Into the Mystic

 

August 25, 2024

Musical Empathy

Tonight I was feeling both restless and lonely, an odd combination that I didn’t know what to do with. Therapy has taught me that when I’m feeling restless, it’s my body’s way of telling me I’m feeling an emotion I haven’t processed.

When I’m restless, I can’t focus my brain on any single thing. If someone asks me what’s wrong when I’m feeling restless, my honest answer is I don’t know. Everything. Nothing.  I needed to solve this if I wanted any sleep.

I grew up learning not to express emotions. Good, bad, didn't matter. I also grew up in a house that loved music. Always music playing. I associated my feelings with music. I learned to associate emotions with music. We couldn't talk about fear, love, pain, joy, beauty, tragedy. So that's how I learned to feel. 

Musical empathy

Without glasses

I closed my eyes because I couldn’t see what I was typing anyhow.

Free flow no rform

Fighting the rules

Always following the rules. Proper grammar, just stopped to lean down at the screen to check my grammar. No. We don’t always have to have rules. Mother.

It’s why I ride.

It’s why I played drums. And why I’m a brat.

I spent my life trying to get attention – look! A girls who plays drums. Looks, she got her masters degree while raising kids and working full time. Look she can support her family and

Van Morrison Into the Mystic

Therapy comes in odd moments for me. And I’e had a lot of breakthroughs listening to music

 

It’s such a beautiful scene, I won’t do it justice.

I spent decades pushing down my emotions.  I was a dry drunk for the first 4 or 5 years of my sobriety because I hadn’t learned how to feel things.

Anyway, not the point of this.

I’m sitting trying to describe the beauty of my sanctuary. I’m overwhelmed in a glorious way. I’m sitting in the corner of my office in the wingback chair wearing only  a bath robe. The only light in the office is the soft glow from y laptop, but I don’t need light. My eyes are closed.

I was sistting on my back porch trying to figure out what was making me so restless. I had my earbud in, playing my calm down and relax playlist. At some point, I took off my glasses to just close my eyes, listen to the music, and feel the hot wind. And incessant mosquitoes, but never mind the bugs. Music has always evoked big emotions in me, but in this moment I stopped to really analyze it.

Musical empathy.

While I grew up in a family that didn’t and still doesn’t talk about any big feelings, good or bad, I also grew up in a family surrounded by music. We listened to music together, we played instruments together. Somewhere early in my life, I learned to attach those big emotions I wasn’t allowed to feel openly to the music I was listening to. I wasn’t supposed to cry in front of my family, so I’d cry in my room listening to music. It wasn’t a big deal to bring home a report card with straight As. We don’t have big joy. We don’t grieve together. We don’t show excitement or pride or sadness or anything beyond a very narrow range of acceptable emotions.

Vincent by Don McLean was playing.

I realized in the moment that tears were rolling down my cheeks. Not weeping, not bawling, but just big fat chubby wet tears. It’s just so sad and beautiful.

And I had a goddammed breakthrough right there on my porch. The trauma of learning to suppress my feelings, big or small, not to celebrate big wins in a big way. That trauma of feelings = bad that turned me into a drunk. That same childhood is where I learned to feel everything through music. The reason I am moved so very deeply by music. Music is how we felt things. This thing all of my family had in common.

The reason I learned that love = music. It’s not that I love music, it’s that music to me IS love. It’s also joy. Pain. Gut-wrenching sorrow. Ridiculous goofy joy.

At this point in my story, Brooks has just walked in, gently touched my toe, and handed me my glasses. For reasons you’ll understand later, I wrote the first half of this blind. Literally.

The reason I was weeping on my back porch for Vincent Van Gogh’s tragic life.

I’ve spent the last year learning how to have emotions. At 51 years old. I’m learning how to say. Hey! I’m sad! Or Hey! I’m angry!

This Night Has Opened my Eyes by The Smiths is playing. It figures.

Therapy, for me at least, is really about figuring out why I act the way I act and do the things I do. I knew I got both a love of music AND a crippled emotional maturity from my family, but until tonight I hadn’t really connected the two.

It was both a duh moment and a huge revelation.

I was still restless, but the mosquitoes were not taking a hint by the crying lady on the porch. Husband and dog snoozing. OK, maybe a sit in the bathroom with the water running?

