Torn to Tattered

            I’m going to break away from the Neutral Milk Hotel lyrics for one post because I heard a Carbon Leaf song I liked in high school called “Torn to Tattered” and it resonated with me. The lyrics are in plain text and my comments are emboldened. This post will touch on a few themes that interest me right now: my former friend, former religion, and parenting thoughts.

In a classroom somewhere alone

I feel more alone than I ever have—when it comes to the social sphere, not my husband Alex or my son Felix. It’s partly because I’m waking up to the fact that the relationships in my head (largely, relationships from my former college or a mental amoeba of my college community) are not as real as they seemed to be. Take former friend Alice, for example. I thought we were still best friends but she was drifting. Yeah, she should have told me and tried to work things out long before she opened up. But I also could have been more sensitive to reality—not the Alice in my head, but the one who wasn’t contacting me much.
Looking at the window scene

I think of napping Felix every day while he breastfeeds. I stare out the window at my view of the woods.
Tune out the tutor in me

This tutor line speaks to my recent focus on stepping back from Controller (of my environment and of Felix’s growth and life) to Enjoyer. Principally, I want to enjoy him—at each stage, wherever we are at the current time. His life is not about getting somewhere else, and there is no report card for me at the end of this. I’ve been thinking lately, “What is my end goal?” What I am trying to achieve as a parent? Maybe I shouldn’t be achieving at all—just enjoying. I’m sure, if I just enjoyed, that would include all the other necessary steps.
Sun is going down through the line of trees
I day dream

And in my head I walk along
All the paths we have been on

This stanza makes me think of my relationship with my parents and CS. I’ve been thinking a lot about my departure from CS and how it consisted of so many tiny fissures along the way, and I want to write a post about that some time. I should briefly explain now that CS is a Christian sect with an almost exclusive reliance on faith healing and rejection of medical care. They believe true reality is perfect and we need only to change our mindset so that perfection may take shape in the physical form.
There is a chance to bridge the line
Between two points ruptured in time

I’m almost always a little separate from my life though I have my fair share of present moments with Felix. I recently committed to focus on taking him in or accepting him in. It’s easy to feel like I’m not having real conversations during the day, and then I remember that I can just as easily have conversations with Felix even though he can hardly form sentences yet. By watching him, opening my heart to him, and being still and receptive (head/heart/gut connection), I can converse with him. He is valuable. He is respectable. He has contributions.

I’ve also been focused on being real with him, not trying to fake enthusiasm, joy, or interest. When I fake, I think he senses the divide in me. I don't intend to be fake; it’s just a social habit. In order not to be fake, I must be still. It’s more of a receptive state than an active state of adding on to the moment.

I was talking with a friend recently about how we, meaning people, can just be. That is enough. Sometimes we try to multiply our existence by two: the being plus all the controlling and shape shifting. At the same time, I own that I am a shape shifter, and there's only so much presence to which I can surrender. I'm going to try not to go down the rabbit hole of perfectionism and expect myself to be present and authentic with Felix 100% of the time. 
You lived your life like nothing else mattered
And now you're torn, torn to tattered

This line is for me and my mom and all the other C Scientists, or former C Scientists, who felt pressure to commit our lives and our minds to a destructive, and even lethal, religion.

And I don't need any apology
And you know I don't need any apology

I’m grateful that my mom has apologized for raising me in CS; my dad's still in it. At this point, my mom sees through a lot of the BS, especially since she has begun reading an illuminating bio of the religion’s founder. With that said, I have to brace myself for the possibility that, as the bio fades from her mind in time, she may go back to CS for comfort. I do hold out hope that she will rely on medical care from this point on, and I take comfort in the fact that at least I can take full responsibility for making a complete departure from CS.

And it's a long walk away
Oh, it's a long walk away

It’s going to take me so long to get away from CS in my head, especially because it is such a mental religion. You’re basically supposed to be praying all the time, to protect and heal your body, your life prospects, your loved ones, and heck, even your opportunity for a good parking spot. Everything in your life and in others’ lives can be healed. Qué responsibility!  
Torn, tattered. torn...

