For Those Who Remain

Timothy O'Neill
Sep 1, 2018 · 3 min read

I thought there was dignity in outrage, dignity in anger

Power

Purpose

Motivation

I don’t need to witness the entire horrific scope of human suffering

Or understand it

I can just become incensed

Let the bitterness boil over

And blame whoever wasn’t there who I think should have been

My little ego says the gods should have been there

And might have been

In disguise

And when I say ‘gods’

I mean any person who was in the position to do more rescuing, healing and raging than they did

But I can’t judge

Not for me to say

As far as I know I was not there

When they fed babies to ovens

But of course I was

In spirit

And that spirit is unclean

Because of what I did, and what I stood passively by and allowed to happen

I don’t like humans?

I love them too much

Or did

Now my love is circumscribed. Delimited.

Organized into a pathology of narcissism, vengeance and violence

There is no civilized place for my version of love

And it is true

I bowed out

I said enough is enough

I cried for me instead of grasping your hand and pulling you out

I consented

I thought madness could be brought to heel through art

Through beauty and nostalgia

I was wrong

If that many people were butchered then it must mean on some level they consented

Or our society did

Or the cosmos did

If we relate through common consciousness then that consciousness, beyond all intimate knowing, approved

So who to blame?

No one

I need to blame

I need order

I need order that I can pull together inside the dimensions of my mental framework

Guilty

All painted with the same dried and crusty brush

I am guilty

You are a distinct, original and lovely you. You are me and not me.

You died

And I could not contextualize

I saw myself long ago, with chords of light connecting me to the life outside of all this death

I saw myself snap out of it

Snap out of sanity

I saw myself become one

It was not a reunion, it was a fracturing

Ah, at last I understand, I told myself

I’m in a prison

Witnessing the natural outcome of disorder and separation

Competing to live

Learning to love in the harshest, most paradoxical of circumstances

Lift others up

Others who were born here and never knew anything else

The other that you became when you thought you were more than us

How well will your beliefs hold up when placed in front of the tide that knows no mercy, with no one to advocate and reassure?

Parts of you will be wiped away

What is not organic will be shattered

What is strong and intended will remain

Fall down and you shall see you have no one and nothing to pin your darkest fears on

You will have no one to blame for your overwhelming guilt and your sadness more bottomless than the ocean

You will see you, and you will either reject or accept it

For you are this place

All places

And you are desperate for a home