Cheering Us On To Salvation~ A Handbook For Those Subjected To People With Disordered Personalities Poem by Alla Bozarth

No matter what they tell you,
you are not the one who is crazy.
If you think that you are dealing with someone
who is attractive, charming, intelligent, compassionate,
generous, playful, funny, witty, self-absorbed, hateful,
vengeful, vitriolic, volatile, resentful, manipulative
and cruel—you are right. You are.

Recall that crazy means cracked and think of the brain as an egg,
and it will be easy to see how it’s true. Certain wires are tangled,
and there are holes in significant meaning and perception centers,
and interpretation synapses are corroded, and the love receptors
are atrophied, and the reality receptors are Teflon-coated.

The egg has long since spilled out of its shell
or dried up or rotted inside.

The shell looks fine, for a while.
Then you begin to notice
the hairline fractures,
and when it turns
you see

the marred, tarnished and empty places.
Sometimes the foul odor of the ghost
of a self escapes through the cracks.
And sometimes this empty egg tries to suck others in.

You suddenly or gradually realize
that you do not want to be on the same continent
with this person.

At this moment, consider yourself among the enlightened, and thank God
that, however evasive you have been and for however long
you have been so, you have finally been caught by the germ of reality.
It will make you feel ill for a short while, but never
as genuinely debilitated as you were for all the preceding years
of confusion: Years in which you questioned yourself
over and over again—Did I do something wrong?
Was I unsupportive? Did I betray this person
without even knowing it? Have I been abandoning,
negligent, unkind? You can forget all that now.

At last you’ve been freed from the dusty gray cloud
that’s engulfed you, misnamed a relationship. That cannot happen
with such persons. Either, innocently enough and
out of good will or initial enjoyment, you were caught
in a toxic enmeshment (stabilized on your part by false hope
and lack of clear understanding and knowledge) —
or you were simply held hostage
by guilt, doubt or fear.

It’s over the moment you read this and realize,
Yes! That’s what it was! And you’re free
the moment after, perhaps long after,
you have had your last cautious contact
with this person, and no longer think about it
ten times a day or even once in a month.

No more emotional whiplash from absent reason,
overweening emotion, poisoned words,
broken synapses, confused perceptions.

No more loss of yourself
to wasted efforts of reconciliation
and resumption, leading always
and reliably to more devastation.

Believe me, countless others have known
these same behaviors, similar to the serial killer’s
shout to the arresting detective,
“I’ll see you hanged for this! ”

The exhibitionism, the hostile dependency,
the sweet disposition between malicious eruptions—
the wing-wang, ding-dang, madness-made-and-making
terrible burden of responsibility that should never have been yours.

Do not worry for these disordered persons.
They move on easily to find their next victims.
They thrive, while hundreds go down
in the trail of carnage behind them.

Whole families, churches, clubs, mosques and synagogues,
entire distressed neighborhoods have taken years to recover,
and some never do. But disordered personalities go on and on.

They do not usually kill themselves, except as a last act of malice,
to have the last word guaranteed them, to go out seething
and self-righteous, with survivors to blame, survivors who may not survive,
who are meant to be condemned to a lifetime of guilt, regret and self-doubt.
It is the ultimate victory of the hate-laden mind.
But it lasts only for the final delusional moment
of that last vicious decision.

The feeling of personal powerlessness will have been
so-well masked by power-played actions and words
that such life-ending persons may believe that the only life
that will really end will be the lives of those who are perceived
to have wronged them.

But as soon as their real healing at last can begin
with their return into God, or the darkness they’ve chosen
has engulfed and absorbed them, only you who remain
will continue to suffer.

Do not allow this to happen.
Even should the worst revenge
be crafted for your final enduring,
refuse to surrender to such madness.
Remove yourself from the target field.

Do it now.

If you become tempted
to return, read this again.
Keep it near, as you would
an antidote-to-poisons handbook.

And create many fresh forms
of radiant new life for yourself,
and for those around you
who consistently open their lives
to happiness, redemption and grace.

Remember this: the brains of some of us,
by genetic damage or early life experience,
and no matter how sensitive or intelligent,
are unable to integrate insight.
They know what to say to impress themselves and others,
but they cannot incorporate their words
into their persistently self-destructive life patterns,
which remain hurtful to others also.
Every cherished act and intention
to create a fulfilling future
will go on being sabotaged,
usually on the verge of completion.

Your (and their) only salvation is to recognize the problem
as that of a disabled personality, and for the persons so afflicted
to learn how to curtail their words and acts of destruction so harmful to all.

But you will not be able to teach them,
nor could you succeed if you tried to help them.
They would have to discover this from their own actions,
usually from the consequence of being alone and without means.
But the likelihood is this: it will never occur to them
in any way they could accept
that their unhappiness is their own creation.

Their lives will always be limited,
but every life is.

See to it that your own life is as unlimited
as is truly good for you, and that no one
is given power to take from you your heart’s desire—
insofar as your wishes do not threaten the well-being
or spiritual freedom of anyone else.

You are the steward of your own life.
See to it that you create wellness where you can,
and make your way through into happy fulfillment.

Recognize your doubts and diminishing feelings
to be but temptations, sabotaging patterns—
that unjustified guilt, a false sense of power and
the reflex of effort leftover from the past.

Let them dissolve into life-allowing silence.
Fill what remains with your own music.

Find your true rhythms and dance them.
Find your own joys and play them.
Share what you want to share
with those who can receive your gifts,
and who will respond with respect and tenderness.

Settle for nothing less.

Fare forward with great heart,
and be blessed with the willingness to let go
and learn your way into laughter and love.

Do not be afraid to feel awkward
as you find your way, step by step,
into the wonderful world of a daily fresh start.


This poem is in the book, Purgatory Papers
by Alla Renée Bozarth, copyright 2011. All rights reserved.