Simone Matzliach-HanokhTales of reversible death. Simone Matzliach-Hanokh - Tales of Reversible Death

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Simone Matzliach-Hanokh

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Tales of reversible death. Depression as a healing force

To my children - beloved Yaare and Agama

You taught me love

I know depth. I got into it
Root. But you're afraid of the depths
And I'm not afraid - I was there, I'm used to it.

(Plat C. Willow soul. Per. Ruth Finelight)

Prologue

On one of the evenings of the third month of a cloudless pregnancy, I began to bleed. I sat on the toilet and cried. She called her then-future husband, got to the car - and to the hospital: she was a few minutes away. The thin doctor, with a Russian face the same shade as her pale green operating suit, looked like she had just been woken up, and was so lethargic and indifferent, I would say even detached, that I began to suspect that she had injected herself . Roughly rummaging through me with the tip of an outdated ultrasound, the doctor said that she did not see any pregnancy. It turned out that I made it all up. Probably, my confused look aroused pity in her, and, softening, she added that this equipment was old and that I should wait until the morning when they open the office with a new ultrasound and do a more detailed examination.

"Sorry," she said as she barely touched my arm.

I was in a hospital bed. One floor above me, babies were being born; mothers fed, circled along the corridor, as it should be after childbirth, on widely spaced legs and bled into thick pads. I didn't bleed anymore - my little pregnancy that didn't exist anymore didn't bleed anymore.

In the morning, a young technician, about twenty years old, examined me on a new ultrasound.

– This is mis 1
Abbreviation of the English "miscarriage" - arbitrary miscarriage.

, - she loudly threw the doctor standing near my head.

I crawled out of the office; panties stained with clotted blood, belly smeared with transparent gel. I dry myself. All. I am no longer pregnant. And what am I to do now?

Everyone tried to pretend that nothing had happened.

“It’s not like you really lost a baby,” my mother told me. best friend and I didn't have the guts to argue with her.

But in fact, I felt that, yes, I had lost a child, but I couldn’t talk about it. All my life I have tried to fix the irreparable, to save the hopeless, by switching to something new and wonderful - a kind of miracle cure that I invented for myself. The medicine is enough long-acting so that when I wake up, I remember the pain experienced as something fleeting and insignificant. It was the same after the miscarriage. Two days passed, we were driving in the car. This road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is always stunningly beautiful.

“Let's fix everything,” I suggested to my friend, not taking my eyes off the road, “let's get married.”

That same evening, I called our closest friends and told them that I had two pieces of news: one sad and one happy. I am no longer pregnant and I am getting married.

We plunged into preparations for the wedding and did everything we dreamed of: picked up a wonderful wedding outfit; dashed several hundred kilometers in search of special cheeses, good wine and fresh homemade bread, which will be delivered still warm directly to festive table. And all this time, I wasn't as happy as I thought I should be. And therefore, she was angry with herself, even began to suspect that perhaps she did not love her future husband enough, and found fault with him because of any little thing, explaining how important it was not to miss a single detail. And we didn't miss anything; everything was great, of course. All but one: nothing really pleased me, and I came to the conclusion that I clearly have some kind of defect; that I am unable to love. I continued to prepare for the wedding, angry at myself for not glowing with happiness.

We got married in his mom's garden. The chuppah itself took place on a trampled area between a lemon and an olive tree. Later, I mentally returned to this place more than once in the hope of finding refuge and peace of mind there. Everyone around us smiled with emotion, and with a superhuman effort I tried to connect myself with this garden, with these festive faces, with my fiancé, with my mother, with my wedding, with my beloved person.

At night, without changing clothes, we sorted out gifts and fought with ants that suddenly attacked us from under the bathroom door. That night, I acted like the boy in the old Dutch story who plugged a hole in the city wall with his finger to save his city from flooding. My city will be flooded tomorrow, but I didn't know about it that very night. She just continued to fight stubbornly with the black evasive creature that erupted from the crack behind the plinth.

All this time, my now legal husband was very generous: he was counting on a generous reward that awaits him somewhere among the vineyards of Burgundy.

We left early in the morning. Paris greeted us with pouring rain. We rented a car and only then realized that we had no idea where to go. The girl who placed our order said that the road to Auxerre (the first romantic town on our way) would take a couple of hours. Confident that nothing is impossible for us, we successfully overcame the labyrinths of the metropolis and quickly found ourselves on the suburban highway we needed. We stayed in a small hotel, romantic at first glance, but in fact - gloomy and dusty. The ceilings in it were trimmed with some kind of black transparent material; and all of it looked either built in the style of the distant 1980s, or preserved untouched from those ugly times. We saw our black, as on the negative, reflections, first on the ceiling of the bathroom, and then above the bed; this picture was printed on me inner surface century and returned to me within long months like a harbinger of inevitable troubles.

