Late

I've struggled with my demons for over a week now without comment. My mood was surprisingly upbeat most of the week, but I was deeply psychotic for much of it. The disease wears me out. It's a slow grind on my endurance, and it never stops. Hope is always there, but mercy becomes more tempting every day. I don't know how much longer this thing will dominate me, but I grow very weary of it. Sometimes, all I feel like doing is enter the ring, drop my espada and my muleta, and smile at the bull as it charges. I'd be silent, and still, just like Manolete. Part of me knows the imperfect analogy of Manolete's courage to my exhaustion, but equal parts just want peace, even at the expense of the love and understanding I wouldn't even recognize if it were right in front of my eyelids.

Still

I find myself here. I repeat old stories, and relive old battles. The skirmishes in my head are non stop; as Midnight arrives, they escalate. I was fourteen when it started, fourteen. My life didn't even begin before it was over. Now I sit, with the same choices and the same questions I had in my youth. Why? Where is my happiness? Where is my balance? How can I make it all stop? I enjoy the company of others, but those I know seem to distance themselves from me. Apparently, my melancholy is as distasteful to them as it remains to me. I see the future as an extension of the past; it reaches for me with the same inevitable hunger that grabbed me just shy of the mountaintop. Stare me in the hand.

This was the past


The same as the present


A portent for the future.

Call From the Darkness

When I was in high school, I spent many nights outside. The call of Midnight was intense. I walked around in bare feet, sometimes for hours, pacing the street in front of my house. I pusehd myself into exhaustion; it was hard to sleep. Now I feel the same call. Midnight beckons, and I want to start walking. Perhaps it's the danger of high speeds and drunken drivers that just doesn't happen in the daytime. Perhaps it's the fresh air, or the round shapes of nature that don't form lines in my head. Maybe it's just nostalgia from an era when I was happier with myself, when I saw the mountaintop. Any excuse or way out, I'll take right now. The weeping willows and the thin dew on the ground reflect my pain without judgement. No matter what else, it seems I have the approval of the wild spaces and Midnight. I know it's just an illusion, but that illusion is better than my life right now. I can't go back to the place where I saw the mountaintop. Every day, I slip a little more. The darkness and the exhaustion of Midnight call me; I fight hard to stay where I am, but sometimes it feels like the old times when I'm outside. I had promise then that extended past my next dose.

Why Are We Hurting?

A friend wonders why our similar pain won't go away. I posted the following as a comment on his blog; we're both dealing with the same kind of pain, I believe.

I don't understand all of your post, but I believe I understand enough. I built a safe place for my tormentors to believe, and be free from not only retribution from me, but guilt from themselves. Unfortunately, that guilt is easily assuaged; our pain has no such solution. The people who've wronged us and tormented us will be far happier than we will ever be: if we don't build the safe place, they will find one otherwise. To counter the pain for ourselves, a role in their vindication helps on a minor level. In the end, we'll both suffer more. By our kindness and forgiving natures, they will get ahead of us in not only worldly things; they will be closer to their spiritual goals because they carry the lesser pain. It is terribly unjust, but that is the way of the tormentors. They will get ahead. They will have love, safety, understanding, and angrily enough, the moral high ground. They will look down on us and wonder why we're mired in our pain. Some will laugh. It's easier on all levels to be the tormentor, the one who causes pain.

We're taught that forgiving those who wrong us is the best thing we can do as people and believers. That teaching is itself wrong. The easiest and most direct route to the top of the world and the top of the church, at least in my experience, is to be the tormenter of a good person, then use that good person's forgiving nature to rise above guilt. That way you never have to deal with our brand of pain: watching those who hurt us be happy with their perfect lives, perfect spouses, perfect children, and perfect futures on the backs of our forgiveness.

That is the way of the world and the church. We'll never feel complete. The next time you help your tormentors, know that they will feel better, and live better far before you will. The only thing we can do about our pain is to pray and hope that when the Lord sees fit to remove us from our pain-filled bodies in his pain-ridden world, that he does not judge us harshly for our misery. He demands we forgive, so we forgive. He allows infinite chances for the tormentors to forgive themselves, but offers few options to comfort our pain. The worst part of the whole situation is that without forgiveness for our tormentors, we'll never feel better at all.

Lines

When I'm deeply psychotic, my sight betrays me. I assemble lines and images where there are none. Things stop being what they are, and become collections of lines, shapes, and items traced between what I see as important points of reference. Sometimes, I let other people know about my lines, but mostly, I move objects around the room to make as few lines as possible. I'd close my eyes, but that's when I see my dancing, glittering angel of pain the clearest: when there's nothing to interfere with her dance.

This concept might be hard to grasp for most people, so I've constructed an example. Below, I display two paintings by different artists, and drew lines and shapes into them as I see them psychotically. The Grunewald bothers me immensely, the Dore not as much. First take a look at the originals:




This is how I see the lines when I'm psychotically incapacitated; you'll have to click on the images to see my lines clearly:


Notice the revolver, the grail, and the equilateral triangle. The blue lines are lines I see that rearrange themselves into different shapes when psychotically reassembled.



This painting bothers me far less. The only shape I see is the equilateral triangle between the two wrestlers. The only psychotic lines I see are the horizon and Jacob's staff.

I don't know what motivates me to find lines in some images, while not seeing any in others. Usually, I rearrange the clutter around me through trial and error so I don't assemble the lines. Sometimes, I can't get away from them at all.