It is unbecoming to infer that the killers are weak and the victims will win, it complicates the nightmare with the dream.
Put away your courage it is a provocation in their sight.
I am unable to recall clearly how many times I have now found myself perched at the precipice of a proverbial ‘new beginning’. Truth be told, I am quite weary of ‘new beginnings’, they act as the perpetual ping-pong punctuation on the run-on sentence that is my life. Individual conformity is my prescribed pattern of existence: how is one to dare anticipate a positive outcome born of such convoluted contradiction? When I was eight and being sent off to live with my father it was a new beginning; when there was pain and only the bleak, looming stretch of more pain to come it was ‘This too shall pass’; when, ten years later, I managed to escape that saturated swamp of venom, it was a new beginning; when I started learning voluntarily that was a new beginning; when I got accepted to Oxford that was a ‘new beginning’ and now as I leave to look for myself in the capital of universal self seekers the term is being thrown around all over again. There is nothing new about these beginnings, they are all far too old to begin anew and I recall that saying about a fool being someone who continues doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result each time.
Yet, it remains what we fools are destined to do I suppose and so ‘that which we are, we are’.
I recognise that my more than morbid meanderings are laced with melodrama, self pity and a rather unhealthy dose of narcissism. Still, this year and this particular ‘beginning’ has brought with it far too much ‘reality’, nearly enough to completely obliterate Beentherella. It is hard now to summon up my usual enthusiasm for …anything. I have spent the past weeks packing, roaming the streets of Oxford, silently sketching, watching movies and trying to immerse myself in my ‘aloneness’ with the same vehement determination I always reserved for it. However, this is mayhaps what I resent the most about free falling, heart-long in overtly-unrequited love. The fact that it has cemented that painful realisation that ‘No, I don’t love being alone’ no matter how good I am at it.
And I am very good at it.
Another recent development has been my inability to continue expressing myself on this particular forum. The entire point of having a ‘me space’ on the web was to not know who knew the ‘me’ in question. I have always relished this rare opportunity to actually be as brutally honest, insane and explicit as I can sans repercussions. Collecting my personal collage of cyber strangers, face-less friends and brash critics I have managed here and really nowhere else, to completely be all of my many ‘me’s’ at some time or another. Recently I have become aware of some of my readers and the axis has shifted completely. It is an odd sort of reversal being confronted with my virtual reality, by real people talking to the corporal, artificial I. There are just too many ‘me’s’ in such conversations and we are all airbrushed. I have grown up, I suppose, in the sense that I have learned to numb my mind and yet I have not lived. I have swallowed far too much and tasted nothing. The sad part is that I have recognised that this isn’t or wasn’t ever about where I was or am…it has always been about who I am. I choose not to participate in the perverse façade of being part of a ‘people’, any people. I have realised that I am quite a coward.
Recently, I was hit by one of my more severe waves of manic, suicidal depression. This time I navigated the mechanics of an End for fourteen hours on a not-so-random Tuesday spent staring at a half-full bottle of nail polish remover, contemplating how immediate its effects would be. I calmly composed one of my more eloquent- and I feel, sufficiently melodramatic- ‘last words’ and pondered how the world would go on without me and how it wouldn’t. There is a meticulous process to all suicide attempts. The vast majority are located amidst extreme bursts of adrenaline spiralling out of control into demonic descent and I have had my share of those in the past. In fact that is how ‘Beentherella’ came into being. She took birth from the ashes of my fourteen-year-old self vowing to never go down this path ever again. She was determined to remain forever vigilant on my behalf. She deemed it a terrible cowardice. Today, she knows better.