In the morning we went to Chablis. A few minutes later I was thirsty. She drank water, but the thirst did not pass; I drank more, but my throat was still dry. Panic seized me; I was sure that I was dying. She asked me to return to the hotel. He didn't understand. We argued a little.

Have returned. We spent the whole day in the room. The next morning we were on the road again. I felt weak and helpless. Looking out the window of our small car, I counted the kilometers, rejoicing at the landscape that was already familiar to me: we were driving - and everything was in order. Here it is, the same tree we passed by yesterday, but our throats were not dry; after him - road sign and I'm not dying; we came abreast of the small bridge, and I was still not dead. So the day passed. We drank the famous local wine; I felt dizzy, but I wasn't worried: alcohol usually makes me dizzy.

The remaining twelve days we traveled around the most beautiful roads France, spent the night in really romantic roadside hotels, medieval castles and small palaces. I was sure that one of two things was happening to me: either I was gradually losing my mind, or I was dying. I was crushed by the horror of death. And never once could I really explain to my most beloved person, who had been mine for five years the only man and has been my lawful husband for several days, which I feel.

There were nights that he lay without releasing my hand, as I was sure that this was the last night of my life. Once I ran out of the restaurant at the very moment when we were served food: it seemed to me that I was losing consciousness. True, I immediately reassured myself that the local hospital was very close; walking, we passed by it several times.

Since then, we almost always ate in the room. He contrived to cook tasty and fast, but then he ate everything himself: I lost my appetite, I could hardly force myself to swallow something. She began to lose weight and weaken. He tried to support me. Day after day, hour after hour. I was happy when I managed - for his sake - to force myself to be happy about something; cursed (mentally, of course) those endless hours when I sat with my face contorted with horror, peering into nowhere. He did not understand that I needed to return home, and I was afraid to tell him about it.

At the beginning of the third week we checked into a charming little hotel in one of the towns of Perigault. Having settled in a cozy room, we went out into the courtyard and suddenly found ourselves in an amazing park with a small pool that looked like a real pond; with lush green lawns and rose beds. I walked along the paths like a hundred-year old woman with parchment skin and brittle bones: one step and another step, slowly and carefully.

There I finally realized that if I am not able to enjoy the beauty and love around me, it is better for us to return home. And not only understood, but said it out loud. He agreed. The next morning we left for Paris, which was ten hours away. From that moment on, I allowed myself to relax and immediately began to fall rapidly. I had no doubt that I was dying. In the evening my friend came to our room. I lay in bed and smiled guiltily. She laughed out loud, smoked near the window, offered to sit in some small cafe. I was silent most of the time; I got the feeling that this life is no longer for me, and all that it has to offer - street cafes, jokes, gossip, fun - no longer concerns me. An irresistible force sucked me deeper and deeper. I was already far, far away from the place where my friend rejoiced at our long-awaited meeting.

The doctor came and after a short examination said that I most likely have mononucleosis and, of course, I need to return home.

Have returned. Outside the window were long full of light and the sun summer days and I refused to get out of bed. She ate almost nothing. I couldn't explain what was happening to me, what I was feeling. The slightest movement made her dizzy. With huge eyes of horror, I peered into the void, into the darkness surrounding me, into limbo, into nowhere ... I did not exist ... And so day after day, week after week. Eternity.

When, finally, still weak and frightened, I began to carefully, leaning on my husband, get up and even take a few steps, it cost me incredible efforts to convince others, my mother, my confused husband, my skeptical doctor, that my feelings are not the fruit of my overexcited fantasy. I was offended by the whole world, scared and very lonely.

It must have been about three months since our trip. It seemed to me that the concept of time no longer concerned me. My life went on in its own mode: from dizziness to loss of balance, from fright to horror.

