Hero’s Journey

December 14, 2020

Dear Juliet,

You’re the first of my therapists that I didn’t call “doctor” or refer to with a title of any kind. For me, I think at least, this made my experience with you all the weirder at first.

In the last few months, you’ve helped me learn a lot about myself. Some of them were difficult truths to accept. In fact, I had a hard time seeing them as truths at first. I’ve spent a lot of time questioning my own reality, which is something I’ve been used to since I was a child. But now, when I question reality, it collides with the instability of my own identity. That has been incredibly confusing to navigate. 

What a truly vulnerable thing it is, piecing together my own puzzle. The more I learn and the more sense I make of the puzzle, it just seems to grow impossibly bigger. There are more pieces than I could’ve possibly imagined, and it’s frustrating because I just want to know what the big picture actually is. 

It really hit me today how much all of this has affected me. I’ve never been a fan of new diagnoses. Honestly, I thought I had myself figured out. For the most part at least. I thought that I was at a certain point in my journey where I was just coping with my symptoms and learning to live a healthier life. I thought I was managing. But actually I’m still in the discovery phase.

Discovery doesn’t make me feel like some adventurer who’s off finding her treasure either. I don’t feel like some hero vanquishing evil. It’s nothing big like that. In fact, I feel small. And insignificant. And neglected. Like the universe was still in the process of molding me and then forgot me in the middle of the process. I still feel like the lost, confused child that dissociated for the first time in the bathroom stall of her after school daycare. Part of me is still there. 

I’ve been learning about the Hero’s Journey since before high school. It’s pretty standard. The Hero has to leave the Ordinary World behind, usually as a result of some spectacular occurrence. Through a set of trials and tribulations, they emerge victorious and are rebirthed (usually metaphorically) into a champion. They then return home, a Hero. 

It’s taken me years to recognize that I am the protagonist in my own story. I’ve never taken the center stage before. But then again, that’s because I never recognized the power I had in shaping my own narrative. That I got to call the shots in my story. For years, I was used to someone else doing that for me. Someone else telling me what I wanted. Someone else dictating what I needed to do. Someone else deciding what my next step would be. Someone else, but never me. 

It makes me sad that you’re leaving Acacia, that it will soon be our last session together. I’ve had three different therapists this past year, and while it was easier each time to start over, I always felt a little stagnant each time. Because it seemed like each time I changed, I was always close to some new breakthrough. And then I’d be left in the dust again to pick up the pieces of my puzzle. Pieces I’d just discovered, but didn’t know where to fit.

You have lent me powerful insight into my many personas. I know I’m never quite the same each session I’ve had with you. Sometimes I am quieter, more centered. I have greater capacity to listen and accept. Sometimes I am frantic and my mind is all over the place. Those days we spend the session going in circles because I just can’t seem to understand. Sometimes I am inconsolable. My inner child is grieving and my heart cries with her. Those are the hardest days. Because on those days, I can see her grave in my mind’s eye. But I don’t know where I’ve buried her. 

It is the end of the year, which is often a time of great reflection. This year, the greatest lesson I’ve learned is to let go. Cliche, yes. But something novel to me. I’ve grown up feeling the dull ache of my scars, of all the holes that have been slit open inside me and never healed. But I hate to admit they are scars even, for then I’d also have to admit how greatly they’ve impacted me. Weakness. A visible Achilles heel for someone, something to exploit. But my scars burn. A slow scorching flame, self-destructive because I’d much rather be the one burning than anyone else. I never let myself forget, because I always believed that I was the one that set myself on fire. So I forced myself to believe that I had to live with the consequences of my own self-destruction. 

In just the last two months alone, I’ve had to wrestle with two new diagnoses. Bipolar…of some sort. And now potentially schizoaffective disorder. I always wanted to be strong enough to withstand the weight of words leveraged against me. But to do that, I had to let go of the way I saw myself. I had to let myself fall. I had to watch myself break. I had to piece together the ruins. Then I had to do it again. And again. And again and again and again. 

But the truth is, I’m so tired of falling. I’m so exhausted of letting go and not knowing what’s going to happen. I’m so fucking tired. I just want to fall and not break for once. I’m sick of starting over.

Remember I told you about how I self-gaslight? Someone pointed out to me recently that I self-stigmatize too. I’m just figuring out what that means. My entire life, I wanted to belong. I just wanted to fit in. Because my mind made me feel like a freak. Living inside it was scary because it would malfunction, turn against me, isolate me, make me hate myself. So for the last two decades, my inner child was stuck there, alone. 

I just wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted to live like everyone else. I wanted to be normal like everyone else. And so when I first started going to therapy in my first year, it made me angry that I wasn’t like everyone else. Even my depression and anxiety couldn’t be treated with the same medications like everyone else. My thoughts didn’t sound like everyone else’s. My feelings weren’t quite there like everyone else’s. 

