Two months ago I held a man in my arms. I was the first person to touch him in years. He stays in his bedroom almost all the time because he is afraid of people. He is afraid people are going to hurt him and hate him. They might. But what people think has no bearing on his mental illness. He is consumed by what he thinks people think about him. His own assumption of other people’s judgments keep him locked in a 12 by 12 bedroom.
How big is your bedroom?
He is a dancer that doesn’t dance. Except behind the closed doors of the office we were in. There he was a ballerina. A poised-sweaty-deliberate body of art.
He isn’t a very good dancer. But he watched me watch him and saw rapture in my eyes and body language. He danced harder and faster to the unspoken approval I showered on him. His finishing number was filled with anguish and tears and a bow. He got lost in his dance because he felt safe to do so. I recognized him as a dancer.
Who gets you lost?
I held him after that. Tears should have been rung from both shoulders of my shirt. He cried because he spends the majority of his life trapped in a prison in his own head, walls made of unfounded fear. A lie prison. A heavy metal concert of thinking that never stops and is never nice. Some people have a classical music prison, some an opera prison or an oldies prison. The sound in the head, be loud or soft, be nice or vicious, is just that. Sound. Words and pictures that are given meaning with the problem solving ability of the brain. These solved problems that define who you think you are could be your bedroom.
Insanity is not dancing.
My hope is that his tears seeped into my shoulders. I should always be quiet enough to recognize the worst dance and be brave enough to dance my worst dance.
We only die you know.
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