Face The Reality

I don't know if I'll ever get back to the way I was, and the truth of that fact is more than I can bare. I can barely remember it now. I think Hell is a place where one day delivers enough pain to make you feel like you've been there for eternity and lost yourself. So traumatic that nothing else matters, nothing else can be remembered, and nothing else can be felt.

The doctors: the psychiatrists, psychologists, even the orthopedic specialists, all of them, tell me that I will probably never be the same. Not that same is what I want, just that I expected to grow in a positive way, rather than become partially insane. My personality is undergoing a complete transformation into God knows what. I am afraid of myself. To say that I don't know myself would be an almost sadistic comment. I have no idea who I even was, who I am, or who I will be. I am scared of all of the answers to those questions. I simply do not want to be me.

I am stuck in the Grand Canyon rut of personal identity. What I feel and what I think battle each other like they're in the most righteously desperate of wars over the truth of me. The feeling side is winning by a dramatic margin. I fear that I have lost everything that I was, everything that I am, and everything that I will be. I used to be so many things, so many things that so many people thought were good, and each of them I now mourn as if my soul has given up all attachments and I am now left with this pathetic shell of a person.

I have run out of tears many times this week over marathon hours of shedding them. My eyes are sore, left with the salty crystals, blurry vision, and rashes from rubbing away my times of reflection. I have forgotten how to smile, swallow, and sometimes breath. I am beset with the effects of fucking up my life for no good reason. It grieves me so deeply. So deep, that I feel it without even thinking. So deep, that I could reflect on it all day and never feel it fully.

This faceless depression seems to be of a different strain that I am used to dealing with. It is confusing and painful in way that pain is not usually felt; not with a clarity of mind, but a clouding of all senses. Any pleasure I feel tends to rot so quickly that I barely remember experiencing it. And I know it is this breed of depression that makes me cast a dark perspective shadow, and that I have no control over it, but I wish I could just face it. I wish I could just face the reality of my life.

No Thanks, I'd Rather Hide

Under a blanket, under a tree
Under a rock beside a stream
Under a bed, with a skirt
Under the neck of my t-shirt

In a cave, with a narrow mouth
Under the sand with a straw sticking out
In a bottle, with a cork
Covered in straw with a pitchfork

Behind a computer, behind a desk
Under the desk beneath the foot rest
Wrapped in toilet paper, in the shower
Playing video games past the hour

In the coffee pot, with dark roasted blend
Somehow between the paper and the pen
Between two cups, stacked in each other
Under the feathered ass of a finch's mother

In a shell, in a shelter
In an asylum with white-washed helpers
Under a log, in a fire
Warm and cozy in the highest spire

No thanks, I'd rather hide
Than get up and go outside

Hold On, Just Hold On

These were my last therapists words to me just before I left her office. I'm beginning to think that therapists are not as much like doctors as I originally thought. I do not mean to insult the profession, but there is much that many therapists do not understand. Like lovers. Unlike listeners. In fact, I have had more therapists than I've had lovers and less listeners than I've had therapists.

The story for me now is that I'm holding on. Holding on and reaching out. I've begun to dabble again into spiritual experiences, which in the past, have provided much healing and peace for me. I'm currently reading two books: one on prayer and the other on listening. I just now realized there has been a hole in my approach to prayer even more so than there has been in my past listening skills.

Here is how I reasoned it: Prayer to God often comes in the form of somewhat grocery lists of needs and desires. After all, God is there to help us, no? On the other hand, listening comes in the form of selflessly minding the other's thoughts and feelings to the point that one forgets their own and focuses on the speaker. Now, given that God (or whatever you call him or her) is the foundation for truth, and that he or she also has a will for us in the form of love, why is there so little listening in prayer?

I know it sounds weird. I mean, what do you tell a person who says God speaks to them? Do you ask them the secret of their drug cocktail? I would certainly feel that way. That is to say, I would feel that way if I were completely sane and had all of my shit together. Egos spike quite higher when they are stepping on others. But I don't, and I'm not, so on we go.

What would happen if we took time to get comfy and pray. Who in their right mind says prayer has to be some sort of ritualistic recital? Get comfy, quite down, and listen to God. If he is who he claims to be, then he will speak to you. If he is not, or simply doesn't give a shit, then you'll hear nothing. And it is here that I need to make a distinction. A simple one, between, let's say, eastern and western religious philosophies.

What I propose in the above paragraph can only be done with a Judeo-Christian approach. Most eastern religions require the emptying of one's self in prayer, detachment from all things, and a sort of raising up or branching out of the mind to relate. In the western Judeo-Christian approach, prayer requires the filling up of one's self with God, a deep dependence on him, and a sort of selfish focus wherein God reaches out and in to you. Not exactly Sunday school stuff, but I thought I'd make the distinction.

So, given a God who is truth, who loves us, and wants to help us, I neglect to see why listening to God in prayer could be considered as absurd as I once thought it was. Imagine actively listening to the Truth. Empathizing with an almighty heart that loves you. Reflecting those emotions as though they were a person speaking to you and you were giving them their full attention, complete with reflecting facial expressions, tones of voice, ears filled with their intention.

I know I am reaching here. Reaching out, holding on, just holding on. But I might, just might, actually believe this.