Well, then I went through everything existing analyzes and surveys. I was sent for a hearing and spatial vision test, computed tomography head and neck; recorded electromagnetic impulses did an ultrasound and general analyzes blood; checked hormones and glands internal secretion. I was examined by neuropathologists; orthopedists tapped on the knees and probed the vertebrae. I sat in a soundproof aquarium and had to press a big button every time I heard a sound, sometimes so faint that it seemed to me that it was only in my head. I sat in front of a randomly flickering screen, and for what seemed to me three hours I had to press the button again every time I saw (or thought I saw) a bright flash of lightning. I was connected to electrodes, lubricated with gel; I tilted my head, raised it, and tilted it again. I sat down, got up; they measured my blood pressure, pulse, temperature - nothing indicated any violations; moreover, even the level of iron in my vegetarian blood has never been as high as it was then. The suspicion of mononucleosis was abandoned at the very beginning of the marathon after simple analysis blood. Well, most of all I was annoyed that my husband did not get tired of repeating how beautiful I was, and I myself, looking in the mirror, saw in front of me really beautiful woman, but at the same time, every time, everything inside me contracted from the foreboding of the impending disaster. I thought it was my swan song. I thought it was another hint of the coming end.

For hours I tried to describe to my husband, my parents, numerous doctors, the most detailed details of what I felt, which scared me so much. Panic, horror, unexpected inexplicable waves of dizziness and weakness. I looked for all new images and comparisons that would bring them closer to my state; make them understand how I feel. I stand on the deck of a ship rocking on the waves; no, I'm spinning inside a concrete mixer, I'm a small multi-colored pebble that rises and falls in some kind of constant circular rhythm; I rise and fall—almost falling—and I have to grab on to something. But there was nothing to grab on to, because my husband got tired, and he said:

- I'm not going to dive with you into this nowhere of yours anymore. I'm starting to live again.

And left. True, he returned from work every day and faithfully took me to the doctors, at meetings with whom I stubbornly insisted, but he himself was no longer with me.

My mother, an experienced psychiatrist, and my local doctor began to increasingly say out loud what they used to grumble under their breath. My mother said, “You are depressed.

I called my psychologist, the same one I stopped dating as soon as I got pregnant and was so happy (a million years ago ...).

She came to her, sat on the sofa and cried. I cried for the first time since that terrible night when I lost my child; and that was the first time I actually cried in her clinic. I told her everything that had happened since the last time I left that room. About the miscarriage, the wedding, the honeymoon, and my illness.

And she spoke the words that opened the doors for me on the road to a slow and long recovery.

“Something terrible has happened to you,” she said. - You lost your child. You had to wrap yourself in sackcloth and sprinkle ashes on your head, sit on the floor and mourn your fate, but no one could fully understand and recognize your pain.

What was happening to me took shape, and I, having figured it out, poured content into it: I tried to overcome and cross out my loss, to ignore the pain, to suppress it, but it was stronger than me, it took possession of me, filled me all - to the brim. I have become a vessel, a container for depression, for despair and the unrelenting fear of impending death; and nothing else was in there. I was in hell and there was hell inside of me too.

I was depressed.

Once upon a time there was a girl

I can’t say exactly when and how in my gradually recovering soul the connection between depression and familiar early childhood fairy tales. Like long-awaited saving clouds during a long drought, images, words, pictures surfaced in my mind: Little Red Riding Hood swallowed by a wolf appears from his open belly, Snow White falls dead and comes to life again, Sleeping Beauty wakes up a hundred years later from the kiss of the prince ... Now they all have become I am especially close and understandable.

I remembered a fairy tale I read as a girl in the kibbutz; one of those that I read and re-read as if spellbound five, ten, or even more times in lazy afternoons on the iron bed of the children's corps, alone in the restless childish anthill. I remembered how I walked in a magical forest: there, in an abandoned castle, lived a princess with golden curls (such as I never had), bewitched by an evil fairy for a long seven years. And then she woke up - beautiful, smart and matured.

Goldilocks, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and with them Persephone - kidnapped ancient greek goddess fertility, who became the goddess of the kingdom of the dead, swarmed in my tired head; they were talking, whispering, or simply, silently, spinning in an airy non-stop round dance. And I, listening to them, began to listen to what was happening in my soul: carefully, grain by grain, I cleared the real from the far-fetched, until the appearance of a monster began to emerge, threatening to deprive me of everything that was dear to me. And at the same time, it became clear to me that my story exactly repeats them: like Snow White and Inanna (the Sumerian goddess who retired to the realm of the dead), so I ended up buried alive at the bottom of a deep well called depression, and now I'm trying to get out of there . And like Goldilocks, I wake up completely different.

At the same time, I began meeting with an amazing woman, a “shaman”, hiding her hair under a thick white scarf, who from then to this day has served me as a faithful and reliable guide.