Cowardice is a failure to accept the reality and rationality of such a decision. Cowardice is want and hope for change when one knows not to expect it. Cowardice is the triumph of religion over reason; of matter over mind; of memory over meaning and above all of Elpis. Cowardice is the sound of her dancing in the rain and smiling at the stars. In general I accept reality with a fluid sort of ease, because I intuit that nothing is real. The fact that I believe foremost in ‘doubt’; in the certainty of nothing indicates to my warped self that I also believe in anything…because it doesn’t matter either way. I read once that the ancient cabalists used to pretend that man was a microcosm of sorts, a symbolic mirror of the universe. I do not know if I am narcissistic enough to believe that and yet I recognise that it is only narcissistic if one assumes the ‘universe’ to be grand. That is further complicated if one assumes that anything ‘grand’ is inherently ‘good’. In the end it all only remains unexplained. My cowardice stems not so much from fear of the unknown but rather that worn-out, perennial Pascal’s Wager: ‘Mayhaps tomorrow’.
And so I succumbed. I found myself calling my aunt with a rather pathetic S.O.S to convince me to choose my cowardice; to give me reasons to stay; to tell me it will ‘all be all right’. All so I could scoff at her in my mind while simultaneously indulging my emotional insolvency in the assertion that there are those who would care if I am dead. Whereas if anything, I shouldn’t! Sadly, that too did pass. And now the Future looms once again, hope springs bitterly triumphant as Time brings with it a tidal wave of the trivial: Harry Potter films to see, restaurants to try, graduation to look forward to, a PhD to shoot for, careers, New York big-end-ings, novels to write, thoughts to think, countries to see, hazy, misty first impressions of a tiny person I can love enough to not need to love myself and You. You: whoever You are or were or could have been or will be that I have never casually bumped into lurking behind a bookshelf; crossing the street, across a car park or sitting next to on a plane.
And to think, I lament 26 years of being the mess that is me today!
Put away your courage it is a provocation in their sight.
I am unable to recall clearly how many times I have now found myself perched at the precipice of a proverbial ‘new beginning’. Truth be told, I am quite weary of ‘new beginnings’, they act as the perpetual ping-pong punctuation on the run-on sentence that is my life. Individual conformity is my prescribed pattern of existence: how is one to dare anticipate a positive outcome born of such convoluted contradiction? When I was eight and being sent off to live with my father it was a new beginning; when there was pain and only the bleak, looming stretch of more pain to come it was ‘This too shall pass’; when, ten years later, I managed to escape that saturated swamp of venom, it was a new beginning; when I started learning voluntarily that was a new beginning; when I got accepted to Oxford that was a ‘new beginning’ and now as I leave to look for myself in the capital of universal self seekers the term is being thrown around all over again. There is nothing new about these beginnings, they are all far too old to begin anew and I recall that saying about a fool being someone who continues doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result each time.
Yet, it remains what we fools are destined to do I suppose and so ‘that which we are, we are’.
I recognise that my more than morbid meanderings are laced with melodrama, self pity and a rather unhealthy dose of narcissism. Still, this year and this particular ‘beginning’ has brought with it far too much ‘reality’, nearly enough to completely obliterate Beentherella. It is hard now to summon up my usual enthusiasm for …anything. I have spent the past weeks packing, roaming the streets of Oxford, silently sketching, watching movies and trying to immerse myself in my ‘aloneness’ with the same vehement determination I always reserved for it. However, this is mayhaps what I resent the most about free falling, heart-long in overtly-unrequited love. The fact that it has cemented that painful realisation that ‘No, I don’t love being alone’ no matter how good I am at it.
And I am very good at it.
Another recent development has been my inability to continue expressing myself on this particular forum. The entire point of having a ‘me space’ on the web was to not know who knew the ‘me’ in question. I have always relished this rare opportunity to actually be as brutally honest, insane and explicit as I can sans repercussions. Collecting my personal collage of cyber strangers, face-less friends and brash critics I have managed here and really nowhere else, to completely be all of my many ‘me’s’ at some time or another. Recently I have become aware of some of my readers and the axis has shifted completely. It is an odd sort of reversal being confronted with my virtual reality, by real people talking to the corporal, artificial I. There are just too many ‘me’s’ in such conversations and we are all airbrushed. I have grown up, I suppose, in the sense that I have learned to numb my mind and yet I have not lived. I have swallowed far too much and tasted nothing. The sad part is that I have recognised that this isn’t or wasn’t ever about where I was or am…it has always been about who I am. I choose not to participate in the perverse façade of being part of a ‘people’, any people. I have realised that I am quite a coward.
