A little sniper shot to the soul: Variation

I think it's interesting to picture nearly every adult as a person who is "whistling past the graveyard," whose life is a dream dimension, an alternate reality that keeps him away from and largely oblivious to his true self. Several clients today, too, to whom I'd mentioned this notion, also thought it felicitous. What's not pleasant is the awareness of the reality, of what we left behind and beneath us: a child, aflame, falling down an endless black abyss, ungrounded as the universe is large, nothing to cling to in his heart or in his hands. Time does not move on in this real place. A young client knew this was his identity beneath his character of obsessive-compulsive behaviors, all of his sanitary occupations. To stop all the actions would be to immediately be falling and wailing in that black abyss. Nobody wants to picture a child so helpless, ungrounded, no love, no help. But I told him that if he were that boy in this room, on the couch, I would keep my hand on his shoulder until he finally landed, because he would finally land. My hand would be ground, would be the love.

I believe that nobody "copes" with any loss without present love. What we call coping is just stepping into that dream dimension, imagining strength invoked from old storybooks, whistling past the world.

Underneath it is that fragile, two-dimensional plane of the child, always falling.