At the same time, my husband managed to literally pull me out of the house: on jelly-like legs trembling like jelly, deafened, as it seemed to me, by the unbearable noise of the street, with stops and respites, I made my way from home to the car, so that then, clinging to in a grocery cart, indifferently trailing after him through the supermarket. Unbearable bouts of dizziness that turned me into an idol of ice, my optimistic mentor called "the internal rebirth of life mechanisms."

In those days, in the midst of the process, I could not figure out the true state of things, but today, from the height of the past years, I see how unknown forces, as if moving drifting continents, were rebuilding my soul. The seemingly invincible barriers were demolished, and the gaps in the protective wall formed in childhood, on the contrary, were sealed (and now I carefully protect them). Disheveled witches with black nails hiding from prying eyes crawled out of the dungeon, and to this day I can’t always cope with them… get out of there, and whether it is worth it at all. The goals that I was striving for with all my might, not noticing how I trample and crush other particles of my own self along the way, suddenly evaporated, as if they had never existed. The images of success and happiness that had settled in my mind since childhood, ruthlessly urging me on, stepping on my heels, froze motionless. Now I was controlled by new forces; and they were softer, more compassionate, more human towards me and those around me.

At the same time, I was able to see the fundamental model on which all fairy tales are built, not subject to the laws of time: after all, it was their heroes who whispered their stories to me when it was especially difficult for me. These fairy tales drive their heroines into a hopeless dead end, as a result of which they die for some time, and then, having resurrected, begin to new life. I call them tales of reversible death.

In my understanding, fairy tales of reversible death are repeatedly repeated stories about the depressive process, told through various plots, where there is necessarily a dive into the underworld of spiritual hell, a seemingly endless stay in this hell, and then no less difficult ascent, a kind of rebirth that entails followed by sacrifices, concessions and losses.

Those of us who think in terms of modern Western society and consider illness, depression or loss to be unequivocally negative phenomena that should be avoided and prevented will be very surprised when they see how many heroines of fairy tales and legends on which our culture is based, absolutely consciously doom yourself to disappearance (temporary), to the torments of hell, to reversible death. I will immediately note that this craving for non-existence (and return from it) is not exclusively a female lot, but men and women die and are born again in completely different ways; I will definitely elaborate on this. Before we continue, I want to re-emphasize that this book is mainly about depression, which occurs exclusively in women, which is why I wrote it from the point of view of a woman: I often use phrases “we women” or “we women” , and not the generalized “we” and “we”, since I am writing from there, from the inside, where the soul and flesh are inseparable. Well, as for you, the men who also decided to jump into our carriage, I, of course, say “welcome”, but I warn you: sometimes it shakes great on this road.

Why Sleeping Beauty doesn't want to see the world through the transparent cellophane she's wrapped in by her unusually devoted parents 2
“Extraordinarily Devoted Parents” is a paraphrase of D.W. Winnicott’s famous expression “the usual devoted mother”, which combines an endless list of desires, intentions and ideas that he speaks of when examining the parent-child relationship. Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes of a mother from early childhood as "too good" or "too loyal" when, by hiding her daughter under her skirt, she unwittingly hinders her development and maturation. Such a mother is obliged to "die" in order to provide the stage for the teenager's mother. This kind of mother is depicted (not flatteringly) in many fairy tales as a "stepmother" in the most negative connotation.

And looking all over the castle for a single surviving needle to finally fall into a dream? And why does Inanna, the mistress of heaven, renounce the royal throne, leave heaven and earth and descend into the underworld of her sister Ereshkigal? She is completely consciously going towards her terrible fate. And Snow White? She opens the door again and again to her shadow. 3
In analytical (Jungian) psychology, the Shadow is a set of those negative qualities of a person that he possesses, but does not recognize as his own. These are those character traits that a person does not accept in other people, without noticing that he himself is endowed with them to no lesser extent. They form the shadow image of a person, " dark side» his personality. Often the Shadow contains mysterious, frightening properties - this, according to Jung, is reflected in many literary and mythological images. If we turn to shamanism, then the role of the Shadow is played by the “outer soul”, which usually takes the form of one or another animal. “If something serious happens to the shadow, then the person who owns the shadow will soon say goodbye to life” (Nahum Megged. Portals of Hope and Gates of Terror: Shamanism, Magic and Witchcraft… Tel-Aviv, Modan).

Hiding under the guise of a poor old woman. It is unlikely that the girl does not know who is standing (several times in a row) behind the door: after all, this is the Old Woman-Death in person, offering her an apple!

