THEORIES OF PERSONAL GUILT
I recently wrote a faux ad for a seminar I never gave, a humorous article really, entitled "NEW SEMINAR GIVEN BY FAMED PSYCHIC, HOW TO BE A PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE" which really is a laughing gas history of all the earliest signs of insanity that my now, locked-up, once delusional but now totally sane son gave off.
I published it on my own website, an honor that uneducated, unpublished, wannabe media pundits can freely allow themselves for the stipend of roughly 5$ a month and I promptly got an e-mail fan-letter from a reader who asked if I had any other experiences, cognitions or revelations' on Covert Aggression.
I told her that my research tool or guinea pig, the sole source of experience with this odd stripe of behavior, recently had been locked up in a state loony bin. Diagnosis, paranoid schizophrenic. And I told her I now could contribute one more fact: that such aberrant behavior as Passive Aggression doesn't come from a SANE person..... it comes from the totally berserk.
Covert aggression isn't logic and hate. It is illogic and hate. I told my reader that one was not responsible for the part of the aggressive person that is illogical, but one MAY be responsible for the hate. That was my part in the dance. At times I have been less than graceful and well-mannered. I tell myself, who of us hasn't been?
See, as a mother of this young man, I feel guilty. Part of my brain says I should NOT be; I didn't cause his chemical imbalance. I fed him tofu and carrot juice. Good Mommy! Madness is like a random bullet which takes someone out in a stadium. I shouldn't feel that a mad son comes to a mother who deserves it. Still, I do. I think that I created his hostility then, that created his madness.
This son was ---(I must fight this past verb tense) HE IS my favorite son). I have two others to compare him to....denizens of the real world both of them, and sadly so. They are judgmental, alienated, unfeeling punks in comparison.) He was different. He had feelings and forgiveness. I felt that he cared about me the first dozen years. He certainly wept at my tragedies. He went on to be a kind, feeling person in later life, although mostly for OTHERS. For instance, lighting candles and praying for the welfare of starving Mexicans, writing little prayers on pieces of paper, saying "I am cause in this matter, I decree that they will get food." After he reached age 13, when anger and testosterone hit the bloodstream, he never was wholeheartedly sweet to me. I thought that was simply puberty. He pretended to be respectful and during the next decade, pretended better and better. I was able to collect a lot of info on covert aggression and the forms it takes.
But, now that the dear little guy's gone, to the big padded room in the sky I reflect on our 30 years together and ask myself, which came first ... his hostility to his mother? Or his hostile behavior? Or his GUILT for his hostile behavior to me? And did that guilt lead to his madness? That's the theory next door to it, that goes "Whom the Gods abhor they first drive mad" which pivots on the concept that if we hate ourselves, then God hates us, the exact, metaphysical theorem being that when hate ourselves, the part of US that is God --- drives the part of US that is NOT --- NUTS.
But conscience can come up with so many theories of personal responsibility here. I no doubt did plenty of things to him that demanded hostility. Did those selfish things precipitate his madness? Should I feel guilty and drive myself mad along with him? And then, there are these whole OTHER collateral questions. Which came first, his insanity or his insane behavior? His hate, his guilt or was there a basic insanity? And when I try to focus on all these angles and questions, my brain STOPS dead. Such mental wanderings make brains freeze up. They are a ZEN KOAN that blitzes gray cells entirely. I don't know why they call brains gray cells. These neurons only process BLACK AND WHITE facts. THEY abhor the color gray and any gray information will shut down the black and white bi-nominal thinking system entirely.
Well, I am not sharp enough to figure out what happened. I have to stop carding and re-carding the tangled skeins and facts of our shared history and just realize that I miss him. I'm sorry if I caused him to go mad. I'm sorry I was a bad mother. I used to kick cats, now I adore them, and can't understand how I once was so unfeeling ? People evolve is all. I really do love him. I want to do something primitive like get down on my knees and PRAY that he get well. That the State goes easy on him. That some doctor at the nuthouse transfers to him, sees the goodness, the Messianic sweetness and that my son transfers to someone out there and somehow grabs a ladder out of the snake pit. I don't actually get down on my knees and PRAY however, because I'm a card carrying scientist. I stick to facts, to what's proven and the power of prayer is NOT proven. Of course I don't have the scientists notebook full of facts. I can't remember much. I can't figure out what went wrong with him and me because I wasn't really there when it happened.
My memory, like my intuition does not go there so there is no possibility of an answer. The State has answered for us, having taken upon itself to dose him with an ARSENAL of drugs they have that will stop the hallucinations, voices, illogical assumptions and stop that messianic compassion for this tilted world which keeps him in pain.
After 7 months of his being on Gov issued drugs, I ask him.... Do you still have wild ideas? No, he says. How about the OLD WILD ideas, I ask. (His crime was that he had lit a small fire in a shed at his factory the place where he had worked, thinking an airplane would see it and get to the airport OK, delusional.) So Today I ask him, “Do you still think a werewolf lives under the bridge onVictory Blvd?? “ “YES” is the answer. So modern medicine can't cancel out old beliefs but new ones aren't getting thought up as much.
There's a pony here somewhere. If anyone is EVER covertly hostile to you again... you can SUSPECT him of being totally off his rocker, a paranoid schizophrenic, delusional and even a STUPID person. Yes, I have proven this. Madness takes a very low IQ. Mental illness can't RAVAGE us if we're smart. We see the signs of impaired logic and say HOLE ALARM!!
To recognize an assumption as delusive, specious metaphysics, is to be sane. ALL our crazy hunches are not real! For instance, I THINK that I see a big case of impending GUILT stirring in me, and personal madness on the horizon. You see, I did smoke grass once when I was pregnant. Maybe I fried his neurons at the factory level. A MOM boiling her innocent, unborn son's brain in cannabis? And now God has punished me for it! EEK! Guilt's a dangerous thing, and now I've got a sign on my back which says "bad karma! God, kick me some more"
Any scientific, reasonable person would know karma, like the theory of an avenging God, doesn't exist. Karma is an oriental superstition and there are herbs one can take for it. Just as there are pills one can take for guilt. Prozac they call it. And drugs for lunacy. Demons can be tamed by science.
Man keeps trying to design a guilt free Brave New world and keeps trying to hammer it into existence but maybe God didn't design it that way.
NOTE:
It is now APRIL 2008. My son has been away for almost 10 years, locked up by
the state of California, in a Carrot Cooler. Called PATTON MENTAL HOSPITAL His
Public Defender was reassigned and doesn’t know this. If he’d taken a straight
‘guilty plea’ he’d have been out in six months. He was instructed by his PD to
plead not guilty by reason of insanity. She assured us that then he’d be able
to vote, have a clean record So far, 4 shrinks and l00 psych techs and l00
prison guards have made between $60,000 and $200,000 each per year thanks to my
son’s continued presence there. I might add that the PHARMACEUTICAL
corporations have made a sum between those two sums on on the drugs he’s been
force fed. My dear little son should be pissed but he’s charming,
conversational, friendly to all. Which to them, absolutely proves conclusively
that he is crazy.
If
your mom made you wear this
wacked
jacket, you'd be a lil bit
nuts,
too!