Sphinx
Shapeshifting has been a facet of nearly every human culture, explored in art and literature through the ages. These human-animal entities can be glorious and divine, or sinister and grotesque. Typically, they exist symbolically—either the transformation or the resulting state is significant in some way. My own experience with shapeshifting was more clinically than artistically rendered, and I am still hazy on the message my experience was meant to convey.
The shift occurred on a November morning like every other in the city where I live. It was damp-cold, and everything was monochrome: slush-lined roads the color of car exhaust, and a bleak sky heavy with the oppression of clouds—layer upon layer of clouds, denying you the contact of the sun. A timeless day, where morning will turn into night and you will shrug and say to yourself, the day came and it didn’t matter, and the night came and it matters less, except that you can allow yourself to sleep, if sleep will come.
I was driving my son home from hockey practice. My son doesn’t like hockey and neither do I. We were both participating in the ritual for my husband, who wholeheartedly believed in the early morning get-up, get-out, freeze-freeze-freeze, as the very best way to learn about sportsmanship and community. My husband was conspicuously absent from our outing, and while I don’t know what my son was learning, shivering in the back seat of the minivan, I was nurturing a fierce resentment, and, through the suppression of my rage, there was also an omnipresent self-hatred.
The bizarre unfolding of the events that were about to take place could not have been a manifestation of my deep hatred of the gray city-winter morning alone. The greater context was that, having been separated for six months, my husband and I had recently moved back in together, and were trying to work on our marriage. This seemed a brilliant idea when we were living apart—we were getting along, co-parenting, and rekindling a lost chemistry. In the beginning of our coming together, it was summertime, and after putting the kids to bed, we would congratulate one another with a glass of wine on the back deck of the apartment I was temporarily calling home. Convinced that this was a sign of better things to come, we reunited, and now, three months later, all of the differences that had driven us apart had become glaringly apparent once again.
Bigger still than the bleak gray winter and the rocky predicament of my marriage, I found myself rapidly approaching forty, and, upon personal reflection, felt an overwhelming disappointment in myself. I had wanted to create a life of travel, creativity, and adventure. Yet here I was, living and working in the city I was born in—a city I had left at seventeen and vowed never to return to. I was living a life of privilege, to be sure—I had a good job and a nice house and I earned enough money for a vacation once a year. I had friends and family living nearby. My kids could see their grandparents often, and attended a quality school. But every day, I felt like I was dying. It was hard for me to put into words, and when I tried, it was hard for others to understand. I had so much to be grateful for. To want something different, something other, something more, was gluttonous and unseemly.
Not wanting to seem greedy, I spent most of my life pretending to be happy. I drank too much and ate too much and smoked too much in an effort to be seen as jolly, affable, content. I bought new clothes and tried new makeup and cut and dyed my hair and popped antidepressants like tic tacs. Failing to find happiness for myself, I worked to make other people happy—my kids, my husband, my friends and colleagues. I became utterly numb. “How are you?” “Oh great! Yeah, fine, all good, thanks. Really wonderful.” I am and always have been an excellent liar.
Lying to others is a good way to end up feeling completely isolated and alone. Add another layer of lies on top of this—the lies you tell yourself, the anger you suppress, the bullshit you use to avoid coming to terms with your true thoughts and feelings—and you have, apparently, created the perfect conditions for an event of some great proportion.
And so, there I was, a human woman, cold and angry and resentful and hunched over the steering wheel of my car, when, with excruciating precision I felt a thick pelt of golden fur push through my skin, each wiry hair bristling up over my arms, hands, shoulders, and back, up my neck and over my skull. My hands turned from those of a primate to those of a lioness, with sharp-edged claws and no opposable thumbs. I squeezed my gray eyes shut and then opened them, wide and amber-green. I pawed at the steering wheel and angled the car off of the road, my heart pounding. Instinctively, I leaned forward to allow space between my back and the seat of the car, as enormous tawny-feathered wings sprouted from my shoulder blades, sending a rush of warm air up my spine and neck. I leaned my head against the steering wheel, trying to breathe my way back into human form. My lips parted, revealing long, curved incisors. I was transformed. I was no longer human.
“Mom!” my son called from the back of the car. “Why are we stopped?”
“Give me a minute, baby!” I told him. “Mommy’s feeling sick.”