Snow White opens the door of Death until the gate to non-existence opens before her. And there, in a glass coffin, having forgotten a deep sleep, like a swoon, she finally calms down and gives her torn soul the opportunity to rebuild in order to live on. Here is Inanna - she dies from the "look of death", but then, thanks to the efforts of the gods, life returns to her mutilated body. Something similar happens with the Sleeping Beauty: she plunges into an eternal sleep, from the depths of which the long-awaited prince appears.

Despite the fact that I was brought up (in principle, we all were brought up that way) on the fact that the depression that I experienced and the heroines of the fairy tales of returning from non-existence experience is a negative phenomenon that needs to be cured, today I don’t think so anymore.

Depression in my current understanding is an extreme tool, an extreme measure of salvation from a hopeless, dead-end state of mind (which is absolutely clear from the tales of reversible death); a tool, without a doubt, a dangerous one, which I would by no means recommend as a lifesaver. And yet I believe that we are able to take a fresh look at the ordeal called depression, leaving aside conventional conventions, freeing ourselves from the need for constant total control. We are able to treat depression as an inevitable process that the soul resorts to when it finds itself in an intolerable situation.

Many followers of holism see any disease as an obligatory healing component, i.e., in their opinion, any disease is also a medicine; any disease can be treated as a "fall for the sake of taking off." Moreover, even conventional medicine, although not always, admits that in the anamnesis of many diseases there is a history of suppression of emotions, ours or our parents, or, at worst, that suppression of emotions can be harmful. physical health. In this book, I write only about depression and only on the basis of my personal experiences, but I fully admit that similar processes are characteristic of many other mental and physical disorders.

I see depression as a kind of beneficent regression, as a refuge within whose walls one can take refuge, like a snail hiding in a shell. And there, in the bowels of temporary non-existence, let go of the reins of the chariot of life in order to give the opportunity to heal the very spiritual crack that served as entrance gate for depression. Well, as for the loss of control, we can only hope for intrinsic property, called intuition, which, like a faithful horse, will not let our soul go astray and will find the way home we have lost.

In my opinion, I borrowed this metaphor from a Russian fairy tale, where Ivanushka the Fool (seemingly such) trusts his horse (Humpbacked Horse) so much that, on his advice, he jumps into a cauldron of boiling milk and, as usual, emerges from there a handsome prince.

The first person I thought of, starting my journey in the footsteps of the heroines of fairy tales who returned from oblivion, was Persephone. Young carefree Persephone, as the story goes Greek mythology, was kidnapped by Hades, the god of the underworld of the dead, and became his wife. Demeter, the goddess of fertility and agriculture, was looking for her daughter all over the world, indulging in inconsolable grief, and at that time the earth was barren; nothing sprouted in the sown fields. People were dying of hunger and did not offer sacrifices to the gods. Zeus began to send gods and goddesses for Demeter to persuade her to return to Olympus. But she, sitting in a black robe in the Eleusinian temple, did not notice them. In the end, Hades was forced to let the girl go, but before being released, he gave her seven grains (or three, there are different variants) grenade. Persephone, who had been refusing food all this time, swallowed the grains - and thus was doomed to return to the kingdom of Hades. She spent six months (spring and summer) with her mother on Olympus, and in the fall she descended into the dungeon to rule the kingdom of the dead. And so from year to year, all nature on earth blooms and fades, lives and dies - rises and falls along with Persephone.

This retelling of an ancient myth may cause bewilderment: it would seem that what is common between mythological abduction and us - women who voluntarily seek a path into the depths of their subconscious and follow it to the point of complete exhaustion? I will use a colorful image borrowed from Clarissa Pinkola Estes: it is enough just to blow lightly, and all the dust of “patriarchal morality” that prescribes obligatory abduction into the Kingdom of the Dead will fly off Persephone and the ancient “original” will be exposed - Persephone of her own free will sets off on a long journey.

After all, it cannot be that the goddess of spring, the daughter of the goddess of fertility, was kidnapped into the womb of the earth, which, according to the logic of things, belongs to her mother: here, in the depths of the earth, trees have their roots; here sleep, gaining strength, wheat grains; earthly juices nourish all life on earth. The whole earth - everything that is on it, and everything that is under it - is in the possession of Demeter, which means that it already belongs or will belong to her daughter, Persephone.

