The Pilgrimage – Part 5
16 years ago
In Memorium
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
This summer, one of my best friends killed himself. It has broken me like nothing else, ever. I've tried to write about this many times, but I can't do it. I can't bring myself to face the truth of it, and translate that truth into words.
...
This summer, one of my closest friends killed himself. He destroyed all his ID, left his identity behind, traveled to Arizona, and hung himself in a hotel room. He was dead for a month in the morgue before they even determined his name.
...
I thought I felt him tap me on the shoulder the other day. My lost friend, my missing friend, my dead friend. My friend who still haunts me from the wasteland of technology; his number in my phone, his Facebook page, his last email. Goddamn flotsam, everywhere I turn another ghost. Nothing I can erase, but I only have to see it out of the corner of my eye, if I turn fast enough.
...
Fuck. Fuck it.
This is how I feel most days, when I let myself think too much. I try to fill my days with work, TV, books, the internet; the endless distraction of static and noise.
But.
It's always there, a shadow dragging at my heels, a black dog howling in the night.
...
He's a bastard. He chose this way out. There is nothing glorious about suicide. I used to think there was.
I once spent hours on MSN reading his increasingly incoherent messages, waiting for the pills to work, waiting for him to die, hating myself because I hoped he would die. And now the guilt has me. A stinking sea-bird draped around my neck.
I am so tired of being angry all the time. I am tired of feeling guilty. It may be my fault, or it may not. I wasn't there at the end, that's what matters. Oh, I've been told not to feel like this, as if I have a choice. I've been told that it doesn't matter whether I was there or not, but it does. I abandoned a friend – it's what I always do, when it gets too hard – I left him behind, and I kept walking and walking, and the sound of his steps became fainter and fainter, until there was nothing behind me but the shadow dragging at my heels, and the dogs howling.
...
It was early this summer when my friend killed himself. He had been suicidal for many years, although I suspect that I was the only one among us who knew the true extent of his unhappiness. He knew I understood; I've felt the slavering jaws of the black dogs around my neck enough times to recognize the teeth marks. He told me about his pain, the details of which I will never share. I know which secrets to keep.
He was not always a good person. In fact, he spent many years being a terrible person, a selfish person. He spent the seven years I knew him trying to become a good person, although he failed many times at this. When you are out of practice, it is so much harder to be good. I know this. Virtue is a habit.
He suffered through insufferable pain. He thought he was being punished with a disease that should have killed him, but kept him alive long enough to hurt him, seemingly without end. I wasn't there for most of the painful months, but I was there after. He called me his 'guardian angel'. What a terrible burden, what a thing to say.
...
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp'd no more --
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
...
The saddest words ever written. He wasn't much for poetry. Tennyson probably wouldn't mean much to him. I don't think I really understood those lines – 'like a guilty thing I creep' – until now.
...
When does it end? Because I feel it every day, everywhere I go, I feel the loss and the guilt, and I am so fucking angry. Time, they say. It takes time. If only I had world enough, and time, but I don't. My time is finite, and I could easily let the minutes and days and years slide by, feeling this way.
...
I always won at Trivial Pursuit, regardless of what he said or chose to believe.
...
Words, words, words. Break, break, break.
...
When my friend killed himself he took me with him. Or perhaps just a part of me, but something vital. Is it selfish to say that he took suicide away from me as well? It used to be such a comfort, the idea that I could one day crawl into the bath with a razor blade and a bottle of pills, kill the pain when it finally hurt enough. Strange comfort, I suppose.
I am so selfish. I thought I could kill myself without consequences. I am so fucking selfish, even to write these words. 'He took my death away from me'. So what? You don't get to choose your own death.
Not once did I think about what my death would do to others. Now I know, and I'm angry that such a terrible option has been taken away from me?
I am so selfish, even to write these words. This is not about me. This is about.
...
My friend, who killed himself. How is not important, why is not important, when is not important. He simply did, and that is all.
His shadow finally dragged him down, and the dogs were upon him, snapping their awful jaws, and that is all.
I am selfish, and he was selfish, and that is all.
And like a guilty thing I creep, and that is it, and this is all.
...
This summer, one of my closest friends killed himself. He destroyed all his ID, left his identity behind, traveled to Arizona, and hung himself in a hotel room. He was dead for a month in the morgue before they even determined his name.
...
