Welcome to Bedlam

Commonly referred to as “Bedlam”, Bethlem Royal Hospital was the first asylum in England for the mentally ill. While Bethlem in its new location is now at the forefront of humane psychiatric housing and treatment, investigation in previous centuries has revealed the monstrous torture inflicted upon residents in the name of medicine.

There are times that relationships have felt very much like being in Bedlam in the bad old days of water torture and electric shock therapy. I get little flashes of intuition, hints that things are not as they seem (also known as “she’s cheating”), but when I talk to my partner about them she assures me that my concerns are unfounded. (“Sweetheart, she’s straight, married, straight and married, just needs someone to talk to…” Insert excuses ad nauseum.) Up till now, I’ve loved and trusted this person, and I don’t really like what my flash of insight might mean, so I want to believe what she tells me is true, and yet my gut still tells me that something is wrong with this picture. This scenario repeats as needed until I begin to feel that I must be losing my mind with my attempts to reconcile the “truth” of my heart and the “truth” of her words but the “truths” can’t both be true so one “truth” is true but one “truth” is a lie and my brain can’t tell if I am being lied to or if I am lying to me until I can no longer tell the difference of the truth of the “truth” and the lie of the “truth” so it just rolls round and round and round beating me against the walls of my rubber room while I sing “They’re Coming to Take Me Away”. AUGH!

Then finally, one deep, dark, night in the pits of despair a tiny piece of evidence comes to light and she can no longer deny what I have known all along. She’ll try to explain away the proof of the lie in her “truth” and for awhile she may succeed in convincing me that even my own eyes and ears have lied to me, but little by little I will shake off the shackles, releasing the raging, tortured, madwoman inside me with a primal scream of hellfire and woman scorned.

There has to come a point when I listen more to my intuition than anything or anyone else, but there are so many factors that can influence that. How do I determine when unsettled feelings have legitimate purpose and when they’re simply fueled by fear and the ghosts of relationships past? I’ve tried upfront discussion, I’ve tried “trust, but verify”, I’ve tried “wait and watch”, I’ve tried “ignore it and hope it goes away”, but all these methods of dealing with it have all come down to the same simple truth. That truth is that no matter what I need to start listening to that little voice inside (the intuition kind, not the schizophrenic kind) and treat myself like a friend, rather than someone I don’t trust or even seem to like very much. When my friends tell me there’s something wrong I believe them. When they’re sad I comfort them. I have their back when they need someone to go to bat for them. The least I can do is give myself the same courtesy.

* And femme ladies, take it from me. If they’re hanging with your butch, they’re not that straight and not that married.
Bedlam. (2011). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 22, 2011 fromhttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/58154/Bedlam.
© Sarah Ultis 2011