What happens on that warm sunny morning? Persephone with her girlfriends collects wonderful wild flowers - violets and irises, crocuses, flowers wild rose and hyacinth - and imperceptibly moves away from everyone. And now, alone, fascinated by the heady beauty of a flowering meadow, she finds a daffodil waiting for her for a long time and, of course, plucks it. Narcissus, with its daring disturbing smell, with its alluring gaze turned inward, into the infinite "I", takes us further and further deep into the mirror labyrinth, in the walls of which the bottomless eternity is reflected. Black emptiness draws us in - we drown. As soon as Persephone plucks the narcissus, a chariot arises from the bowels of the earth, and in it - Hades, the lord of the kingdom of the dead; he takes her to his lightless lair.

Even if Persephone (who is nothing more than a late version of Inanna) is not fully aware of what is happening, she is in fact the most actively looking for the gate leading to where she should be. What part of Persephone knows that the daffodil is the very gate to the world of the dead? There is no exact answer to this question, but it is certain that it was this part that directed all her actions on that sunny morning.

And now another light touch - and another ancient picture looms before us: before releasing Persephone, Hades hands her pomegranate seeds. Tiny droplets on a man's palm, they shimmer in the dark like bloodshot rubies...

Smooth as river pebbles, grains pleasantly cool girlish fingers; for a moment she feels their heaviness on her tongue, for another moment a sour-sweet explosion in her mouth, and then a faint flash of memory, a slight pleasant chill; and all...

“Good luck,” her husband tells her.

"See you soon," he adds in a whisper so she won't hear.

And Persephone? With a brief glance back, she rushes up the stairs, straight into the arms of her ready-for-all mother.

You didn't take anything from him, did you? Demeter asks, holding her daughter close.

- No, mommy, only pomegranate seeds. Only a few grains.

“My fool,” the mother bursts into tears. “You know you can’t take anything out of Hades with you. Now Hades is inside you. Now you have to go back there. Oh Gods! Help me!

Mother falls to her knees near the black bottomless well.

End of the second act.

“You know very well why,” the serpent of knowledge that has settled inside me insistently whispers, “why Persephone eats the pomegranate seeds that her treacherous uncle gives her.” The very grains that make it impossible for her to fully return to earth and force her to submit to the rhythm of the eternal pendulum: down - to the underworld and back, up - to the light; rhythm, according to the laws of which the goddess of spring fades and buries herself in the earth, like the goddess of death, and then is reborn - sprouts again, like spring.

The pomegranate seed, an ancient symbol of fertility, prosperity and marriage, is used as a metaphor, as a poetic image, alluding to the voluntary merging of Persephone with the spirit of the underworld; on the union between the higher and the lower, between light and shadow, between consciousness and subconsciousness.

Now I was attracted not so much by the ancient legend familiar to me from childhood, but by its ancient predecessors. And it really turned out that at the beginning of her evolution, Persephone descended into the Underground voluntarily, no one tried to kidnap her. The very goddess of spring, which the Greeks borrowed from the centuries-old mythology that existed before them, aspired to the Eternal Kingdom of the Dead in order to quench the thirst for knowledge, shake up a boring calm being and finally meet the mysterious husband waiting for her there; to discover for oneself the inner image of her mother covered with darkness - the image of the so-called Black Demeter and to examine close up one's own Shadow hidden in the bowels of the soul.

And now, when we have removed the ancient mask from the face of our goddess of spring, it doesn’t cost us anything to make out the ancient roots of the myth, diligently powdered with a fresh cover of patriarchal ancient Greek morality, which preached a complete separation between higher and lower, between the inner, hidden, and the outer, located on surfaces. Another light touch - and we find ourselves in a completely different space, in an environment that recognizes the importance and even the need for periodic immersion in the bottomless depths of the subconscious. This is how I propose to read all the tales of the return from non-existence. Let us brush off the patina of patriarchal dust from them, and layer after layer of the mosaic of what is happening will open before us, hidden in the depths: immersion in Hades is an internal necessity.

* * *

Tales of reversible death. Depression as a healing force

To my children - beloved Yaare and Agama

You taught me love

I know depth. I got into it
Root. But you're afraid of the depths
And I'm not afraid - I was there, I'm used to it.

(Plat C. Willow soul. Per. Ruth Finelight)

Prologue

"Sorry," she said as she barely touched my arm.

In the morning, a young technician, about twenty years old, examined me on a new ultrasound.

– This is mis 1
Abbreviation of the English "miscarriage" - arbitrary miscarriage.

, - she loudly threw the doctor standing near my head.

I crawled out of the office; panties stained with clotted blood, belly smeared with transparent gel. I dry myself. All. I am no longer pregnant. And what am I to do now?

