Something personal

"It's what they would say of her years later, that writing for her was a miserable sort of ecstasy; that, in order to write, she had to open herself to the demons of her past. Memories she had struggled for so long to repress were now coming back to haunt her when she would allow them. They would torture her as she translated their experiences into words and for several hours afterward, sometimes even days, before she could bury them again. She would emerge from her writing episodes exhausted from the battle, famished for comfort but unable to give or to receive any, desperate for the times when those memories could once again become merely shadows. Still, even as she attempted to keep them from the surface, they would dance ever closer, teasing her with their nearness, always fooling her into believing that the next time would not be so harsh, the next time it would be easier to subdue them afterwards. And so again she would give into their urgings, and again she would become a victim of herself."
I wrote that during the spring semester of 2007, though an exact date escapes me. As an author, I never fooled myself into believing I was unique or even talented (despite assurances to the contrary from friends, family, and peers), and I certainly didn't think there was anything special about my process. And no, I've never been depressed, despite Hughes statements on 131 that self-deprecation is a symptom of depression. After reading Hughes, I am relieve to know that I was right (after all, who doesn't like to be correct?). There is something unique about each human being, but to discover I was the only one experiencing those moments of fear of my own thoughts and complete surrender to them would have been unbearably lonely, like standing at the edge of a branch on a tree thinking there is someone closer to the trunk who can grab you if you lose your balance, only to look over and find you are standing out there alone.
At the early part of the chapter, Hughes bridges the gap between physical illness and the mind. As a massage therapist, I've often found that my guests hold their troubles and tension in their muscles and other body systems -- stress at work leads to tight shoulders or otherwise inexplicable neck pain, severe emotional trauma leads to constipation or other stomach ailments, to name just a couple. For that reason, in massage school, the instructors spend a great deal of time guiding students through dealing with "emotional releases," when the alleviation of physical discomfort in a muscle leads to uncontrollable crying, because the flight of the physical leads to the flight of the emotional.
It is this mind-body connection that perhaps lends some support to the practices of shamanism. There are people who believe that the work of a shaman involves mainly finding that altered state of consciousness, that alternative methods of healing are no replacement for Western doctors and their medicine. Western medicine has undoubtedly taken society leaps and bounds forward in terms of healing, but that does not mean that there are not other untapped resources. If physical ailments are at least somewhat the result of mental afflictions, would it not follow that the cure may also be found in the mind?
A broken heart is not merely an emotional blow; there is a feeling of oppressive pain on the chest where the sufferer knows his or her heart may once have been. When the "patient" is alone with nothing else to occupy his or her mind, the pain grows, or at the very least does not lessen. But when his or her friends show up, maybe with alcohol or a pint of ice cream, the "patient" takes his or her mind off the pain and the suffering, and soon the discomfort is no longer even there. Perhaps we create our illnesses, surely not all of them, but some of them.