Who's That Girl?*

Becoming and Homecoming

This picture was taken by my 9^th grade English teacher, Mrs. Herbst, shortly after I was diagnosed and began treatment. Her class felt like kindergarten and was one of the kindest, gentlest, safest spaces I have ever known in school. The medication was pure placebo.

As I heal more and more layers (through grief, emotional release, and physical purging, I’m sorry to have to say), the inner core of my Self is slowly becoming more and more exposed: I experience this physically in resolution of symptoms, pain, and increasing stamina (after the purge); I experience it mentally in clarity about my future, motivation to do what I love, and deep thoughts pouring out into my writing, music, and conversations (after the bursting dam of anxiety); I experience this spiritually in more vivid meditations and dreams, a more consistent daily perception of embodied divinity (after the existential crisis and staunch agnosticism). And I’m experiencing it all in a quiet exhaustion: winter is here; I rarely venture out, only to turn errands into a moody walk in the fog; I go to bed ridiculously early and wake up in the darkness.

As I let this turbulent river carry me through each day, the memories, mental and physical, are becoming intensely clear. After so many years of brain fog, dissociation, depersonalization, and derealization – and believing it was permanent brain damage – I might have to appropriate the German language to encapsulate the long tangle of gratitude, wonder, excitement, confusion, awe, and time travel that is wrapped up in this phenomenon. Die Dankbarkeitstaunenaufregungverwirrungehrfurchtzeitreise.  Close, but not enough. I have my life back!  A new life… and yet… so old. So familiar. So purely mine.

It’s her.

I remember her. When Jessica became Jess, and “anything but Jessie.” That magnificent creature coming of age at 14, full of transformation, awakening, joy, love, and so much music. She chose French class when everyone else spoke Spanish, not because it would be of any help in the US, but simply because she loved it. She took every art elective she could literally get her hands on. She was too poor to afford her own clothes, but her stuffed animals’ scrap-heap fashion sense was epic. She had a tremendous soul.

And nowhere to go with it. No safe place to ask provocative questions. No acceptable society to grow hips and boobs and hair. No kindness for wordiness and dreams and fantasies. No respect for self or pride or talent. No fertile grounds for love and friendship. No tolerance for sinners. No space for mistakes. No room in the inn.

Instead, she wore her own face like a mask, Victoria’s Victor/ Victoria. She was diagnosed with hereditary Major Depressive Disorder and put on medication for the rest of her life. I’ve spent the last 10 years refuting that diagnosis, but isn’t it 100% truth? There is major disorder and disease in depressing the human spirit, the Imago Dei, nipping the bud, trampling the rose underfoot. The unpardonable sin. Major disorder.

And so for the next 25 years, my flesh became the battleground of Self vs. Repression. My body vs. vanity. Growth vs. obscenity. Self-esteem vs. narcissism. Love vs. lust. Talent vs. pride. Wisdom vs. arrogance. Art vs. reality. Expression vs. responsibility. Charity vs. colonialism. Inherent worth vs. earning my keep. Child of God vs. miserable wretch.

Imago Dei vs. Depravity.

Jess vs. Jezebel.

Repression won. Religion won. “God” won. Martyrdom won. Death won.

So much of Lyme Disease has felt like death, quite literally descending into hell. And so much of recovery has felt like a literal resurrection and rebirth. As I guide people through the horrors of pharmaceutical withdrawal and Lyme, I find myself completely stuck, between a million words and speechlessness. How can I possibly sit here and extol the virtues of death and dying? How can I sing the praises of these demon tick-borne microbes that eat our literal flesh and blood while we watch and waste away?

How?!

Because Lyme set me free. My demon was never nature, myself, or my body; it was fear and hatred. It was repression. That was the monster that killed Jess-not-Jessie. Lyme wasn’t killing me, it was killing the false suicidal depression that was hiding my incredible will to live. It was killing judgment. It was killing Victor so Victoria could shine as herself. Lyme killed fear. Lyme killed the lies my life was built on, Lyme plowed through the dirt of repression and masking, Lyme rolled away the stone of shame and guilt that buried Jess alive. Lyme turned Jess into Jesus, and that’s a story we haven’t found proper words for in 2,000 years.

The living word, they call it. And maybe that’s the only way to speak it: to live.

I've been digging up old poems, lyrics, photographs, projects, digging up my old life, and realizing the cliché is true: the healing journey is just the journey back to yourself. I find joy in understanding that part of my purpose is to finish what I started: to give Jess her voice, be her safe place, carry on her legacy until we meet in the present moment. Like therapy went from a deep grief and compassion for my inner child to this glorious reunion, my moody fog walks have become an evening dance under the streetlights, just me and my shadows: living, loving, fulfilling.

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This liberating and healing process of self-acceptance can be facilitated through therapeutic methods such as Shadow Work, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Compassionate Inquiry, Somatic Experiencing, re-parenting, and more. Try these keywords on social media, search engines, or the library and see how they land on your heart.

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A huge word of gratitude to the public school teachers, mentors, friends, and other heathens who managed to see me, love me, and encourage me through the blindness and deafness of my repression. I hope someday I get to tell you what a difference you make, to let you know that you are the reason I write, you are the reason I’m alive again. You have done it unto the least of these.

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*It's Jess