Reflections from my therapist:
‘Now wait a minute,’ you’re going to say. ‘These are stories, not history. What I want to know is, when and how did the events Luke described in his ‘autobiography’ actually take place?’ As Luke’s therapist, I am paid to be concerned for his mental health and have asked myself that question many times, sometimes in disbelief. I know Luke’s history more than most, from our therapy together, and because I have read his works over and over again. Aside from my doubt, I have idealistically longed to see some of the beautiful ideas he wrote about come to fruition–even if it only amounts to fantasy.
If only I could hold in my hands, just once, the wonderful tools he used from within, that inner excellence. I do believe it took place, I do believe he carried out what I conceive was profound heroism. As far as I can tell, it turned out that most of it, if not all of it, was true. Not in every detail, of course: the heroes named in the songs were not real names, but the giants and witches you might find in fairy tales were in this case, as real as history.
The world that Luke describes – the prostitution, the homeless, the trains and tunnels, ports, interstates by bike, car, truck, and by foot, San Francisco, Barcelona, Baton Rouge, Houston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, and the epic showdown at the Sagrada Familia, in addition to the everyday people who have become or will become world leaders, or more like princes and princesses, they were all there at the exact right time, they were and are true heroes.
Being concerned for Luke’s mental health, I asked my colleagues for their opinion, but they didn’t believe me. But I didn’t give up. I have to admit I was obsessed.
I could not put it aside, so one day I went to some of the places and met some of the people to see for myself. And set about digging in search of all the things mentioned in Luke’s stories. I discovered the people he called the Dr3am T3am. He believed they were future presidents, diplomats, social activists, writers, and scientists. I contacted some of these people and just as Luke’s words had described them, they were stellar human beings full of real-life potential. And when I kept looking I found the whole world there, too, and dug there.
It turned out that the world really was being destroyed by fire in some of the ways Luke described. He was not wrong, we desperately needed to walk for the world. And yes, he had stepped up and told the truth from the top of a mountain.
My records of every weekly conversation I have had with Luke for the last eight years has been compiled in the form of an inscription. The work serves as a way to understand a life that could not have been lived by anyone else rather than Luke. For a long time no one could put a date to it, including Luke himself, until one day, I came up with a simple chronological outline of the important mental health pillars of his life, based on our work together. On it–for some it might as well have been in hieroglyphs–there is a breakdown of the stories he told into a real account of history, the when and the how. This is what I gave to Luke to do whatever he wanted with…
This is a breakdown of Luke’s story and a therapist’s experiment with truth:
Luke was born in Berkeley, California where his father was doing his PhD in Literature. He was raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with a year-long stint in Wales, a month in Russia in high school, and a month in Paris after graduation from the first black public school in Louisiana. He was the team captain of both the tennis team and soccer team and excelled in his studies.
He attended University of Wisconsin out-of-state and earned near perfect grades. In his fourth year he studied abroad in Holland for a full year. That is where he met his future wife, Anna, and fell in love for the first and last time.
That all happened with relative normalcy…
Now we will break things down chronologically, starting with early accounts of mania and depression, as a mental health survey that attempts to capture the incredible volatility and periods of calm that guided Luke’s journey up until now:
A. 1st Manic Episode (Age 22) / 2006
Wedding (Los Angeles) – Euphoria
Honeymoon (Berkeley, San Francisco) – Euphoria
Invitation to a homeless man/biking on Interstate (Los Angeles) – Mania
UCLA| Neuropsychiatric Hospital (Los Angeles) – Psychosis/Dysphoria
Inpatient – 1st Suicide Attempt (Los Angeles) – Mania (*not depression)
B. 1st Depression (Age 22 -25) / 2006 – 2008
Deep Sadness
Earned UCLA Sociology Master Degree
Taught the UCLA course ‘Sociology of Mental Illness’
Chronic PTSD/Catastrophic Thinking
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
C. A prolonged period of joy (Age 25 – 32) / 2008 – 2015
Move to Barcelona
Instant feeling of connection and friendship
Early writings
Professional success
Stimulating, exciting environment
Extensive travel
Happy marriage
D. 1st Melancholy Period (Age 32 – 33) / 2015 – 2016
Separation from Anna
Move to New Orleans
Isolation and loneliness
Relative Professional success
Mixed emotions (Sadness and happiness fluctuate)
E. 2nd Manic Episode + 2nd Depression (Age 33) / 2016
Return to Barcelona
Final breakup with Anna – Mania
WalkTalkNow development – Mania
Sagrada Familia (Theory/Action) – Mania
Hospitalization Barcelona (Dysphoria/Depression)
Return to Baton Rouge
Houston/Los Angeles/Oakland – Mania
Hospitalization New Orleans – Depression/Mania
Ghetto Homelessness Bus Station Atlanta – Dysphoria
Miami – Mania
Return to Barcelona
Relationship with Prostitute – Mania
2nd Suicide Attempt – Dysphoria
Hospitalization Barcelona – Depression
F. 2nd Melancholy Period (Age 34) / 2017 Spring
Compilation of writings and crafting a draft of the ‘story’
Dejected and dispirited
Negative sublimity/grandiosity
G. 3rd Manic Episode + 3rd Depression (Age 34) / 2017 Summer, Fall
(3rd and 4th serious suicide attempts – back to back hospitalizations)
Baton Rouge suicide attempt / knife – Mania
Baton Rouge Hospitalization – Depression
Louisville suicide attempt / jumped – broke neck and hips – Psychosis, dysphoria.
