Day: April 13, 2013

We got a visitor at the farm this morning, we heard the pecking and warbling, and Maria said, “hey, Woody Woodpecker is out here,” and she was right. Fortunately I had the big lens on the camera.

I don’t know what is best for other people, I can barely sort it out for me.

I see now that I came to upstate New York, fled my life, ran to my farm for a number of reasons. One was that I was looking for love, I have been looking for it my whole life. Another is that I wanted to understand my life, to seek a spiritual life of meaning and understanding, to learn how to see myself truthfully, to be authentic, to move beyond a life bounded by fear, impulse and anger. Like most people, I seek connection, a sense of belonging.

I don’t know if I will every completely get there, I am working on it. I still am sometimes a bit in shock when I think of what happened to me up here, coming to Bedlam Farm, finding Maria, leaving the farm, coming here to our new home. The parade of animals who were saving me, loving me, comforting me, or so I thought, I can hardly even remember them all now.

Still trying to make sense of it, the pills, therapists, analysts,  counselors, shamans, card readers, the years of panic attacks. Wow. When I do pause, my mind often takes me back to the enablers, the part of the process I think I still haven’t let go of, am working through, and am perhaps the most regretful of, the most ashamed of. When you live a narcissistic, self-absorbed and impulsive life, as I did, a life of rationalization, self-gratification and loss of perspective, one of the most difficult things for me to recollect and understand was the army of people, once so central, now just a blur, that I manipulated into supporting me, cheering me on, nodding and assisting me as I blew up my life, bought things I couldn’t afford. Over and over, all day long, for years,  I explained all of the good reasons for doing things that were hurtful or foolish, giving my money away, acquiring animals I could not know or love, walling myself up in my Bedlam Fortress behind sheep, cows, dogs, goats, chickens, cats, tractors.

I loved Bedlam Farm, but it was not just a farm, a medieval moat, I had built a medieval moat up there, the mad prince holed up in his castle, pikes on the wall, heavy doors with studs.

Up there,  I gave all of my money away, all of it, everything I had saved and earned, the money from the movie, from the then flush time of royalties, from my IRA’s. I spent it on animals, restoring barns, buying things. I gave it to someone I thought was in need, a family I thought I could save. I thought I was saving a life, so arrogant and myopic was and of course, I basked in all of the praise for my nobility and courage.  I remember having dinner with a friend and she told me I reminded her of Jesus Christ, I was so noble, selfless and generous. I should of course, have blanched and run screaming from the restaurant at so outrageous and inappropriate a comparison. I did not, of course. I drank up my enabling like a great wine. Yes, I said, blushing a bit, what is a saving a life worth?  Life is short, brutish, why shouldn’t I do what I want whenever I wanted to do it? Why not make it count?

It was years before I really understood the power and meaning of Thoreau’s notion of a meaningful life. Self-determination is not a license to do everything I wanted, quite the opposite, it required me to not do most of the things I wanted and to know the difference. A meaningful life is simple and truly self-sustained. That is the core of independence – living a life I don’t need other people to support.

It still takes my breath away that in all of those mad years, no one, not a single person in my life, my family, my friends or colleagues ever took me aside, called me up, sent me an e-mail, wrote me a letter and said, friend, you can’t go on like this, you can’t do this, you need to stop and get help, something is wrong with your life.  You can’t spend money you don’t have, animals are not people, they cannot long perform the functions of people, and you can’t expect other people to bail you out of your life.

And you know the reason for this? It was my fault, not theirs. It turns out a lot of people thought that I was in trouble, were worried about me. But I was so good at manipulating people, drawing them into the drama of my life, that I made sure I was never in a position to listen. I was passionately convincing about my life, so much so that I even fooled myself. And of course, I could not have heard any other messages.

I was in a panic all of the time. My phone rang constantly with people who soothed me, fussed over me, assured me I was on the right course, doing the right thing, offered help. I got scores of e-mails from people admiring my drive, my nerve, my determination and courage. I was Christic, after all, prepared to sacrifice all for what I wanted.

I realized at some point that I was living a delusion, or a series of them. I was surrounded by  an army of enablers, people drawn to drama and crisis, people I used and re-used, and they thought it was an act of friendship to keep me going, to prop me up, to help me deny the reality of the world, of my life. They are all gone from my life now, although some are still in my head. As I awakened, as I began to recover and be healthy, I found I could not bear to be around them, it was so uncomfortable. Enabling, of course, is not friendship. Enablers vanish when you get well, the relationship simply withers. You cannot have a healthy relationship with an unhealthy person. Enabling, I learned, is not love. It was not about me, it was about them. It did not solve a single one of my problems, it merely helped me to hide in them, to delude myself and to avoid reality.

I have new friends, and they are not enablers. My friends today do not hesitate to speak truthfully to me, to challenge me, to help me respect boundaries. They do not simply enter my life when summoned, we share our lives together. They are bounded.  When I panic, I do not call them. I call me. I do not tell them how to live, or panic alongside of them.  I know when I have made a good friend, because they do not try and save my life or support my poor decisions. They do not rush to bail me out, and I don’t wish them to.

They do not tell me it is virtuous to live a life of disconnection and impulse. . Nothing is free, surely not the enabling of a life. Friends just offer love and companionship. Enabling is not help. I can only save myself.  It took me a long time to sort out the difference.  And love is not the same thing as enabling either, this has been one of the larger lessons of my life.

Life looks different as I get closer to the end than the beginning. These lessons are for me, I don’t believe any longer that I have the answers for other people. Everyone has to make their own way, learn their own lessons, live their own life.

I have already lived long enough to understand the notion of consequence. That is not, of course, something one grasps at the other end of life. Maybe that’s for the best, perhaps it’s for a reason. Consequence is one of the mind’s great inhibitors and restrainers, the mother of perspective. Think of all the amazing things that would never get done if people understood what it really cost. I suppose I might never have come to Bedlam Farm in the first place.