I thought I felt him tap me on the shoulder the other day. My lost friend, my missing friend, my dead friend. My friend who still haunts me from the wasteland of technology; his number in my phone, his Facebook page, his last email. Goddamn flotsam, everywhere I turn another ghost. Nothing I can erase, but I only have to see it out of the corner of my eye, if I turn fast enough.
...
Fuck. Fuck it.
This is how I feel most days, when I let myself think too much. I try to fill my days with work, TV, books, the internet; the endless distraction of static and noise.
But.
It's always there, a shadow dragging at my heels, a black dog howling in the night.
...
He's a bastard. He chose this way out. There is nothing glorious about suicide. I used to think there was.
I once spent hours on MSN reading his increasingly incoherent messages, waiting for the pills to work, waiting for him to die, hating myself because I hoped he would die. And now the guilt has me. A stinking sea-bird draped around my neck.
I am so tired of being angry all the time. I am tired of feeling guilty. It may be my fault, or it may not. I wasn't there at the end, that's what matters. Oh, I've been told not to feel like this, as if I have a choice. I've been told that it doesn't matter whether I was there or not, but it does. I abandoned a friend – it's what I always do, when it gets too hard – I left him behind, and I kept walking and walking, and the sound of his steps became fainter and fainter, until there was nothing behind me but the shadow dragging at my heels, and the dogs howling.
...
It was early this summer when my friend killed himself. He had been suicidal for many years, although I suspect that I was the only one among us who knew the true extent of his unhappiness. He knew I understood; I've felt the slavering jaws of the black dogs around my neck enough times to recognize the teeth marks. He told me about his pain, the details of which I will never share. I know which secrets to keep.
He was not always a good person. In fact, he spent many years being a terrible person, a selfish person. He spent the seven years I knew him trying to become a good person, although he failed many times at this. When you are out of practice, it is so much harder to be good. I know this. Virtue is a habit.
He suffered through insufferable pain. He thought he was being punished with a disease that should have killed him, but kept him alive long enough to hurt him, seemingly without end. I wasn't there for most of the painful months, but I was there after. He called me his 'guardian angel'. What a terrible burden, what a thing to say.
...
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp'd no more --
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
...
The saddest words ever written. He wasn't much for poetry. Tennyson probably wouldn't mean much to him. I don't think I really understood those lines – 'like a guilty thing I creep' – until now.
...
When does it end? Because I feel it every day, everywhere I go, I feel the loss and the guilt, and I am so fucking angry. Time, they say. It takes time. If only I had world enough, and time, but I don't. My time is finite, and I could easily let the minutes and days and years slide by, feeling this way.
...
I always won at Trivial Pursuit, regardless of what he said or chose to believe.
...
Words, words, words. Break, break, break.
...
When my friend killed himself he took me with him. Or perhaps just a part of me, but something vital. Is it selfish to say that he took suicide away from me as well? It used to be such a comfort, the idea that I could one day crawl into the bath with a razor blade and a bottle of pills, kill the pain when it finally hurt enough. Strange comfort, I suppose.
I am so selfish. I thought I could kill myself without consequences. I am so fucking selfish, even to write these words. 'He took my death away from me'. So what? You don't get to choose your own death.
Not once did I think about what my death would do to others. Now I know, and I'm angry that such a terrible option has been taken away from me?
I am so selfish, even to write these words. This is not about me. This is about.
...
My friend, who killed himself. How is not important, why is not important, when is not important. He simply did, and that is all.
His shadow finally dragged him down, and the dogs were upon him, snapping their awful jaws, and that is all.
I am selfish, and he was selfish, and that is all.
And like a guilty thing I creep, and that is it, and this is all.
Dear God (A Monologue)
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”
First, the 'our father' bit has always bothered me. I have enough issues with my own father without adding an all-powerful celestial being to the psychological mix. Oh, and three and a half centuries worth of misogyny and sexual oppression doesn't help your case, you know? But enough with the sermonizing. Let's move on. (Yeah, I thought you'd like that 'sermonizing' bit.)
I don't know, I've been thinking about you – and your ideas, or whatever you want to call them – a lot lately. This is due at least partly to Mr Dawkins. I'm sure you've heard about his book. It has some nasty things to say about you, and your ideas, or whatever you want to call them.
Myself, I hate the guy. He's elitist, he's flippant, he ends every sentence with a smirk. He doesn't see any merit in the various philosophies that have been built to accommodate and validate your existence. In fact, he thinks that anyone who has ever believed in you is kind of an idiot. Or, at the least, prisoner to a mass delusion that has endured since the beginning of recorded human history. But.