Everyone tried to pretend that nothing had happened.

“It's not like you really lost a baby,” my best friend told me, and I didn't have the heart to argue with her.

The medicine is long enough that, when I wake up, I remember the pain I experienced as something fleeting and insignificant. It was the same after the miscarriage. Two days passed, we were driving in the car. This road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is always stunningly beautiful.

“Let's fix everything,” I suggested to my friend, not taking my eyes off the road, “let's get married.”

That same evening, I called our closest friends and told them that I had two pieces of news: one sad and one happy. I am no longer pregnant and I am getting married.

We plunged into preparations for the wedding and did everything we dreamed of: picked up a wonderful wedding outfit; We drove several hundred kilometers in search of special cheeses, good wine and fresh homemade bread, which will be delivered still warm right to the festive table. And all this time, I wasn't as happy as I thought I should be. And therefore, she was angry with herself, even began to suspect that perhaps she did not love her future husband enough, and found fault with him because of any little thing, explaining how important it was not to miss a single detail. And we didn't miss anything; everything was great, of course. All but one: nothing really pleased me, and I came to the conclusion that I clearly have some kind of defect; that I am unable to love. I continued to prepare for the wedding, angry at myself for not glowing with happiness.

All this time, my now legal husband was very generous: he was counting on a generous reward that awaits him somewhere among the vineyards of Burgundy.

We left early in the morning. Paris greeted us with pouring rain. We rented a car and only then realized that we had no idea where to go. The girl who placed our order said that the road to Auxerre (the first romantic town on our way) would take a couple of hours. Confident that nothing is impossible for us, we successfully overcame the labyrinths of the metropolis and quickly found ourselves on the suburban highway we needed. We stayed in a small hotel, romantic at first glance, but in fact - gloomy and dusty. The ceilings in it were trimmed with some kind of black transparent material; and all of it looked either built in the style of the distant 1980s, or preserved untouched from those ugly times. We saw our black, as on the negative, reflections, first on the ceiling of the bathroom, and then above the bed; this picture was imprinted on the inner surface of my eyelids and returned to me for many months, like a harbinger of inevitable troubles.

Have returned. We spent the whole day in the room. The next morning we were on the road again. I felt weak and helpless. Looking out the window of our small car, I counted the kilometers, rejoicing at the landscape that was already familiar to me: we were driving - and everything was in order. Here it is, the same tree we passed by yesterday, but our throats were not dry; after it - a road sign, but I'm not dying; we came abreast of the small bridge, and I was still not dead. So the day passed. We drank the famous local wine; I felt dizzy, but I wasn't worried: alcohol usually makes me dizzy.

The remaining twelve days we traveled along the most beautiful roads in France, spent the night in really romantic roadside hotels, medieval castles and small palaces. I was sure that one of two things was happening to me: either I was gradually losing my mind, or I was dying. I was crushed by the horror of death. And I have never been able to really explain to my most beloved person, who has been my only man for five years and has been my lawful husband for several days, what I feel.

The doctor came and after a short examination said that I most likely have mononucleosis and, of course, I need to return home.

Have returned. Outside the window were long, full of light and sun summer days, and I refused to get out of bed. She ate almost nothing. I couldn't explain what was happening to me, what I was feeling. The slightest movement made her dizzy. With huge eyes of horror, I peered into the void, into the darkness surrounding me, into limbo, into nowhere ... I did not exist ... And so day after day, week after week. Eternity.

Well, then I went through all the existing tests and examinations. I was sent for a hearing and spatial vision test, a CT scan of the head and neck; recorded electromagnetic impulses, did ultrasound and general blood tests; hormones and endocrine glands were checked. I was examined by neuropathologists; orthopedists tapped on the knees and probed the vertebrae. I sat in a soundproof aquarium and had to press a big button every time I heard a sound, sometimes so faint that it seemed to me that it was only in my head. I sat in front of a randomly flickering screen, and for what seemed to me three hours I had to press the button again every time I saw (or thought I saw) a bright flash of lightning. I was connected to electrodes, lubricated with gel; I tilted my head, raised it, and tilted it again. I sat down, got up; they measured my blood pressure, pulse, temperature - nothing indicated any violations; moreover, even the level of iron in my vegetarian blood has never been as high as it was then. The suspicion of mononucleosis was abandoned at the very beginning of the marathon after a simple blood test. Well, most of all I was annoyed that my husband did not get tired of repeating how beautiful I am, and I myself, looking in the mirror, saw a really beautiful woman in front of me, but at the same time, every time everything inside me shrank from a premonition of impending disaster. I thought it was my swan song. I thought it was another hint of the coming end.

