Demonalia Strikes Again

Well, I'm embarrassed to say it - but I've been having a pity party for the past couple of weeks. A real doozie of a pity party too. My initial excuse for this particular "celebration" was hearing from my brother. Contact - or even the threat of contact - with my brother tends to make me a little crazy. It is not, however, his fault. His reappearance (however peripherally) on the scene was really just an excuse to visit old haunts and start beating up on myself. I think maybe there needs to be another AA spin-off group called Abyss Divers Anonymous. You think you're clean and on solid and reasonably unshakable high ground and "whoosh!" a little tremor, some little flash from the past and off the cliff you jump, right into Pathos Pool. Of course part of the whole process is pretending to yourself that you've been pushed. But that's self-delusion. Pathos Pool can only be entered on a voluntary basis and swimming there is a kind of Demonalian reunion. It's a dreadfully dismal place, yet for those of us who come out of deep dysfunction it has an odd allure. I was talking with a friend of mine the other day and we both agreed that even though we hate our dives into our respective pits of despair, there is also something strangely comfortable about the Abyss. Even when you have moved yourself out of Demonalian haunts, crossing back into them feels oddly comfortable. They feel like home, like a well broken in pair of blue jeans. In Pathos Pool you just hang out. It doesn't demand much of you. Except, of course, your Joy, your Hope and your sense of Self. Thinking about it, it occurs to me that maybe part of it's allure - and it does have an allure - is that it's one place where those of us who were not well nurtured get what passes for sympathy. It's the place where our pain gets acknowledged. This being Demonalia*, of course, it also gets judged. Still, even if it is only our wounded selves, someone cares about our hurt, someone understands. Even as it isolates and condemns us, Pathos Pool offers a perverse comfort. "You poor thing," it whispers. "You poor pathetic useless thing." To a psyche starving for a bit of tenderness, cruel "love" is better than none.

But what on earth could have induced me to take this dive? I've been working so hard and making so much progress. Why would a letter from a stranger telling me that my brother wants to contact me make me throw away all I've learned and jump off a cliff into this pond of gloom and self pity? Well, I guess the answer is that core beliefs die really hard and despite years of therapy and the certain knowledge that contact with my brother is toxic to me, I still feel guilty about disliking him. About abandoning him. And I still feel endangered by him even though I know that he can't hurt me. He is very ill with Parkinson's disease. He is probably dying.

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