The Person I Was

Pain is so deeply a part of what I am. At times I have experienced myself entirely as pain. I have defined myself by it & I have loathed myself for it. I have swallowed too many tears in too short a time. I have hung my head low long enough that my spine has taken to curving that way. Now it is a difficult thing for me to hold my head high. It is a difficult thing for me to imagine myself happy. I peruse the bazaar of experiences, sometimes, when I am feeling well enough to be seen & to interact in public - I mean the game that most people play without even realizing they are playing - I mean that dynamic thing we call 'normal, everyday life.' I last for a day, or a week, or even several months. The pain returns in different ways. Sometimes it is sudden & overwhelming. Other times it seems to tease me into thinking that this time - just maybe - I can escape it. At these times the fears within me which undoubtedly stem from childhood are triggered gradually. One or two or three at a time, in an inevitable chorus of solemn misery, the familiar emotional tensions return. It is like a terrible homecoming.

I am tempted to say, "life has lost all meaning for me." But that is not true. I do not recall ever attaining a conviction that life has any meaning. If I did at one point believe this, then that point drifts further from the sandy coastline of my present life, further yonder across the tumultuous ocean of my past, than my conscious memory is able to glimpse. The people I interact with, the situations I encounter, the places I see - all contribute, though they do not know it, to the unpredictable winds of life which can so suddenly & devastatingly lift the gleaming azure waves of my past to unavoidable heights. The winds know not what they do - they merely proceed as winds do. The ocean seems too eager to batter the shoreline with ceaseless dreadful, & by now familiar, waves. When emotion of this magnitude overwhelms me this thoroughly, life is far too small a beach to offer any safety. I daresay that on high-tide I am wading in these feelings, hopelessly unanble to find any solid ground.

When I realized I was desiring death, I was in a bit of a quandary. How ironic is it to be living in the full knowledge that I am pursuing death? I did the only thing I could do - I continued. To stop, or to back down, would have been denying myself. Had I done that, I would have lived forever with a suppressed desire for death & all of the socially unacceptable fascinations & fetishes which come with it. No, such an untrue & ultimately oppressive life was not for me. Instead I set out. I went to all the most dangerous places, sampled all the most dangerous activities, partook of the most dreaded pleasures I had even been warned away from. Alas - to no avail. The gall of people! To warn me away from places where it was possible to live! To fear for my saftey when my safety was the very thing which allowed my dreaded pain to arise! Most of all, to warn me of the danger in activities which inspired in me - far from the fear which they so obviously inspired these seemingly cowardly people - the only sense of aliveness I had ever known! How dare they warn me against dying without even considering whether I wanted to live? It seemed to be selfish & completely lacking in empathy. In truth I was desiring not a physical death but the death of the person I had been & the birth a new, more true person within me.