Emptying Out

"Will you finally be happy when there is no one to miss you? You cut & cut & cut away bonds. You feel nothing for anyone else, you selfish bastard." There is no life without death, no joy without pain, no love without loss. I don't want the pain, so I won't take the joy, either. I will feel nothing. I will have nothing. I will want nothing. But then, I have nothing to give. What do I have to offer, when I am empty inside? I've been so busy cutting pieces of my heart out. Cutting out all the hopes & dreams.

I feel like I should care, I should be appalled, shocked, screaming, "Oh my god, what have I done, and how can I set it right?!" But no. I don't want to "set it right." What good is a heart? What good are dreams & hopes? What purpose do they serve? I think, instead, I should just keep cutting, keep breaking those bonds, giving up those wants. There is no point to this, so I should just settle into the pointlessness.

"One day, you'll die. One day, you'll die." It's a mantra to cling to, a speck of hope in the hopelessness, to remember that it is finite. One day, this pointless, empty waste will cease. One day, I'll die.

The Point

'"And what would you do," the Master said unto the multitude, "if God spoke directly to your face & said, 'I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE WORLD, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE.' What then?"'

I've always liked that quote. Liked the idea that we could live in such a way as to be truly happy. That that might even be the point.

But my answer to "What then?" is that I would fail. I cannot think how to be happy. I cannot think what I might want, or want to do. Life itself is not something I really want. I live for others' sakes, & because I know that someday, perhaps even someday soon, I will die without needing to take any actions of my own. It is inevitable, & I can wait.

I wonder, sometimes, if that is not the point. Perhaps, if people like Richard Bach are right, I chose this life. I sat down pre-life, flipping through a catalog, perhaps, & decided to try a life of emptiness, depression & despair, not really knowing what it would be like to live that life.

I don't think so, though. It doesn't explain the dream - that unimpressed Death judging me. Whatever I'm supposed to be doing, I'm not accomplishing it. Whatever your definition, your belief, about the meaning of this world, this existence, I'm failing. There are no great works to live on after me, I leave behind no offspring to carry my genes into the future, my life is not devoted to any deity or path to higher being, & I am not happy in the world. There will be no improvement, either to myself or to the world, by the life that I have lived. Whatever the point... I'm missing it.

Equinox

Spring 2010-

Balanced. Unbalanced. Standing on end. Afraid to fall. She told me once, "it doesn't matter what you do, where you go, just DANCE & enjoy the dance," but I can't. I can't do it. I can't just GO without knowing where I'm going, what I'm doing. Too afraid to fall. Because every way is the wrong way. Every choice is wrong, is useless, is pointless, is... wrong. That way is wrong & that way is wrong, all ways. Always. Frozen.

Dreaming of Pain

I'm having a bad day. Which doesn't mean that things are going wrong. It means that I'm going wrong. I'm having a bad day. I don't know whether to scream, or cry, or beat my head against the wall. It's one of those days when I want to hurt myself so that I can feel... feel something other than the horrible, suffocating nothing inside. But it's not an empty nothing, it's a filthy, howling mass of nothing, like the rotting gap where a diseased tooth once sat, like a gunk-encrusted garbage disposal with rusted blades, & it threatens to suck you in & rot you from the inside out. I cannot escape it, so I dream of pain to take me away.

I drive out into the night, trying to find things to distract me. The sugar & caffeine of an iced mocha do not do the trick, & the new books seem but empty promises, certain to disappoint. I step out of the store hoping for a cool breeze to wash over me, to lend me it's cleansing breath, but the air is hot & heavy, like walking through warm syrup, like trying to breathe through wet wool. I feel like I'm suffocating. Bad day.

I dream of pain again, sharp & clean, seeking escape in the thought of stinging strikes against my flesh, or the press of teeth in my skin, hard & harder, bringing a rush of adrenaline & endorphins to fire through my veins like acid, driving out the disease. Pain or passion, I often dream of at times like these. Pain or passion, burning me up from the inside out, burning out the rot & setting me free. For now, though, there is neither, so I suffer, & despair, & continue to dream.

Better Off Dead

WHY AM I HERE?!!?! I am nothing. I am a blot, a blemish, a stain on the face of the world. How did I come to be? It doesn't make sense. It's certainly a good example for a random & unplanned universe. I have to think that if there is some powerful entity arranging things, he/she made a mistake by letting me come to be. How is it possible that I was the best - the strongest, the fastest, the most driven & determined little swimmer? How can it be that thousands of years of evolution & the natural selection of the conception process led to me being the person who was created?! I should never have been. I wish... I wish everyone in the world would get the chance to try the "It's a Wonderful Life" wish, just to see what the world would be like without them - better, worse, or indifferent - because I really do think it would have been better without me.

Judgment

I had a dream once when I was in high school. I was floating over my room & there was a long line of items floating in front of me. At the end of the line at the far side of the room was Death, sitting behind a desk. I reached out, & in the weird, warped law of physics in dreams, I managed to grab the edge of the desk & pulled myself up to it. I stood there, or floated there, rather, & stared at Death, waiting for something to happen, but he just sat staring back at me. Finally, I asked, "Don't I get anything for challenging Death?" "No," he said, gesturing behind me, " because you ignored all the other challenges."

I've made reference to this dream before in my bloggings, when I speak of being judged for failing to take on the challenges in my life, by hiding away in my house. It's something that haunts me. I feel like I am being watched & judged & found wanting. I wonder, is it enough to just not seek death before my time, to accept that I must live this crappy life out to the end, or is more required? Do I actually need to be pushing myself to seek out challenges? What is expected of me? What should I be doing? Could I ever be enough? Do enough?

Building the Wall

(Originally written Spring 1998)

…And so we build the wall, like a dam desperately built to hold back the flood that threatens to pour out.
Hap hazardously. Requiring endless energy to hold the wall of anger in place, fighting back the sorrow with every breath.
No energy for anything else. Purely survival.
While the water stagnates behind it.
Knowing it won’t hold forever. Why do I try?
Knowing it will burst through some day, a torrential flood of pain & anger, causing such havoc in its wake.
Is it really so much easier this way?
The tiniest crack in the defenses & it begins to trickle,
and then pour.
So, we seal the cracks with our own blood & tissue, thoughts, cares, hopes. Emptying self of self until all there is, is this wall of rage & the terrifying pain behind it, a patchwork mask of indifference, bulging at the seams, draining all else to sustain itself.

2:15 am

It's amazing the number of possible person-to-person connections we miss out on in the course of a day-- people we pass on the street that could have become dear friends, or loves, or even enemies... but we'll never know, because we never make those connections. Crazy.

I go through the day with my focus turned inward, intent on where I'm going, what I'm doing, & probably don't even see the people that pass me by. Then, I go home & get on the internet to swap inconsequential data with people I don't really know, many of whose names I'll never learn, faces I'll never see.

I'm afraid to be seen, because I don't think they'll like what they see. So, I keep my head down, my gaze on the floor. "No one of consequence here. Nothing to see, move it along." I can't stand photos of myself, either. I can't even walk by a mirror without sticking out my tongue, flicking myself off, or just averting my eyes as I run by so I don't have to look at that loser.

Healthy.