Anguish Unedited

 I Think I understand complete and utter anguish, more than I understand any other emotion. The place between your ribs, that’s pulsing, and rising up, the opposite of wholeness, but a full brokenness. A place that you go, that not even an ice burg in the middle of the ocean could you find yourself more alone. There is a shame that comes with anguish, that is where you meet bitterness, but when I was young, I hadn’t known bitterness yet.

               As a child, I laid in many strangers bed, reaching out to heaven, with no reply, except maybe the gentle comfort of dopamine that releases when the mind suffers beyond its own comprehension, and maybe that is where we meet God. Still now,a child screaming out in pain for their mother, or their daddy, yanks me out of my perceived reality and I’m seven years old again, writhing In madness, squirming for comfort, there was none. I never went home, and that pain has never gone away, I just learned how to not feel it sometimes. It doesn’t have to be a cry from a child, sometimes just a simple rejection.

Some times I see myself in a room filled with things made of glass, beautiful things, and I have a bat. I think about it, in my loneliest waking moments, where I let my pain transform itself to rage, and it begins in my belly, where is starts to get hot, when the fire reaches my chest, the day dream begins, and Im smashing everything. Glass is flying, and I can feel the weight of the bat in my hand, and the pain I get when I hit things hard and the bat pushes back, but my muscles hold strong. I fear the glass will fly up and cut me, but it some ways I hope it does, so the people that see me, could see the pain, the bleeding and what this rage has done.

               Nothing hurts more than being alone. You just wanted to be special, you wanted the person you love the most to hold you in your arms so you could be home. You never went home.

I think the most important thing for people who have seen and felt the anguish, is to find a place, deep inside, that’s safer than anyone in this world, or safer than any place in the world, because as beautiful as the world is, its far more cruel than your worst nightmares. I’ve been to that place often, deep inside, whether it was during a time I was raped, or mental hospital where your cognitive abilities had had enough and shut down, and nothing made sense anymore. I’ve been there. During a time where you died to your body, for 23 hours bringing a new life in the world, or a time when I had felt the worst physical pain in my life, where my knee was shattered to bits, and I go there. It may not be the place you find God, but many think hes there, but a place where you see yourself eye to eye. I can see the universe swirling there and the answers to my questions, the greater reality. Where you dive into each fractal until it doesn’t make sense, but then it does again. When they told me that my father had got hit by a train, my mother had died, my aunt committed suicide, the darkest despair your mind can not comprehend, there is a place waiting for you there. When your best friend betrays you, you feel like you have to start over again, How many times will I have to start over again. How many times will I break and have to find strength. Until death.. I’ve watched people die, I’ve held their hand until they took their last breath, and I know its a battle, in the heart and in the mind, a fighting and bargaining with your own soul. I know what it is to die to the self, but I don’t think I know what it is to let go, that must be death, the ultimate. Final. death.

Just weeks ago, I spoke to my councilor about my dreams, a recurring dream and fascination with drowning. Whether the dreams had been me drowning, a stranger and even my daughter. I was surprised when he told me that it made complete sense. That drowning is a struggle, and it order to find peace, you must let go, when you do, you go into a state of complete nirvana, and things don’t have to make sense but they do. My heart yearns for that peace, but you have to conquer fear, in conquering you have to let the fear consume you, then let go. Its not abnormal to go to a place, as metaphysical as it is, where fear fills your lungs and you cant breath. Panic.

              I will never sit down, and I will never turn myself in, I will always start again. If these things have taught me anything, its that in anguish, fear, complete brokenness, loneliness, and self loathing shame, that you do always have a friend, in yourself and you must find it, create it if you must, inevitably you will. I don’t know what I’m writing about today, except pain, and that it is real, that we all feel it. You live long enough, and its not a stranger, and sometimes you need to just let it consume you, as long as you get up and start again.