Louisville Hospitalization – Deep Depression
Baton Rouge Hospitalization – Mania
H. 3rd Melancholy Period + 4th Depression Period + Normalcy / Stability (Age 35 – 43) / 2018 – 2027
Rapid mood fluctuations
Intensive / compulsive writing
Comforts of Family
Sense of home
Hope for future
———-
Further Reflections from my therapist:
I outline Luke’s story and I am sorry for reducing it to an outline, it was obviously lived with much greater complexity. I hope Luke and anyone he chooses to share it with will understand that melancholy, joy, depression, mania, euphoria, dysphoria, and psychosis are categories. They reduce intricate systems of meaning and emotion and feeling into words that don’t do it justice.
In the span of a day, Luke would describe feeling a wide range of all of that complexity experienced moment by moment, from joy into depression, from mania into dysphoria–almost all at once. In contrast, there are absolutes stretched over great periods of time that can be accurately characterized with those categories–depression is depression, mania is mania.
What I want to convey is that Luke’s story is based on reality, it took place, a when and a how transpired, and although it is broken down in the simplest of ways, now you know that it did happen in the lifetime of one man / one spirit. Of course, I can’t capture the concept of spirituality here, I would like to be able to, but I know that a very different outline would be necessary. Without his spiritual trajectory, none of what I have written down makes any sense.
This outline is a bare minimum with a very basic explanation. I don’t suggest that this is all-encompassing, rather it is a simple tool for understanding a complex mind. Behind categories like, ‘mania’ or ‘melancholy’, is a person who has lived a vast range of emotions and a wide array of experiences. I wouldn’t doubt that Luke would feel a little disappointed to see this therapeutic exercise presented to him. I would remind him that it is a simple tool to help us understand great complexity and a meaningful, spiritual, and real life.
-Dr. Osbourne
From: Luke
I am deeply grateful for the work that my therapist put in to capture the history of my mental health, and of course, all those years of therapy that helped me immensely.
I’m pretty crazy…that much is clear. I would only add that from the sociology of emotion we know that the inner life of a human being is so profound that it cannot ever be measured.
Without the tools of psychotherapy and psychiatry I would be much more lost than I otherwise would be. So I am not going to argue with the chronological mental health survey that you have presented here. That answers the question of when it all took place, and how I was emotionally during those distinct times.
I have to admit I am wary of the complexity of my mind being reduced to psychiatric categories. I have to admit sometimes it feels like an insult. When someone says, “I am bipolar” in group therapy, I cringe. I want to say that you are not a mental illness, you may have one, but it doesn’t define who you are.
If I am me, would I have taken a pill that would have prevented the mania, the depression, the melancholy? Would the world be a better place if a magic pill cured anyone who lived a life of volatility? Where would we be if we were all stuck in a constant state of normalcy, and all the edge, struggle, and complexity was ironed out.
So the question is…would I have done it differently? Would I sacrifice all the peaks of euphoria to avoid all the difficulties? It is a question I ask myself every day.
