember that I had returned to the cabin, the toxic mixture of resentment, anxiety, hormones, gender identity disorder, and a learned coping skill of destructive behaviors mixing violently in my brain.  I sat on my bunk, surrounded by other bunks in a tiny cabin, with teenage girls coming and going, because of course I was “female” back then, and I felt a physical shift within my body.  The beast of my mental illness was struggling its way up and out like a nascent dinosaur breaking out of its hardened shell.  I had severe insomnia, I was paranoid, I was unable to focus, I began to speak abusively, I was anxious, and at the pinnacle of my 1st slip into madness, I threw a flashlight at a girl in my cabin because I felt left out of the plans that she and another girl were making.  This action resulted in my spending a night in the nurse’s cabin, and having some long talks with the adults, and apologizing to a now frightened teenage girl.  

In retrospect, I see why my actions were inappropriate, but at the time I really didn’t understand.  This behavior had been modeled for me for more than 14 years, and I believed that this was the correct response to frustration.  It’s true, having had objects thrown around and at me, my entire life, had desensitized me when it came to using physical violence toward others when I was emotionally dis-regulated.  Simply put, when I was upset, I felt that the best option was to chuck something as hard as possible at whatever was handy.  

The truth of course, is that this is not OK behavior, and it is what I work on with my students on a daily basis, i.e. “Use your words.”  And for as much good as that may do with those youngsters, it is just as likely to elicit the same response as it did from my beast that night, “Go to Hell!!!!”  And, sadly when I have reached that point, I am already in hell, and I am bent on bringing everyone else down with me.  That raw beastly growl from within bursts out like sulphuric lava, spewing every ounce of hatred, depression, and fear from within me.  And the me that I know and that I can make function has been drowned out by the panicked screams of a suddenly freed monster of mental illness.  It is a terrifying feeling, this loss of control, and I suspect, it is an even more terrifying place to be if you are on the outside of it.

So, on the night that the beast and I really met, that night when my hand threw a heavy flashlight into a wall, narrowly missing a girl’s head, a piece of my sanity was replaced by the pain that had exploded out of me.  The beast got its first real taste of freedom that night, and I knew, I felt, that I and the life I had were never going to be the same again.  

Swimming to another side.

As the story of that summer unfolded, my mental illness was swept under the rug, excuses were made by my family, and my need for help was replaced by a new evil that took over our house just a few weeks later.  Yes, it was the same year that my father began a 6 year affair with a woman whom he chose to house in the same home as his wife and child.  It was the beginning of a new familial madness, one that would lead to fires, abuse, broken hearts, broken families, broken relationships, desperation, alcohol and pornography addictions, and a crazy that defied labeling for its unparalleled perversion and sickness.  

The link that I finally find, nearly 25 years later is that this place, this camp, this spiritual center for so many members of my family, is in fact a place of immeasurable sadness and brokenness for me.  It is the epicenter of my first psychological meltdown.  It is also the place that when I finally left my parents to spend a week on my one at the age of 14, that while I was gone, my family fell apart.  As a youngster, a teen, I blamed myself for taking my focus off of my job, keeping our family together, and attempting to meet my own spiritual and reflective needs.  To this day, I carry with me the belief that when I divert my attention from holding everything together, and I actually stop and care for and about myself, that my world will soon fall apart.  It may stem from the grandiosity that accompanies Bipolar Disorder, or it may be a result of the blame that was poured out on me during my life.  With no insane, controlling, violent, abusive, or mentally ill adults to bully me into submission, I am able to meet my own needs.  Ironically, fifteen years later, I am frequently that very same horrid adult bullying myself into submission, making certain that I must suffer for the good of everyone else.

As I reflect further on this I see the lifetime belief of unworthiness, revealing itself in places I never even thought to look.  Taking responsibility for my parents‘ marriage, or taking the blame when they told me they were “staying together” for me.  As if living in a house where adultery, and quite honestly polygamy, were acceptable realities for a 14 year old child, and then to tell the child it is for their benefit.  I was being molded into a warped and unstable individual, I, the very reason for the bitter, screaming, and burning hell that we all lived in.  And I carried that with me for so long, feeling responsible for the scars on my psyche, and my body, that had been caused by "loved ones."  That is a Hell.  And true atonement for those sins comes with my forgiveness, and my letting go of the stranglehold on my own life.  
Those experiences of my past have shaped who I am, but as is so often the case, what humans have done with malice, G-d can use for good.  You see, the pain of what was, has become a gift of true understanding of the horrors that other people experience.  I am not desensitized to the pain, rather I have a shared compassion as someone who has survived the darkness that a tortured soul finds himself or herself in.  As I work with little children, I can honor their brokenness and help them to find their own voice.  I can stand with them in their fear, and I can stand strong for them until they can stand for themselves.  Just as I now can stand for myself, always knowing that is G-d standing with me.    

So, here we are, a new year and I am reaching for my own at-one-ment and I am caught in my interfaith life even more than I once would have supposed was possible.  And ultimately that is exactly where I am supposed to be, living into Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Summer Church Camp, and yes, theological school.  If I truly believe that I am made in G-d's image, then the plurality of my life is inherent.  I have been given an opportunity to live as more than just female or male, more than just sane or crazy, more than just smart or artistic, more than what I have been told I can be.  I have been granted the gift to live as exactly who I actually am.  I have been granted the chance to share my story and be present for those who need to share their stories.  I am a very blessed man. 

Sharing my stories, my songs, and myself.

Thank you for sharing in and being a part of my stories.

Be well, remember to love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari