The Great Comfort of Unconsciousness

Daniel and me had dinner and a quiet night of doing little, just letting the seconds fall from the clock until a pool of time had collected around us and we ought to bed before we drowned in the liquidity of existence.

.

Daniel was a bit hyper and difficult to settle, so I had to attack him with tickles and nonsense for some of his unspent energy to be expelled in giggles and gurgles.  The simple joy of my affection upon him that shone from his eyes was a gift to behold.  I felt awed at my own self that I could give so much, so easily.  I had never been inclined to babies, but here was my own born, and a love that I never knew myself capable of, flowed from me.  I realized, bending over the cot and laughing at Daniel’s closed eyes, chubby cheeks and smiling mouth emitting the music of happiness, that my own son had taught me love.  For the very first time in my life, I felt love.  I had not ever felt it from my father, could not consciously recall it from my mother, my sisters were basically strangers with the familiarity of family – and other people, well, they were just people in my life.  In truth and fact, for all my time on this planet, for this century at least, I had not felt love outward or inward.   If ever I were to write a book, I would inscribe at its opening:  ‘To my only son, Daniel, who taught me Love’.

.

When finally Daniel was in his cot with the white teddy I’d slept with while pregnant, to infuse it with my energy, and laying on his side eyeing me, I sat propped in my bed, the Bible in my hands.  As determined that morning, I would read the word of God until I literally collapsed into the arms of sleep.  I would keep vigil for however many nights it took, to show the spiritual visitors that this was our territory and we were protected by God.

.

Oh God, was it really the word of God?  Had only man said it was? I had been told by Nuns when I was a kid, that it was.  And who told them?  Their parents?  They had faith it was; I was to have faith it was.  I had heard the argument of atheists that people believe in God “because people need to believe in something”.  I had heard the belief of Buddhism that we each are Buddhas/Gods.  I remembered as a child being taught that God is within each of us.  What is true and what is illusion in this life, I just do not know.  But I know, absolutely, that we had been haunted, and of all that I had tried, this was my only resource that I could conduct myself, put out there myself, until we won – won our home back.

.

Why hadn’t the Priest blessing the place worked, I wondered.  I then suddenly wondered whether, if I flung holy water at the electrified air space that night, like I had flung my urine; if it would have caused a hissing sound too.  How curious, I wondered, wondered.

.

I looked at Daniel’s eyes, anticipant, looking at me.  He knew I was doing something different tonight and watched me curiously.  I bet he was glad I had returned my bed to his room, nearby his cot.  I had separated us, thinking it was “time”, that I should for his independence, and here we were cloistered together, the door shut, me ready to speak the spirits away.  And they would listen to me?

.

I wondered whether at this age, Daniel yet thought ‘why’?  Would he think, ‘Why is Mum reading aloud tonight in her bed?  Why is Mum’s bed back in my room?’  The child health nurse told me there will come a ‘why’ stage.  Not even I know what answers I will give.  I never guessed that I would be in a position this lifetime, of teaching another generation ‘why’.  Some of it will be the factual why, and some my own moral and spiritual why.  I will actually be teaching my offspring my own beliefs of existence and purpose, reason and, well, why not rhyme.

.

To think I will be affecting another human being with my own mind of things is really pretty heavy going.  I had hardly been taught myself.  I had to “make of it what I could”, mostly.  I was given Roman Catholic direction from the time of the orphanage – age six, and while living with Aunty Betty, but once I reached dad’s domain, that’s when I was left to try and survive the years best I could,  and find within myself whatever I could to endure.  And I had been a ship adrift.  And I had been an island.  And I had been madly driven at times.  And I had been so depressed that darkness was the only light I could see.  Oh, what kind of God gave to me this beautiful child – me, my damaged psyche, depressed heart, my suicidal ideations that consume me for days on end?  It is the same God that gave me the heart which flutters with a butterfly’s wings as I watch it hovering over golden flowers, sunny days, feeling warm sunshine on the crown of my head, smelling ocean in the air, marvelling at the colours of nature, and dreaming as the butterfly leaves the flower and flutters off into a distance, into its own existence.

.