“Sick” is the only word we have for my experience in modern Western civilization. More specifically, the doctors called my experience a psychosis. Based on my previous history of mental health complications, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and admitted to the hospital, where I slept, heavily medicated, through Christmas and into the New Year. “Mommy’s sick” became our family mantra. Mommy’s crying? She’s sick. Mommy’s angry? Sick. Mommy’s in a good mood? Also . . . sick. When you’re diagnosed bipolar, there is really no mood you can inhabit that is free from slander.
I don’t disagree with my diagnosis, nor am I ashamed. Initially, though, I felt that the bipolar diagnosis was all-encompassing—a filter through which everyone saw and could explain my motivations and behavior. I have always been creative, eccentric, and emotional—yet there are plenty of people with these qualities who do not have the specter of a mood disorder hanging over their heads. There are also plenty of people who fight with their husbands, feel dissatisfied with their jobs, and question their life choices—and do not necessarily find their bodies shapeshifting against their will.
I can now identify that the creature I became is a Sphinx—a powerful mythic creature with the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle, the tail of a serpent, and the head of a human. In Greek legend, the clever and powerful Sphinx sat atop the gates of the city of Thebes and stymied would-be passersby with her riddles, eviscerating those who did not know the answer. Despite her awesome powers, the story of the Sphinx—at least in Greek mythology—is a tragic one. She gets caught up in the tale of Oedipus.
According to legend, Oedipus meets his father, King Laius, on the road leading to Thebes. Oedipus does not know that this is his father, and when an argument ensues, Oedipus slays King Laius and walks on toward the city of Thebes. At the gates, Oedipus is stopped by the majestic Sphinx, who asks him her riddle: “What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet in the afternoon, and three feet in the evening?” When Oedipus is able to answer her riddle, the Sphinx is driven mad. Rather than turning her anger on Oedipus, the Sphinx devours her own body in a savage act of autosarcophagy. Oedipus passes through to the city of Thebes, where he proceeds to marry his mother, Queen Jocasta, and sire four of her children. It is not until years later that the truth is uncovered, at which time Queen Jocasta hangs herself, and Oedipus puts out his eyes.
If only the Sphinx had slain Oedipus, this heinous act of incest and betrayal would not have taken place.
Much has been made of Oedipus since his story was told, but what of the glorious Sphinx?
In the years since my morphing—or psychosis, if you will—I have floated on a cloud of medication, slowly peeling back the layers of fog, one pill at a time. When you have a mental health diagnosis, there is a delicate balance you must try to achieve—a state of mental stability, but a mind that still feels familiar. It’s a very slow process, requiring much patience. You know you are not yourself, and there is a homesickness that accompanies the knowledge that yourself is a place that can be dangerous, and utterly out of touch with what others perceive to be real.
As the heavy clouds of psychiatric medication lift ever so slightly, I can feel myself becoming me again, but with the perspective of years of therapy, I have better learned the art of self-reflection. Importantly, I have learned about rage, and to refuse to turn my anger inward. When I sense an impulse toward suicide or self-harm, I push back. In this sense, while I don’t fully understand the significance of the story of the Sphinx as it applies to my life, I do believe that her tragedy has served as a warning. Perhaps I might rewrite her myth and, instead of tearing into my own flesh when faced with the likes of Oedipus, I might leave my perch overlooking the city of Thebes, and fly off in search of something different, other, gluttonous, more.
My body has not morphed again, although for six months this year I was haunted by the ghost of my great-grandmother. At first I was afraid, and I took antipsychotic drugs to make her disappear. As doctors will tell you, ghosts, too, are a form of psychosis. Eventually, though, I made peace with her. Now she comes and goes, and I don’t mind. She was sick too, according to my grandmother, although sometimes I wonder if she was also deeply unhappy. She was a talented pianist, who played at the theater and with Guy Lombardo and his orchestra. Then she got married to my great-grandfather, and had children, and instead of playing the piano at the theater, or traveling with Guy Lombardo and his orchestra, she played at the church near their farmhouse in the countryside. Did she wonder what her life might have been, had she made other choices?
I am no longer afraid of her ghost, but I am afraid of what will become of the rest of my life.
-Iris Gray
Iris Gray writes personal essays and short stories that explore mental health, coming-of-age, and the complexities of what it means to be a woman. Along with writing, she engages her creativity through travel, music, and expressionist painting. Iris is deeply fascinated by animals and their place in culture and literature, and is a particular sucker for a story with a talking bird.