Sidebar: We have a tiny bathroom. Our bedroom is huge, but the bathroom is hotel-style with the vanity out in the bedroom. The toilet and shower room is pretty small. I turned on the cold water, not the steam. 51-year old women get hot sometimes. I just wanted the moisture in the air. Anyway, there are two choices to sit in the bathroom – on the toilet or on the floor cross-legged facing the toilet. There isn’t room to stretch out. I mean, technically, someone could also sit on the shower floor in several spots, but that’s beside the point. I’m crying, the shower is running cold, I’m sitting cross-legged on my bathroom floor with my earbuds playing my extra-big-feelings playlist. With me? Ok, back to the story.

I started listening to more and more songs. Songs that I knew gave me big feels.

Hallelujah by Jeff Beckley

Bawling.

Into My Arms by Nick Cave

I was crying but then I also started to smile and sway. This indescribable connection I’ve formed between music and emotions, this musical empathy, is a beautiful gift from my family.

Norwegian Wood by The Beatles

I closed my eyes, swaying, crying but also laughing while I remembered sitting cross-legged on the living room listening to records with my sisters and my parents, FEELING Daddy’s bass cut beneath, supporting, soothing while we all sang along.

I needed to write. Now.

Still naked from sitting on the bathroom floor AND with both legs fully asleep and useless, I try to hoist myself upright. Also, of course I was naked, because what kind of animal sits on the bathroom floor with the water running while they are fully clothed?!?

Remember Brooks bringing me my glasses earlier? Here’s where that nugget of information is relevant:

I eventually managed to unfold myself from the pretzel I’d managed to form with my poor legs, and tried to quietly leave the bedroom to get my laptop in the office. I came out of the bathroom and couldn’t find my glasses. I’m very blind, by the way. Trying not to wake my sleeping dog and husband, I tiptoe ever so not gracefully into the closet, next to the bathroom sink. Nothing. Did I leave them outside? I’m frantic now and still blind. I have to get these words out. Next to the bed? Nope. Ooo, maybe I have a spare pair in my closet? These? Nope, Brooks’ glasses. Damn him and his pretty good vision. These won’t help.

Trip over a dog toy. Again.

Screw it. I need to write.

I sat in my dark office wearing only a bathrobe with my laptop. And wrote. Laughing. Crying. Smiling to myself.

Also, my attempts to quietly shuffle around to find my glasses did wake up my very kind husband. He found my glasses under the bathroom vanity.

What in the world was he thinking to find me after midnight, sitting in my chair with my eyes closed in the dark, typing furiously? This isn’t a common occurrence, though he’s had a front row chair watching me get sober and then actually get REALLY sober when I started to learn how to have FEELINGS. He knows when I need to be alone.

How to Disappear Completely by Radiohead

I assured him I was OK and just needed to write before I could sleep. I think he could recognize the Rachel-needs-to-sort-through-something-but-it-has-nothing-to-do-with me tone, gave me my glasses, and went back to bed.

Thank you, baby.

When I first started to write my thoughts were a little jumbled. So I fought every single one of my professional instincts and allowed myself to free write. It didn’t matter if I hit the wrong key or didn’t form complete thoughts at first. Word vomit and it will sort itself out.

In the spirit of sharing my emotional process, I decided not to go back and edit. I think you can probably tell when my brain started to align itself again. If not that, you can surely tell when I stopped writing with my eyes closed and got my precious spectacles back on my tear-stained but very much at peace face.

The last song before I go to bed.

Into the Mystic by Van Morrison

This is the song I’ll be going to sleep to. Hold on a second, I’m going to close my eyes and listen to it again.

And I wanna rock your gypsy soul

Just like way back in the days of old

Then magnificently we will float

Into the mystic

 

I’m going to sleep at peace.

[edited to add]

After this massive expulsion of emotions, I was hungry. 

Scene: illuminated only by the soft glow of the over stove-light, a middle-aged white woman wearing a black fuzzy robe, hair is in a greasy knot. It's 12:57 a.m. She's eating a spoon full of peanut butter while spinning in slow lazy circles, swaying. 

Big Log by Robert Plant

 End scene.