What Is Never Lost
I have the tendency to be bold and brash when it comes to confronting forces beyond my control. The feeling of helplessness makes me angry, and that anger, when it peaks, eliminates all fears for the future. There is no logic that can dissuade me, there is only the emotion around which all action revolves. When it comes to more mundane, domestic matters, I am often as quiet as a church mouse. I don’t want a negative reaction to me or my beliefs to derail my false sense of self and thus initiate a hyper-masculine overreaction that harms everyone involved.
I need to trust myself more. I have dealt with my anger for a long time. I have consistently strived to be not only the person others expect to see, but the person I would like to be.
Why though? Why am I so determined to be a kind, tolerant, peaceful and polite person? Society as it stands doesn’t condone or reward it. (The machine, at least. Individuals are another story.)
Is it the syndrome? Am I an impostor? Am I pretending and performing, or am I managing and surviving?
I am an impostor.
I’m you, and rarely ever me. And if I was me, I would not be welcome.
Maybe.
I feel guilt. Guilt for past mistakes, past sins, and guilt at success that was based on lies.
Guilt for failures based on truth.
I am competitive, but I don’t value winning. If you win then I’m fairly certain you’ll play again. You might even like me when we’re done. But if I win you may slam down the controller in a huff, and I may not hear from you again.
You might dislike me.
That is intolerable.
Hate me, if you please, but don’t dislike me.
And where does the hate come from? From me? A natural outgrowth of my self loathing? Or did you (or they) see that turbulent weakness and decide I could be a serviceable patsy, one who never complained?
How sure of you are you?
But…
This is all on me. I’m the one writing. This is my show now. I’m a director that wasn’t open to collaboration. And one director, no matter how devoted to work and his or her own vision, does not a movie make.
I’ll say it again.
It’s all on me.
That’s what I need to believe to prop up my flagging sense of self-worth…or to create it from scratch.
What is so wrong with me?
I ask myself this in the bitter depths of the night.
I ask…
Why do I hurt so much?
Is pain merely a logical side effect of impossible expectations?
Yes, yes.
And no.
One of the unchanging rules of life in this reality is that one must experience pain to bring themselves closer to Christ, Bhudda, Mohammed, Infinity, True Self or however you may name the steward of the source. Pain allows us the opportunity to realize we are more than our physical bodies. It enables us to empathize with people undergoing near unimaginable anguish and to say to ourselves, ‘that is me suffering’.
I wish the world’s pain was not a burden that I have to carry.
Pain also signals danger.
Am I in danger? If I am, what does that mean? I’ve lived and I’ve died. I’ve been praised and I’ve been tortured.
What is danger?
I wish I could express the preceding sentiment honestly, but I’m still afraid. And as long as I’m afraid I can be hurt.
I’m afraid of living.
I’m in danger.
We can share these feelings, we can lighten the load, we can encourage and reassure, but we cannot cure a teaching tool inherent to the cosmos as we know it. Pain is useful, but it is painful. Death is death. Loss is loss. And it is largely negative for us. Around the world there are many forms of creative celebration of the transition of the mortal to the kingdom of the dead. And these celebrations cannot be separated from the different perspectives certain groups have about what it means for a person to die.
Is it the end?
No, it isn’t.
Or, better phrased, the end of what? Life and consciousness? No, because we’re still here to bear witness and to respond to tragedy and loss in any way our hearts moves us.
Things depart and things remain.
But then we take things personally.
What about him? I may not love life as I’ve experienced it. I may not love myself, and I may not put stock in any contemporary forms of religious solace, but I love him. Where did he go?
I don’t know.
But I think he was always, as you are, more than he appeared. Cessation of the body processes could not stop such a curious configuration of consciousness. What a waste that would be.
He is many places, I’d say. You already know that the weight of him, of his beaming personhood, is affecting you physically. That weight, that promise, is what is squeezing your heart, tensing your stomach and making your head spin.
He still IS. And he is with you.
And he is not with you.
He is elsewhere, still learning, still experiencing triumph and tragedy, regret and your love. He knows it. Intense grief, and the kind of desire it gives birth to, travel as energy throughout the universe and will reach the person for whom, and because of whom, you experienced these awful and wondrous things.
This is life. We are life.
We don’t have to be afraid.