We are all filled with a longing for the wild. There are few culturally sanctioned antidotes for this yearning. We were taught to feel shame for such a desire.We grew our hair long and used it to hide our feelings.But the shadow of Wild Woman still lurks behind us during our days and in our nights. No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D. in Women Who Run With the Wolves
I keep telling you that I am not the kind of mammal that is likely to curl my tail under and lie down on the rug by your door. But you do not believe me. The truth is, after I have dutifully fetched your slippers, affectionately nuzzled your groin and posed pitifully on my haunches for your approval, I am more likely to bite your hand off than I am to lick your fingers. Like the she-wolf you see on the right, my eyes are clouded and dark with this knowing. They are filled with a deep instinctual longing and they are shadowed with the willful desire to return to my inherently wildish nature. And that is exactly what I intend to do here, I intend to use this site to return to the wildish nature that is inherently me.
So if there is anything you need to do do take care of yourself, please do it now before we go any further. Do whatever it is you need to do when someone like me exhibits all the symptoms of a rabidly slow dying dog. Give me a "crazy" label and write me another prescription. Call what I have Manic Depression or Bi-Polar Disorder or whatever DSM IV diagnosis makes you sleep better at night. Then dial your local Mental Health Hotline and gather the required signatures for an Involuntary Committment. Tell the judge you need to reserve a bed at the State Hospital because "in your opinion" I am not "in my right mind". Bring on the cops. Have Officer Dolittle do welfare check on my invisible barking dog make sure he checks to see if my vaccinations are up to date. Just don't expect me to be here wagging my tail for you when they come to take me in because I'm not buying it. I'm not going to the hospital without a fight and I'm not taking any more prescription drugs to make you feel well. I'm sorry but my four-pawed inner life does not fit neatly into any of those goody two-shoed pill bottles the doctor has ordered and my insurance carrier doesn't cover the kind of therapy I need. What I really need to do is howl and I need to HOWL OUT LOUD. So do yourself a favor, check your m.d. at the door and stick all that psycho-babble crap right back up your ass because I don't need it. Then just read it and weep.
This website is not supposed to be about my disease and it is not supposed to be about you. It is supposed to be about how I am when I am normal or when I am as normal as I am allowed to be within the constraints of my prescribed psychotropic medication. The perception is mine and if I seem a little defensive about it, it is because I am. This is my life. It is as raw and as real as venison steak on the flank of a deer and it comes to me in very deep and very personally centered way. You will probably never truly understand what I sense here and what I feel here if you profess to be normal.
I honestly believe that this disease I have is more about what you assume about my condition than it is about what I actually do or how I actually behave. And of course,you protest. You tell me that my disease isn't about you at all. But that is where you are wrong. My disease is always about you. Functionally it is your disease because it is always your discomfort that sends you running for that strait jacket and filing that petition to lock me up. "For my own good" is what you say but it is always for your sense of well-being and peace of mind that I go in for treatment. It is always you that feels threatened by the presence of my shadow-self and it is always you that wants to permanently alter my brain chemistry with psychotropic drugs to abolish her. You want me to be more normal. And, yes you have proven that you can fill me with toxic chemicals, make me appear shadowless and call what it does to me normal. We all know that. But can you truly see me in the darkest night of my soul and make-believe it is all right? I don't think that you can. And surely, you must be aware that your shadow follows you like a tail wherever you go too.
Deep down in my soul and at the very ends of my whiskers I sense your fear and I feel your misgiving in my life. And I know that this Bi-Polar condition you have tethered me to is nothing but a rusty old bear trap designed to dismember me. It threatens to make me less of who I am and I will always fight it because I want out of it. In spite of what you might think, it does not really relinquish it's hold on me when I put a smile on my face and swallow the poison in these pills each day. The Lithium salt you leave out for me to lick up is not really the panacea for what troubles my soul and the Risperidol in my water dish does not banish the psychosis from my mind so much as it saps my spirit to do anything about it.