Oh, my head – I need to put it to bed! Too much.  I smiled at Daniel, said, “Shhhhhhh, sleeeeeeep,” and opened the Bible.

.

I suddenly thought of Chris.  Given my desperation when I rang and he came over with the Chinese written signs to ward off the unseen presences, and when I rang again to say that hadn’t fully worked – something had galloped up my belly in the middle of the night, literally, physically, and pounced off my chest; given the terror of what I was experiencing, I was amazed he hadn’t rung to see how I was – and had the flinging of the urine gotten rid of the energies/powers wandering spirits/ghosts, or whatever the hell it was that had terrorized me these last weeks?  I didn’t need Chris to care about me, but as the mother of his child, given his child was involved … again, I just did not understand Chris.

.

Skipping the puzzling begat and begotting, I read that God had made the world and created man.  I read how he put man to sleep, took a rib, and created woman from him.  I read aloud and clearly what I believed to be the word of God, so that the vibrations of His word would fill our room, be present, and be the charge of our room.

“This is now bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh:

she shall be called woman (f)

for she was taken out of man”

(f) The Hebrew for woman sounds like the Hebrew for man

.

I read how Eve was tempted by the serpent, the apple, and how she and Adam hid from God as he was walking through the garden of Eden because they were suddenly ashamed of their nakedness, having eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  I wondered why we humans ought not know of good and evil.  Maybe that was heaven, how things were back then:  living, doing your daily work, God walking by every now and then in His resplendence.  What could progress from that, though?  Nothing, so we would just exist, emanating joy.

.

I read about Cain and Abel, the sons of Eve, but was confused when the Bible said that “Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant”.  The only way Cain could have had a wife was if Eve gave birth to a girl before she gave birth to Cain.  As “Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living”,  I accepted that maybe people lived hundreds of years in the beginning of time.  Maybe Eve did have a daughter first who grew up, and then she had Cain and then she had Abel – but why was the birth of Eve’s daughter not worth a mention?   “Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. That made it sound like her first born.  I didn’t quite get it.

.

I read onward, including that Cain’s son, Enoch, was born a son named Irad, and “Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael… Lamech.  Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah.”  The Bible continued to only mention women as appendages to men – the ones who “gave birth to a son”.  With all this giving birth to sons, I didn’t comprehend where the women were coming from.  And really, did it have to start with the birth of man in time that men had two wives?  What, in moral conscience, is the purpose of two wives?  I could only see that it would serve ego, and as it was fine for Lamech to marry two women, the service of ego seemed to be condoned.

.

I found the Bible difficult to swallow.  I was only on chapter 5, ‘From Adam to Noah’, and it seemed to have regard for the importance of only one half of the human race.  I couldn’t remember learning this when I was a child – that the birth of girls are not worth mentioning, but when they are a wife and bearing a son they are worth mentioning.

.

I had to not think too hard, and continue reading aloud the word of God.  I had to have faith this was the answer:  the word of God filling my home so that nothing else could fit into it.  I looked at Daniel, and his eyes were half shut.  This should work a double treat.

.

I read past midnight, when I was slumped against my pillow and Daniel was safe in unconsciousness.  I felt mild fear of what the night would bring, the hours 3-4 a.m., when things usually happened, and I didn’t want to be awake then.  I wanted to be asleep – safe in unconsciousness like Daniel.

.

I continued reading aloud to just after 1 a.m., when my mouth was dry, my eyes too, and I decided to lay fully down.  With the light still on, for I was too scared to turn it off, I lay with the closed Bible next to my head.  I put one hand on the Bible, and closed my eyes. 

.

I opened my eyes again.  It was so frightening to think that if I dared close my eyes, ‘they’ may creep up on me, creep up alongside my bed – but I had to not think those things.  I had to believe, have faith, that I had put hours of vibration of the word of God into my home, and it resonated from the walls  and, like Tom once said, “Picture a white light around you – you and Daniel.  Nothing can get through that white light.”

.

With these thoughts in my head, time reached up and pulled closed my eyelids so that I met unconsciousness, the great comfort of unconscious-ness.

.

.

.

Copyright Noeleen&Daniel 50/50