Certain things make me feel
Like it was when we could steal
The magic of moments real

This makes me think of the manic side of CS, the euphoria. I did have some pretty epic mental highs at the CS college I went to, and I’m not sure now how much was self-generated mental bullshit. Probably most of it.
Revisit. remember. reunion. re-ember
The white smell of burning leaves
Walk along...
You walk the path like Charlie Brown
You're full of hope, but with your head down

As a CS, you believe the world is essentially perfect, and that comes with a lot of highs and hopes, but all of those highs and hopes are contingent on your ability to blind yourself to the lows of reality.
And you only have one eye to see

For me this is a literal line because a CS family member lost an eye to untreated cancer. 
The other's closed, and too scared to peak

This speaks to the CS tendency to deny the negative aspects of reality, even to deny the realities of your own body.  
And silence of the heart can leave you shattered
And now you're torn, torn to tattered

And I don't need any apology
And you know I don't need any apology
And it's a long walk away
Oh, it's a long walk away
Torn, tattered. torn...

Through the line of trees I dream
of only good remembering

I used to see my childhood as almost unexceptionally positive. I was enmeshed with my folks. I thought, “I had independence, lots of alone time, no rules because I was a good kid, and good times with my hilarious, enthusiastic parents.” That’s still all true on some level, but it’s complicated by the fact that there were problems I wasn’t aware of until I had my own child and left CS.   

I think of you. was it...
Was it ever so bad my friend? And what was...
What was ever so bad my friend?

But then, I think, was childhood actually so bad? I mean, sure, CS brought some trauma and learned disassociation. But let’s consider just one ambivalent aspect of my growing up: no rules or discipline. Was that good for me? Maybe I can view it as neither good or bad and just examine how it shaped me and let that inform my decision about how much of that parenting style I want to offer my son. That’s a question for another post.  
And in my head I walk along,
All of the paths we should be on

Now I’m trying to figure out my 5-year plan, my 10-year plan, and my bucket list. I’ve never been much of a planner, partly because I thought I had eternity. Now that I believe I have only this life, I want to be more intentional, as I shared in the last post.  
The sun is down, enjoyed the dream

The false light of religion is gone. I enjoyed the dream, the illusion of perfect reality that CS afforded, but it was a disconcerting way to live because I sensed the actual reality underneath, surfacing in tiny ways. I remember waking up in the middle of the night a few years ago and feeling a thought come up from my body or my unconscious mind, “Do I actually believe that I can heal my vision with my mind, that thoughts can change my actual eyes?” At the time, I chalked this up to “animal magnetism,” a concept in CS of a nebulous, non-embodied devil, but I realize now it was the truth bobbing up. 
I'm full of hope, that you think of me

I almost don’t want Alice to think of me. I feel disgusted, resistant. But I feel accepting at the same time because I understand where she was coming from. I think I’m disgusted by the fact that she’s probably doing just fine--I mean, she was already distant herself when this all started to go down--and I’m stuck with this shard of her in my thought. That’s also my responsibility, but shards in thought are hard to get rid of--mainly because they're not that substantial. It's hard to get rid of something that's insubstantial. Maybe that's why it's hard to get rid of the CS left over in my mind, and it's hard to get rid of the college community in my mind. They're mental and insubstantial. 
I think of you and how much you mattered

Yeah, Alice mattered a lot. And I thought I had taken her in so much that her life philosophy would haunt me, but now CS and Alice are mostly off line. How can I and can I ever get them completely off line? I guess the only thing anyone can do is add new thoughts, not take them away. In fact, maybe my desire to take these thoughts away is a remnant of CS, which is all about extinguishing certain lines of thinking. 
When I'm torn, torn to tattered

And I don't need any apology
And you know I don't need any apology
And it's a long walk away
Oh, it's a long walk away
Torn, tattered. torn...

As I close out this post, I acknowledge that it was a bit all over the place. But one, that's likely going to be true of many of my posts, at least until I get more free time. For now I'm going to slam them out at top speed because I don't have many breaks from Felix. With that said, I'm reminded of how trauma makes for disjointed stories and memories. Part of my goal in writing about my former religion is to come up with a cohesive story. That'll help me process, and to some degree, move out of the trauma. So maybe, over time, this story will get more cohesive, more resolved.