Recently, I was hit by one of my more severe waves of manic, suicidal depression. This time I navigated the mechanics of an End for fourteen hours on a not-so-random Tuesday spent staring at a half-full bottle of nail polish remover, contemplating how immediate its effects would be. I calmly composed one of my more eloquent- and I feel, sufficiently melodramatic- ‘last words’ and pondered how the world would go on without me and how it wouldn’t. There is a meticulous process to all suicide attempts. The vast majority are located amidst extreme bursts of adrenaline spiralling out of control into demonic descent and I have had my share of those in the past. In fact that is how ‘Beentherella’ came into being. She took birth from the ashes of my fourteen-year-old self vowing to never go down this path ever again. She was determined to remain forever vigilant on my behalf. She deemed it a terrible cowardice. Today, she knows better.
Cowardice is a failure to accept the reality and rationality of such a decision. Cowardice is want and hope for change when one knows not to expect it. Cowardice is the triumph of religion over reason; of matter over mind; of memory over meaning and above all of Elpis. Cowardice is the sound of her dancing in the rain and smiling at the stars. In general I accept reality with a fluid sort of ease, because I intuit that nothing is real. The fact that I believe foremost in ‘doubt’; in the certainty of nothing indicates to my warped self that I also believe in anything…because it doesn’t matter either way. I read once that the ancient cabalists used to pretend that man was a microcosm of sorts, a symbolic mirror of the universe. I do not know if I am narcissistic enough to believe that and yet I recognise that it is only narcissistic if one assumes the ‘universe’ to be grand. That is further complicated if one assumes that anything ‘grand’ is inherently ‘good’. In the end it all only remains unexplained. My cowardice stems not so much from fear of the unknown but rather that worn-out, perennial Pascal’s Wager: ‘Mayhaps tomorrow’.
And so I succumbed. I found myself calling my aunt with a rather pathetic S.O.S to convince me to choose my cowardice; to give me reasons to stay; to tell me it will ‘all be all right’. All so I could scoff at her in my mind while simultaneously indulging my emotional insolvency in the assertion that there are those who would care if I am dead. Whereas if anything, I shouldn’t! Sadly, that too did pass. And now the Future looms once again, hope springs bitterly triumphant as Time brings with it a tidal wave of the trivial: Harry Potter films to see, restaurants to try, graduation to look forward to, a PhD to shoot for, careers, New York big-end-ings, novels to write, thoughts to think, countries to see, hazy, misty first impressions of a tiny person I can love enough to not need to love myself and You. You: whoever You are or were or could have been or will be that I have never casually bumped into lurking behind a bookshelf; crossing the street, across a car park or sitting next to on a plane.
And to think, I lament 26 years of being the mess that is me today!
I understand the doubt. It's something I live with constantly, and it is starting to infuriate me but I would not dare to wish it away for I am in a way complacent in the uncertainty. I do feel that somehow, the complacency defeats the purpose of doubt but have left it on the back burner for the moment.
ReplyDeleteI can imagine the abject hopelessness, I romanticise it after all. But death's an adventure that can wait for it's own time is it not? Just that there is so much to read left, so much to see, so much to discover - outside and inside. When you are conscious and aware of these possibilities, I don't see how one can wish to end this, how one can do this to oneself! It's not cowardice to be afraid of killing oneself. It's the triumph of hope. Now I sound like an idiot.
Sometimes I feel that at least being aware of one's narcissism, tendency to self-pity etc. redeems it just that one little bit. Now you know, there is some hope of acting on it - or letting it be, you know it has been your choice. Revel in your depravity. Whatever.
Glad you remain in the ranks of the living, hope New York is.. fun :)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure, though, whether being aware of one's mlodramatic tendencies makes them redeemable. Mayhaps that awareness only stems from a need to somehow profit off of them? It shall remain a glorious tangle, i suppose.
5:18 PM