- I'm not going to dive with you into this nowhere of yours anymore. I'm starting to live again.

And left. True, he returned from work every day and faithfully took me to the doctors, at meetings with whom I stubbornly insisted, but he himself was no longer with me.

My mother, an experienced psychiatrist, and my local doctor began to increasingly say out loud what they used to grumble under their breath. My mother said, “You are depressed.

I called my psychologist, the same one I stopped dating as soon as I got pregnant and was so happy (a million years ago ...).

And she spoke the words that opened the doors for me on the road to a slow and long recovery.

I was depressed.

Once upon a time there was a girl

I cannot say exactly when and how the connection between depression and fairy tales familiar to me from early childhood was born in my gradually recovering soul. Like long-awaited saving clouds during a long drought, images, words, pictures surfaced in my mind: Little Red Riding Hood swallowed by a wolf appears from his open belly, Snow White falls dead and comes to life again, Sleeping Beauty wakes up a hundred years later from the kiss of the prince ... Now they all have become I am especially close and understandable.

Goldilocks, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and with them Persephone - the stolen ancient Greek goddess of fertility, who became the goddess of the kingdom of the dead - swarmed in my tired head; they were talking, whispering, or simply, silently, spinning in an airy non-stop round dance. And I, listening to them, began to listen to what was happening in my soul: carefully, grain by grain, I cleared the real from the far-fetched, until the appearance of a monster began to emerge, threatening to deprive me of everything that was dear to me. And at the same time, it became clear to me that my story exactly repeats them: like Snow White and Inanna (the Sumerian goddess who retired to the realm of the dead), so I ended up buried alive at the bottom of a deep well called depression, and now I'm trying to get out of there . And like Goldilocks, I wake up completely different.

At the same time, I began meeting with an amazing woman, a “shaman”, hiding her hair under a thick white scarf, who from then to this day has served me as a faithful and reliable guide.

At the same time, I was able to see the fundamental model on which all fairy tales are built, not subject to the laws of time: after all, it was their heroes who whispered their stories to me when it was especially difficult for me. These fairy tales drive their heroines into a hopeless dead end, as a result of which they die for some time, and then, having resurrected, begin a new life. I call them tales of reversible death.

And looking all over the castle for a single surviving needle to finally fall into a dream? And why does Inanna, the mistress of heaven, renounce the royal throne, leave heaven and earth and descend into the underworld of her sister Ereshkigal? She is completely consciously going towards her terrible fate. And Snow White? She opens the door again and again to her shadow. 3
In analytical (Jungian) psychology, the Shadow is a set of those negative qualities of a person that he possesses, but does not recognize as his own. These are those character traits that a person does not accept in other people, without noticing that he himself is endowed with them to no lesser extent. They form a shadow image of a person, the "dark side" of his personality. Often the Shadow contains mysterious, frightening properties - this, according to Jung, is reflected in many literary and mythological images. If we turn to shamanism, then the role of the Shadow is played by the “outer soul”, which usually takes the form of one or another animal. “If something serious happens to the shadow, then the person - the owner of the shadow will soon say goodbye to life” (Nahum Megged. Portals of Hope and Gates of Terror: Shamanism, Magic and Witchcraft ... Tel-Aviv, Modan).

* * *

To my children - beloved Yaare and Agama

You taught me love

I know depth. I got into it
Root. But you're afraid of the depths
And I'm not afraid - I was there, I'm used to it.
(Plat C. Willow soul. Per. Ruth Finelight)

Prologue

"Sorry," she said as she barely touched my arm.

In the morning, a young technician, about twenty years old, examined me on a new ultrasound.

“This is mis,” she said loudly to the doctor standing near my head.

I crawled out of the office; panties stained with clotted blood, belly smeared with transparent gel. I dry myself. All. I am no longer pregnant. And what am I to do now?

Everyone tried to pretend that nothing had happened.

“It's not like you really lost a baby,” my best friend told me, and I didn't have the heart to argue with her.

But in fact, I felt that, yes, I had lost a child, but I couldn’t talk about it. All my life I have tried to fix the irreparable, to save the hopeless, by switching to something new and wonderful - a kind of miracle cure that I invented for myself. The medicine is long enough that, when I wake up, I remember the pain I experienced as something fleeting and insignificant. It was the same after the miscarriage. Two days passed, we were driving in the car. This road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is always stunningly beautiful.