FFM 2015, July 15 - Better

Before, Anne would have gone to a medicine man, who would have told her she was possessed by a demon or a spirit that was making her sick. Take these leaves and burn them, drink this decoction, recite this litany to exorcise the demon. And afterwards, she would feel better.

The medicine man was unfortunately chased into the bush by Christ, whose methods in turn, granted, only differed slightly from the old medicine men. Therefore the men up high far away from the disease and pock-marked faced of the peasantry quickly distanced themselves from the panacea of Christ's healing powers, calling it superstition as bad as demonology. Prayer was still permitted, but Anne wasn't religious at all; at best an old school exorcism could have made her better.

Unfortunately for her, psychoanalysis did its own exorcism on that kind of mental health treatment. Instead came traumas and childhood dreams and Oedipus complexes and other things that made the sickness something that was in her, not in a demon outside of her. She'd never be not-possessed, she'd never remove the thing that made every day seem anxious and gloomy and stomp it into the ground. All she could hope for was to understand that she was sick and hope analysing her childhood would make her better.

Later, a couple of psychiatrists told her she should see it a chemical imbalance in her brain, no different than having a broken bone or a bleeding cut. Taking the right pills would fix it right up - only they hadn't really found the perfect pills for every imbalance yet, but they were working on it. Take these in the meantime. They wanted to pretend the brain was not-her, that the brain could be mended like a broken car. The pills made her feel woozy and sick and not at all better.

She turned to some of the new-age people who said the disease was not in her body or mind, not in her braincells or memories, but on her soul. And that the soul could be cleansed with the right mantras or exercises or just reading this one really great book about the meaning of life. But Anne didn't believe in the soul, no more than she believed in demons. She tried some yoga, and some meditation, and some mindfulness; but they didn't make her better.

Anne was at the end of her rope - literally fingering the thick fibres of the sailor's rope she'd purchased for the purpose - when she made one last plea for mercy to whatever cosmic power held sway over her fate. And from inside her ear popped out a little demon, all smoke and leaves and teeth and skin, and it said: "Oh do not end yourself in this way, for then I shall have no more home to go to. Instead make this tincture the recipe of which I shall give you, pour it on the ground of your ancestors, and recite this verse: 'I banish thee, I let thee free, let me be for eternity.' And you shall be better."

And Anne made the tincture and travelled far back home and all the way she spoke to the little demon in her ear whose name was Basil and whose job was to remind her forevermore of the heartache and sorrows of the world but who had honestly grown rather tired of it and was just waiting for a chance to be leaves and smoke and dust once more. He apologized for his words and implanted thoughts, although they were but his job, and he promised her that he would be much happier doing something else, but that he would always remember her. And so, she poured out the tincture and said the words through her tears, and little Basil disappeared in a puff of smoke. And she got better.