It might seem from the account provided by my therapist that I deserve your pity. Who would want to oscillate so violently to the point of attempting suicide? I know and remember the state of mind that led me to such wild ends. It’s painful to revisit and I revisit it often. And there is so much more in between that plagues me every day. But there are easy moments when I know how beautiful this world is, and all of it seems worth it, just to admire this simple green tree.
My therapist understandably does not account for all the beautiful moments, in between the most extreme psychiatric categories. After all, in the midst of depression there is the delicacy of a chocolate bar or the amazing web of a small spider. It is in between where the most profound experiences can be found. Euphoria and dysphoria flip over each other in a single moment, and then back again…you don’t know if this universe is exquisitely beautiful or absolutely horrendous, and the answer is that it is both.
When I look back at this mental health survey, it makes me sad. It seems like the bad bits are more frequent than the good ones. I don’t know….it makes me feel kinda crazy. And I worry that anyone reading this is also going to come to that conclusion. I am tempted to hide it, but I do think it is important to be straightforward and honest. My battle with mental illness is real. And if I am to claim that my life is more than that, I need to acknowledge that this has definitely been a lifelong struggle of mine.
I wish I could say that I have put mental illness behind me, but I haven’t. I will say that every day is totally unique, a different taste of the polarity of my mind. Sometimes it is exhausting. But it is always interesting.
What is to come? Another manic episode, a period of depression, deeper melancholy? Psychosis? Relative normalcy? I don’t know. I wish that an account and survey of my mental health was not just descriptive, but prescriptive–giving me a prescription to take my medicine, go to therapy, and then everything is going to be okay.
I contemplated just leaving my therapist’s account to speak for itself. I wanted to qualify it because frankly it is embarrassing. So I will leave it at that, and let you come to your own conclusion. At the very least, I hope it is informative and helps you understand the when and the how of my ‘story’. I acknowledge that this is as close to a ‘history’ as we can get.
-Luke
-Final Reflections from my therapist:
‘But wait a minute!’ you say. ‘If Luke was so deeply affected by the chaos of mental illness throughout his life, how could he have lived a life that was so full of meaning, ambition, and purpose? And then manage to write down the story and tell the tale?’
As Luke’s therapist, I do my homework and follow his ideas, his poetry, and prose, that he communicated in so many different ways. The writing is special. It flows through him like a rollercoaster of the mind. Anyone can get on, you can read and understand it even if you don’t know about Luke’s history of mental illness, you can assume it, and you can find it in the outline and survey above.
If you find that Luke’s life can be understood in psychiatric terms, the next question is, ‘How did he come up with all that!?’ If it all played out randomly how does it make any sense at all?
From the opposite point of view, ‘It must be magic!’ No, absolutely not, it was really quite simple.
…’What was the purpose of it all?’ For me? To teach the right way of living together as a world, how everybody should be with one another, and how we could come together peacefully if we tried. In this way, Luke follows the sound good sense of all the many-thousand-year-old customs and habits, and he repeatedly urges people today to observe them…everything in life would run more smoothly if people did. Almost by itself, as it were, without the need to think too hard about it.
Everyone who knows the ‘story’ will know that a benevolent hand has been waved at this moment in history. The life lived by Luke was really complicated and contains some lessons that are really hard to learn. So I think we should congratulate our Luke on the ‘story’, not only written, but lived. He is an example of how far the human soul can stretch.
I hesitate to say this or endorse it as a mental health professional, but Luke also exemplifies the power of sacrifice. He risked his life over and over again, in ways he could have never anticipated, but also deliberately knowing full well how dangerous his actions were. The legacy I want to instill from my therapy with Luke, which will be the keystone of my career, is finding a way to persuade Luke to never sacrifice himself ever again. If I can contribute that, as well as provide a way of looking at Luke’s story from a different perspective, I would be really happy, that would give my life meaning. In that way, I think I might earn my piece and ‘perception’ of the seventh hea7en…that would be great.
-Dr. Osbourne
PS.
If Luke’s life was governed only by the turmoil of a sick, chaotic, damaged mind, he wouldn’t be here, he would have died a long time ago. I do believe that someone up above is looking after Luke, and I think Luke did what he did because he was looking after us.
*INSIDE THE CARNIVAL.ME* 