Call us AnaByblis

Miletus, son of Apollo, was a Greek mythological hero, founder of the city of Miletus, in Asia Minor. He had identical twins, Caunus and Byblis. Byblis Miletus loved her brother with forbidden love and, Caunus, appalled by his sister`s obsession, fled from Miletus, his mother country, and founded a new one, called Caunus. The pain of rejection turned Byblis mad and caused her to wander erratically through out Asia Minor. When she could go no longer and was about to jump from the top of a rocky crag ending her days and pains, the Nymphs, moved by her suffering, transformed her into a spring of inexhaustible tears. Apollo, upset by the Nymphs` trick, condemned the fountain to be reincarnated in different human beings for generations.
Call us anabyblis. (In Greek, the prefix “Ana” means “again”).
Anabyblis live amongst normal human beings. We are their children, enemies, spouses, bosses, employees, pupils. Etc. Anabyblis go about their lives just like normal people. Some of us are aware of our condition while others believe they are as normal as anybody else.
But.
You see, we are identical to normal beings. We have the same professions (we are awful at exact sciences, though) and social lives. We can only identify a fellow anabyblis, if we are particularly watchful and notice the trace of sadness in his eyes, a sign that he is far away from the place where he is at the moment and the people around him. We could certainly notice the mist in his eyes but we would miss the small little pill of cyanide in his pocket, which an anabyblis always carries in case his life becomes intolerable.
Some Anabyblis also have random brief moments of happiness, as if Caunus had returned.
Many Anabyblis believe that settling in a conventional existence (the kind normal human beings lead) is essential to our well-being. This is what health and soul specialists insist on and want us to believe: “There is nothing worse than a crazy person who is at home with his or her own insanity." (Says the psychotherapist, Jose Luis Gil in his web-page: "You don't want a cure for your neurosis because you find your nest full of defenses more convenient and secure, and, as your sufferings have made you mistrustful of others, your fears strengthen your paralysis. Even worse, you are afraid that if you achieve to change and become well you would cease to know yourself; not after the years you spent building a personality, regardless of how painful it could be!"
They accuse us of sabotage!
So, my advise today, my fellow Anabyblis, is that we hide our own condition from normal people, yes, but only as long as we can recognize each other. Because it is not the same to be normal as it is to be Anabyblis ("Some neurotics go so far as to idealize their neurosis, take pride in their suffering, and avoid having to dispose of their immaturity").
I say: An Anabyblis has a gap in his soul, from the inexhaustible spring we inherited from our ancestor, Byblis. This gap is our element and our mark. The hole is there. We cannot explain this to other people because they become appalled, horrified, just as Caunus became appalled of his sister´s need to bond and become one with him. We have to, therefore, hide the gap from normal human beings but always be true to ourselves.
"Oh, make me a mask"

Because of this gap, this missing piece, this sense of incompleteness, we cannot feel whole in any situation unless we are with fellow Anabyblis.
Don't we wander through this earth, like ghosts, looking for each other? When we suddenly find a kindred spirit, we look in his eyes for a few seconds, one makes a gesture of recognition to the other, maybe a slight nod of the head, and we both breath a sigh of relief. As if the other AnaByblis had the missing piece that would finally make us complete. This bond stops, even if for a moment, the inexhaustible spring of tears. Both Anabyblis know that this feeling will last but a short while, maybe a few hours, as they know that their condition condemns them to let go and open the gap, the spring of tears. No one can live glued to another person for life as Byblis wanted to do with her other half.

Don't doctors seek to surgically separate Siamese twins as soon as possible?
Even these Anabyblis, perfected by evolution, who have managed to plug the gap that is the source of their incompleteness, would never get their own identity if not separated.

Between us we recognize each other in seconds, I say.
But.

Two Anabyblis can not be partners. They would end up as Byblis Miletus was not allowed to end by the Nymphs: killing themselves. We need the healthy and complete love from someone normal, we need his touch when he embraces us, his warm body in our beds. For this reason we need to take care of them (a key fact) so that they can be as happy as they can possibly be and as a result make us feel complete.

But keeping them unaware of our condition, yes, as I explained, for the good of all, and if we ever get caught red-handed with the fountain overflowing, quickly make up a good story, expressed in normal language as to why the fountain is overflowing so as not to scare them. Examples: "I was humiliated by my boss", or "My purse has been stolen."
I learned this years ago, only I did not realize at that moment that I had learned something: my then new husband found me in tears with my head inside the hamper of dirty clothes and of course wanted to know what was wrong,
What, what, what the hell had gone that wrong.
"My bicycle was stolen”, I immediately answered (my then means of transport, when I used to teach English from one end of the city of Buenos Aires to the other).
Give them quick, concrete responses, almost tangible, turn them immediately away from the source of your tears or they would be horrified.
They are not to blame for our gap nor do they have the ability to fill it; only to convey the feeling that the gap is filled.

Once when I was twelve and still ignorant of my condition, my mother found the fountain overflowing. I told her the truth, not knowing what was happening to me. She said: "Poor child. You were born sensitive. For that reason you will suffer more, but you'll enjoy life more as well”.
I remember well her using the word "enjoy" because it was not in her vocabulary. I also remember that her pronouncement made me sad because at that precise moment, any kind of enjoyment seemed impossible. But what I remember most is that I felt the separation, as if she and I belonged to different worlds.
"The basic horror of the neurotic is to discover that he stands alone in the world, that his relationships have been poisoned, that he somehow was always an orphan and he feels panic because he dimly intuits that he has lost forever his last hope of being loved unconditionally as a child."

There are Anabyblis that do not recognize their condition, nor that it is only with another Anabyblis that they can, even if only for a moment, feel whole.
It is a shame.
We can't aid them because we know that to get to the truth is something personal. My grandmother never achieved the realization that she was one of us. She was never able to conceal her "disorder" in front of normal people nor to feel any kind of relief. She told the doctors she had a few peaks of unexpected and inexplicable happiness, and then returned to face the abyss. The doctors submitted her to electroshock therapy many times in order to heal her but that resulted in the gradual escape called Alzheimer's.
You see, to ignore our situation and try to act normal with the requirements of normality, pushes us toward the abyss worse than to try to dry the spring with alcohol or drugs or hyperactivity.

"Healing is awakening to the stark truth that childhood is a train that has departed and learn to live with the certainty that nobody could ever be our savior and that only we can-and should-take the weight of our solitude, of our existence, of our destiny".

Warning: Please note that our gap makes us very vulnerable to affection and touching glimpses of our narcissism. There are very clever normal humans who have found our Achilles heel and come to us disguised as Caunus. We fall into their arms and just as we leave them we realize that there was no bond and that the union has only enlarged the gap, the Anabyblis´s fountain.

"Healing will occur with the help and company of many people, of course, but we are fundamentally alone and autonomous."

So, my Anabyblis brothers and sisters,watch out for this clever people, be cautious and do not succumb to the temptation to show them your gap. Let's hide the spring from them as much as we hide it from other non-anabyblis people.
And.
Let´s concentrate all our energy on:

* knowing our condition

* hiding it from normal people

* looking for other kindred spirits with whom we can be whole, even if for a moment

* taking advantage of the Anabyblis spring which will be useful for whatever we have found that tastes like a "creation" (even if it is a tiresome as putting a brick next to the other). So we do not aim to drain the spring, as sometimes we think we should do, but instead, take in its water.