The Mental Phoenix

"How could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?"  

~Nietzsche~

In ancient Greek mythology, there was a creature that would live for a time, be consumed in flames and be born again from the ashes.  They never truly died.  These were the phoenix's.

In life, there are times we feel like we have failed or are utterly deflated and defeated. When I first learned I could no longer work or go to school due to my disabilities, I felt useless.  I became dependent on social security (SSI- for my non-American readers, this is a government welfare program for disabled people with a strict wage limit). It felt like I had died.                            

For a long while, I was able to live on the wages, as long as I had a roommate who also received wages of some kind.  There were times it was a very meager existence and there were times it was pleasant.  I was doing okay. I had come to the brink of death and returned.

When my partner (I called her my wife) forced me out of our home and out of her life, I had a mental break down.  I died.  I burned up in the emotion, like the legendary phoenix, and was reduced to ashes.  Over time, a new creature formed and I was born again, so to speak.  With a lot of help and nurturing from friends and family, I grew into a new, healthy person.  I was able to return to work for the first time in over 12 years and I did well, for a while.

While working over night shifts, I felt myself dying again.  I was broken in spirit.  I muddled through and did my best.  I still loved the interactions with the residents and did my very best to serve them and my co-workers.  Eventually, my broken spirit lead to me losing the job.  At the same time this was happening, I was facing being forced to move from my father's home due to personality and housekeeping conflicts. I felt like a complete and utter failure. I had nowhere to go.  I had no job to go to.  I was ailing.  

I moved into a weekly rate hotel and scraped by through the help of friends, odd jobs and my social security benefits again.  I died inside.  But I kept trying.  Looking for work, looking for housing, looking for ways to get by consumed my dark days.  I was wallowing in my ashes, barely a new being, when I was accepted into low income housing.   It had not come a second too soon.

Once in my new home, the process of regrowing myself began.  I contacted services and was able to get into some programs I had worked with in the past.  My dear friend in Austria kept near constant vigil with me as my tender psyche formed and stabilized once more. Eventually I was ready and capable of making a real effort at life again.  The phoenix had risen.

I started with online courses and then entered Vocational Rehabilitation Services.  It took a while.  A year from death to rebirth before I could see any light. Last week I was offered a full-time position working with people who experience severe and persistent mental illness and experience chronic homelessness.  I start Friday.  It took a while for this to set in.  For my emotional state to catch up to my mental state in the rebirth process.  Now, I am eagerly awaiting the new chapter in my life.

So many times, we look at set-backs and failures as the death of ourselves or the death of a part of ourselves.  We forget that we are resilient creatures.  Though a chapter may come to an end, we, like the phoenix of old, may be consumed in the flames of life.  But, just as the phoenix is reborn and rises from the ash, so too will we.  

We are meant to die and be reborn through the experience of life.  We may have to start over several times in life before we find our purpose and place.  

We are strong.  We are resilient.  We are not destroyed by life.  We rise again. We are the mental phoenix.

**Please note that this post is designed to be symbolic and not literal.  While the mythological creature could be reborn after death in a literal sense, people cannot. If you are feeling the desire to end your life or that of another, please call 911 or your local mental health crisis line.**