I am painfully aware that the state of my distemper is probably a much more systemic problem than it is a symptomatic brain disorder but there is not a hell of a lot I can do about it. The system is not an economically feasible or politically palatable discourse that any deer reader with the power to do anything about it is likely to entertain on my behalf and such frivolous philisophical or sociological pursuits are apt to be misconstrued as a "delusions of granduer" coming from someone like me. Perhaps it is just a stubbornly patriarchial worldview that cages me in and causes me to react so rabidly, but more likely it is the famine of feminissima in my life that starves my very soul and emaciates my dogged spirit. Enough said.
At any rate, I what I know. I know that the nature of my mental illness means that my feelings don't matter and my thoughts and opinions need not be listened to or taken into consideration. It is far easier to believe that it is just my disease talking than it is to admit I still have human wants and needs and desires beyond the length of my leash. I know that my social security number has been permanently adhered to a Bi-polar label that means I can expect to live quite marginally on the fringes of a "normal" society if I take my medicine as prescribed and in a cage at the state hospital if I don't. And finally, I know that I will be forever mad because someone else (probably someone just like you) decided that it was irrefutbly so.
And on that note you will have to pardon me while I squat down right here and piss all over this page to mark my territory again. Yes, I did take my pills today and I'm in the ordinary urinary way that drinking plenty of fluids to keep the Lithium toxicity level in my bloodstream down to a "normal" level nessecitates. Please understand that I do not mean to offend you or scare you away. It's just that she-wolves, she-dogs and bitches like me aren't normally bashful or ashamed of our normal biological functions. You know that you are always free to go. You can jump up and leave whenever you feel like it, you need not be tied to the sympathetic treatment of my dis-ease. Just try not to limp away because this particular self-respecting bipolar bitch is likely to have you for lunch. Even in pharmacuetical captivity we are after all, still extremely predatory creatures.
Once again, the purpose of this website is to give you an idea of what it is like to be me and this is one of the only outlets I have left in which I feel free to express the more feral and ultimately the more normal side of myself. The Wild Woman Clarissa talks about in her book is not as soulfully extinct as she is woefully endangered. She is still in me and she is always welcome here. She is welcome wherever I happen to dig my shelter hole. If you don't like her or you can't deal with her or you want to tame her or maim her or tie her down, then do yourself a favor...just beat it and be gone. You don't belong here. There are plenty of dear people, plenty of deer people and plenty of dear deer people in my life who are more than willing to let me know when I have crossed the "because I don't like you when you get this way" line, I really don't need any more negative feedback in my life. Remember this deer reader, I am a carnivore and deer is the main staple food in my diet.
. If you haven't clicked me off yet,either you are a pretty brave homo sapien or you are related to me. Then by all means welcome to my den. Sit down, pour yourself a huge cup of coffee or whatever caffienated beverage still perks your ears up and heightens your senses and make yourself as comfortable as you can in my personal space. I'll try not to bite you but there are never any guarantees in life. If you don't mind, and even if you do, I'm going to try to re-erect my dually disordered sense of self and indulge in all the creature comforts of my diagnostically deranged life while you look on. I call it do-it-myself dog-nitive therapy for a dog-eat-dog world.
Incidently,Women Who Run With the Wolves is my most favorite book in the whole wide world and I encourage you to read the excerpts on this link if you want a little more psycho-spiritual doggie do-do to go on as you attempt to figure me out. The image of the pair of wolves up on top is a digital photo of the wallpaper border that circles half the wall in my bedroom. The heads of the canids you see are replicas of the ones that cast shadows on the ceiling where I sleep and I like to think they hang around here to protect my Wild Woman dreams. The Yellow Wallpaper in the background of this page where I metaphorically peed is really my personal tribute to another piece of literature I often identify with. It was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 and it gives the reader great insight into medical treatment of womens mental health concerns even today.Go ahead and click the link, I dare you. Read the synopsis if you just want to chuckle; read the whole damn text if you want really want to howl and hear this. AH...AH...AH...WWWOOOOooo... (That's a really loud wolf woman howling like a bitch)
