Judy Schreiber - February 1, 2013
Conclusion I
So, what do you think helped you to survive?
Um, [pause] I, I, I think that the, you mean from my standpoint now or from what I would have thought about then?
Right.
How do you...
Yeah, it's um, yeah, it's, it's not actually uh, you've really been, you have been discussing it all throughout, your perceptions of what helped you to survive, which was...
My father...
Father.
Initially, and some kind of a sense of um, some, some, I, you know, I, I interpret it and I think of it as God, because I have been, along with my being freaked out about death, I had been somewhat, got obsessed most of my life. Uh, perseverating and thinking about death was one of my big time occupations, mentally.
Mm-hm.
Off and on, off and on all of my life. And perseverating and thinking about God and what does that mean, and how does that, how does that fall into to my survival, and how does that fall into all the other people that didn't survive. And I think of God as extremely positive. And I think of humans as extremely failing in many ways. And so I always think that when things don't go right it doesn't have to do with God, it always has to do with our own failures. And just wanting, wanting to be able to um, grow myself up enough, cause' I feel like my parents really didn't do it for me. Grow myself up enough and mature myself enough to have the sensibility uh, to understand that if you, if, if you have a, a, a belief and a faith and some kind of concept of God in you, then you have to understand that everything in life is God driven somehow. Even though we don't understand the degrees and the extents, I, I feel like nothing, I feel now that nothing happen...happens ever, just because.
Mm-hm.
Uh, you know, I, I, I've, and I sense a, some kind of a divinity or something, I don't know what to call it exactly. Uh, you know, I sense it within everything.
Hm.
And I, I think I, I think I thought about God when I was very small child and part of that used to freak me out and scare me. Because I knew that I should not be thinking about God at age 6 and 7.
Mm-hm.
And 5, and 4. Even going back then, I knew it was aberrant for a child, I mean, I didn't know the term aberrant, but looking back on it now, I think to myself why was I so obsessed with all that, and somehow it makes a bizarre kind of sense. Because death was all around me, what was I going to turn to for any kind of uh, solace. God would have been the natural...
Hm.
Thing, but what turned me on to that, I'm assuming was my dad and to some extent, maybe my mother, but I don't remember how or why, because they lost their religion pretty much as time went on. Although I do remember my mother all, all of my uh, earlier life and even late throughout the years saying "Gott is a Foter" which means "God is a father."
Hm.
And I remember having that feeling.
Hm.
I have it now, I always had it. And when I uh, when I uh, when I got cancer...
Hm.
It's like I, once again, oh my god I'm going to die. I thought I was going to, you know, die within weeks.
Mm-hm.
And no, because uh, you know, I, I started thinking about it uh, I'm not gonna determine when I'm gonna die, that's not up to me.
Hm.
And if I do believe in a God that whenever it is I do die, it will be exactly when he wants me to, not when I, I'm not setting the timeframe. And some of that kind of thinking over the years has helped me allay some of my fears about death, I think.
Mm.
Although there still with me because, you know, I get real big bouts of anxiety, but they're shorter lived then they used to be. And I have come to understand the source of them. And I know that it is something that I got when I was a very little child. It's like catching a uh, it's like catching a disease that you can never recover from, it's like having diabetes.
Uh-huh.
I became fearful of death and dying at age 3 and it never left me.
Like a disease.
It was like a disease and it was an active disease at times. I think that's why I did drugs at some point too, cause I found out in my uh, 20s, you know, swallowing some uh, I, yeah, I, you know, I've been, I don't take that now, but...
Mm-hm.
Back then, you know, the tranquilizers and this and that.
Mm-hm.
My father forever medicated himself.
Mm-hm.
I think he walked around stoned for 20 some years.
Wow.
30 years. I picked up on it and did it for a number of years, it allayed anxiety.
Mm-hm.
But then I also got to the point where I became exactly the opposite uh, and that is, I became angry at my dad...
Ah.
For taking drugs and screwing up his life, our lives to some extent. And it, you know, now I realize it was probably, it just, it was a uh, probably uh, you know, a mechanism to help himself live.
Mm-hm.
To tranquilize himself...
Right, self-medication.
Self, so that he wouldn't explode.
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