So I tried harder to be like everyone else. I ignored my inner child and listened to the voices instead. And in that process, I started to destroy myself. I spiraled out of control. 

But maybe that was my departure from the Ordinary World. It was the realization that I’m not like everyone else. That my mental health won’t simply be managed with consistent therapy and medications. That I am its vessel and it cannot be tamed. That it is bigger than just me and everyone else. That it is the map of my Hero’s Journey.

The Hero’s Journey transcends lifetimes. The fact that it still exists, an allegory of spiritual growth and acceptance means that it guided our ancestors as they wove tales of the first civilizations. And the Hero’s Journey was passed down to us, generation after generation. 

But the Hero’s Journey is not just a textbook lesson. It breathes, just like the rest of us. Because each generation adds a new layer to the story. And the universe’s Hero’s Journey is a humming web of all our individual narratives. 

When I come out of a manic episode or a depressive period or a psychotic breakdown, I feel like I am born again. When I dissociate and disconnect from reality, I can see this happen from my own vantage point. I see myself rise, manic, frenzied, at the top of the world. Reckless, an impulsive teenager, bouncing between the extremes of my moods, unsure of their power, difficult to control wisely. And then I fall into my rings of hell, sinking, drowning down layer after layer. When I fall, I see the graveyard of the spirits before me. The lifelines and journeys that shaped time to cradle my anguish. The generational curses that my ancestors tried but could never sever. The weight of my body, growing cold and lifeless as the last ring of hell envelops me. 

I am faced with an impossible decision each time I stand before the gates of judgment. It is always the same decision. Break the curse? Let go of the image I’d built of myself in my head? Or give up? Slit my lifeline instead? 

I resurface each time. I am always reborn. A child once again, restarting the cycle. 

I never saw myself as a Hero. But then, I also thought that the Hero’s Journey was just a single one. But I’ve lived lifetimes, cycle after cycle, journey after journey. Each time I am reborn, I am a different kind of Hero. But at the end of each cycle, the decision is always the same. Will I choose to be reborn a new kind of Hero? If I do, will I still be the same person? 

Here’s the thing, though. I never forget. I have the knowledge of every Hero I was each time I stand before the gates of judgment. But I have to let go of that Hero every time to be reborn. Even so, she still stays inside me. The good and the ugly. Her unique cycle through the extremes of her mental illness, the negative thoughts, the crazy voices, the lessons she’s learned. 

So all the different times you saw me Juliet, all the different personas, all the different moods, those were all me. Just maybe a different Hero, living in her own specific cycle, each time. 

I had to let go of my perception of myself each time because I have to accept that I am not the same Hero every time. My decisions and actions during each life will change the course of every cycle. And to be reborn, I must be open to building a new Hero of myself from scratch. 

I’ve learned to be more vulnerable with each new therapist I have. I don’t know if you can tell, but with all the new diagnoses lately, I’ve been reborn a few times in the time I have known you. But I’ve gotten better at sharing with you the specifics of each journey. The more vulnerable I am about each cycle and rebirth, the more I learn about the inner child that’s hiding in the bathroom stall way back when. And the more I learn about her, I’ve come to see that she’s not buried somewhere. She’s just waiting to be born again. 

I am the champion in this story, but it’s still being written. In my story, we are not limited to one Hero’s Journey in our lifetime. That would mean that there is an end to the journey. But the legend of the Hero’s Journey has been passed down from our ancestors to the present-day, which means that it will transcend this lifetime to the generations after. 

Perhaps one day, there will be a Hero in the universe’s journey who can see several lifetimes in the span of her own. When she stands before the gates of judgment, she will choose to be reborn. And my spirit will be reborn alongside her because I am as much a part of her as my ancestors who lived the first Hero’s Journey are a part of me. 

The last part of the Hero’s Journey is the Return. You might wonder what that means for me. We’ve talked a lot about things coming full circle. Going back to the spot where I tried to sever my cycle. Reconciliation and healing from the scars burning inside me. My Return is freedom from the self. 

I let go all the perceptions of myself that I’ve created to restrain me. The perceptions that convinced me that it was weak to be mentally ill, that I wasn’t even mentally ill. The perceptions that I have to be in control to be fulfilled. The perceptions that I am not strong enough to pick myself up when I fall apart. The perceptions that I have to be indestructible rather than flexible. The perceptions that I have to act a certain way for others to think I’m like them. That I have to belong somewhere to deserve to exist. That I have to be like everyone else. 

Because I’m not. I never will be. Heroes don’t ask for permission to be Heroes after all. They just are. 

Thank you for helping me piece together this part of my journey. You have been a valuable oasis for me to stop, re-evaluate, and grow. But I’m ready to move on to the next cycle of my journey. And I will always carry you and your lessons with me. 

Maybe starting over isn’t such a bad thing. Not when I know that there’s so much beyond the Ordinary World. So here’s to many more lifetimes, many more cycles, many more journeys. Here’s to being my own Hero. 

Yours,

Ella