On the Road to Therapy
Foreword: I’m delighted to welcome Peter Bein as a guest blogger. Peter is the author of the memoir Maxwell’s Suitcase. He taught English at a small college in Georgia until his recent retirement and is an active member of Dissociative Writers. This post is one of occasional posts by subscribers to DW who describe what it’s like to have DID. ~ Lyn
by Guest Blogger Peter Bein
I usually line up a few topics to discuss in therapy, but Wednesday’s topic gets topped by Thursday’s and Thursday’s by Friday’s and so on. And I try not to mull the topics over in my head and have my parts comment while we’re driving because that is distracting, something I was reminded of the other day by the 70,000 pounds of screaming steel, horn blaring 18-wheeler, just inches from my side-view mirror, so I got off the highway and flipped on the radio to get settled. The jazz station was playing something by John Coltrane. “A Love Supreme.”
Coltrane’s music is usually too crazy for me, but I hear a melody, and I listen. Coltrane plays a nice line, and he plays it again. But then the band begins to wail. The sax goes one way, the trumpet goes another, and the bass goes somewhere else. The drums bang out their own stuff. It sounds like the fox had come into the chicken coop.
I turned the radio up as loud as it gets, like when I was 18, driving to the beach, and I yell at my parts, “THIS IS WHAT IT’S LIKE LIVING WITH ALL OF YOU.”
As I listen a little longer, I realize the jazz band is really all together. The musicians pay attention to each other. They give each other solos. Someone steps back and someone steps up. Then somehow, they all come together. It’s magic.
After I yelled at my parts but before I apologized, I heard a young voice asking me for the magnets, and we remember the pinkish case in the glove compartment of my father’s 1959 blue Plymouth. The case snapped together with two magnets. We remember the texture of those two little lumps of shiny, black metal with an invisible power to attract and push away at the same time.
I wished for my parts to come together like that jazz band. Then, a feeling inside said, “We do.”
Creative Healing 2023
The DW writing anthology is almost at press! Look forward to seeing the written word and works of art in a beautiful new anthology. Our projected publication date is very soon and it will be available for free download sometime later in January. Thank you to all who contributed and to Gabby and Debby who brought it to fruition!
Calling All Healing Together Participants!
An Infinite Mind is holding their annual Healing Together Conference in Orlando FL on February 17-19, 2023. If you are planning to attend or planning to lead a workshop, please let Lyn know so we can arrange for a DW get-together. Gabby is leading a workshop called Grief: Managing Loss through Art and Music, Sharri is leading a workshop called Sharri Shines: Coming Out of the Dark on the Other Side of RA/MC, and Lyn is leading a workshop called Confronting the F-Word. Email Lyn if you’re going by clicking here.
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Music is the shorthand of emotion.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Lyn