Not all who wander are lost — J. R. R. Tolkien

I'm just wandering, a bit lost on purpose, but still making my way, exploring, so please forgive the disjointed tone of this post.

I've been reading, a lot, for the last month and I suppose I use fiction a bit like other people use drugs. Books are an escape, even if only for the duration of 356 pages. My latest obsession is a series by Keith Ablow whose main character is a forensic psychiatrist, not unlike the author, Dr. Ablow. His obvious forte is the darker parts of the psyche.

I don't know why I'm so attracted to it other than to say I see something of myself in both the healer and in the tormented, twisted killers. I’ve always been fascinated by the mind and the ways in which it will protect itself. A lot like the main character of this book, I have a hard time not wanting to hear others stories if only to see what they endured and their subsequent life results both normal or not. There are many unknown, mitigating, and circumstantial factors with which we are bombarded and those elements shape us into who we are, not what we do, but who we are underneath the artifice of our jobs, and the persona we often let others view. Those hidden seeds, planted in early in life, often bear unrecognizable fruit. It is that fruit I want to examine first in me and subsequently in others.

I think the majority of individuals are capable of even the most vile and horrifying of acts when pushed to their limit. Put someone in a corner and they will come out fighting with wielding whatever weapon they have at their disposal or they will collapse. I want to know why one will fight and the other will not.

Research shows skin cancer usually manifests itself from a sun burn received early on in our childhood and the worse the burn, and the earlier the burn, the more likely your changes of developing melanoma. While the surface colors an array from salmon pink to lobster red the real damage is deep. And it stays deep. Well below the surface, the damaged cells can take years to mutate into a cancer which may very well take the life of its host. Then again, the damage may not mutate at all. Those changes may simply produce wrinkles and a few age spots, and while seen as aesthetically undesirable, they are hardly life-threatening.

I often wonder if our brain works in much the same way.

Within the last half-century we’ve progressed form a June Cleaver, Ozzie and Harriet view of the world where no one talked about the obvious elephant in the room to our present reality-television obsessed society where we not only discuss the elephant but parade him around in hopes someone will pay for us to be the next guest on Jerry Springer, Judge Judy, or any variety of show pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Why being mentally healthy has always been viewed as secondary to physical health I don’t know. I do know I am thankful we’ve come out of the “dark ages” where I’m perfectly comfortable telling someone I suffer from depression. Ever the inquisitor, I continually look for the answer to my depression to my ups and downs. Ever ephemeral, the answer continually eludes me. I’m questioning nature verses nurture which is both age old and, in my woefully-uneducated estimation, unanswerable.

Being in the middle of a separation and headed to divorce, I can attest to emotional wounds being more exhausting and taking much longer to heal than physical ones thus prompting the following questions and observations. The ability of the body to heal itself is nothing short of a miracle and children seem to bounce back from physical scrapes, cuts and burns much more quickly than do adults. With that in mind, those values are also superimposed onto emotional scrapes, cuts and burns.

We think children are too young to remember certain events or that because their minds are still in the developmental stages they’ll quickly forget and move on to whatever the newest and latest craze it. But, what if our brain takes those emotional scrapes and cuts, an emotional “sunburn,” from our childhood in whatever form it occurred—physical, emotional, verbal, sexual abuse or some other tragedy—and files it away. There, in the deep recess of our psyche, it sits and begins to mutate, transform. What happens then? Are the resulting depressions, psychoses, and violent manifestations a form of emotional cancer? Can a parallel be drawn between the severity of the emotional trauma and the depth of ones depravity? Or, due to nature—or nurture—are some people better equipped and the resulting neuroses the equivalent of an age spot or a wrinkle.

I know, right about now you’re probably wondering why I couldn’t post on the innocuous. I don’t know. It’s just not the way my brain works. Right now I’m trying to navigate through uncharted territory and keep the damage from turning into cancer. Writing about it is cathartic and, oddly enough, relaxing.