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.”
Heaven. Shangri-la. Valhalla. Elysium. Every culture has a religion and a god, a pretty picture of heaven and an ugly picture of hell. It always struck me that this uniformity – and the corresponding similarity of so many myths – meant that there had to be something to this god thing. I don't know if I have much in common with the ancient Egyptians, but I do know that the Christian mythos that surrounds me is remarkably similar to the stories of Osiris, not to mention Adonis and Baldr. I see an obvious continuum. Doesn't this mean that there must be some truth to the myths? Each story can be interpreted as fable, allegory, or symbol, but the ultimate truth of each – and the truth that the history of human thought has given us – is this: God exists, and we have known about Him since the beginning, intuitively. Given the world in which we live, we construct different stories to explain how he works, but the song remains the same: God exists, intuitively.
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
One of the arguments against god – and I'm not sure if this is the strongest or the weakest argument – is the 'if God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, why does he let bad things happen?' question. Pretty compelling stuff.
The Spanish Inquisition. The Holocaust. Jonestown. Rwanda. John Wayne Gacy. Slavery. There's more. Make your own list.
The Bible explains this away with original sin, and with the terrible punishment of free will. Seems like a poor excuse for what could be interpreted as simple neglect and lack of interest on the almighty Creator's part.
“And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.”
Okay, I've avoided talking to you directly for two sections now. I'm trying to figure some things out, things that make me feel uncomfortable, things that scare me, things that I fear may actually release me from the awful torment of belief. Forgive me father, for I have sinned.
I think I may be an atheist. I think that you may not exist. I think you may be nothing but symbol – a potent and powerful symbol, yes – but a symbol nonetheless. I think I have been convinced of your non-existence. I think you may be the product of a human desire to explain, quantify, validate. A human need to feel bigger and more significant than a grain of sand drifting across a desert. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust”, indeed.
“For thine is the kingdom,”
It's my kingdom, though, isn't it? Why am I always being told that it belongs to you, that everything and everyone who ever was and ever will be belongs to you, and you are a jealous and angry god, and you will not be denied, and I will do as I have been told by a book written over the course of centuries, a book in which a father is willing to kill his own son on an order by you, simply to prove that you are the only god, the one and only father, the father, son, and Holy Ghost all rolled into one convenient ethereal package.
Why do I need a set of arbitrary rules written thousands of years ago to live my life morally, today, here, now? I know the difference between right and wrong, and I've never needed a preacher to teach me how to distinguish between the two. My mother, a Catholic who left the Church at the age of thirteen, has always told me to be a good person. That's it. Be good to people, and, well, people won't always be good to you, but you will never go wrong.
“and the power,”
Fuck the power! Listen, God; I've talked a lot of shit about you over the years. I don't like what people, for centuries, have done in your name. I don't like that people use you to validate their xenophobia and fear. I don't like the hold you have over the imagination of 90% of the world's population. You're the punchline to a damn tragic joke.
I've talked a lot of shit about you, and I've wavered and called myself agnostic, but I've always, deep inside the secret heart of me, believed. I've prayed to you in my worst moments, and I thought you answered my prayers every time. I'm not dead, right? I'm not living in the gutter, I have a job, family and friends who love me and care for me. So you must have been there, inside or outside my head, watching, listening, helping, guiding.
But now I'm not so sure.
Mr Darwin made you irrelevant 150 years ago, but people continued to believe. Today, Mr Dawkins says you are a cultural meme, a bit of flotsam in the collective unconscious, a mutated gene, a by-product of evolution. Nothing more.
“and the glory,”
Dear god, I think I may be an atheist. I think I may be ready to take a huge leap into the unknown. Into a place where there is no celestial guidance, only the wonders of nature and science and measurable facts. There is still love and transcendence and meaning, mind you. But you're not there, and the heavenly choir is silenced, and most of human history is mistaken in its belief, but it doesn't matter. Because truth – and facing the truth that you will never be found – is beauty, and beauty is truth, and that is all.
“for ever and ever.
Amen.”
Good-bye.
First, the 'our father' bit has always bothered me. I have enough issues with my own father without adding an all-powerful celestial being to the psychological mix. Oh, and three and a half centuries worth of misogyny and sexual oppression doesn't help your case, you know? But enough with the sermonizing. Let's move on. (Yeah, I thought you'd like that 'sermonizing' bit.)
I don't know, I've been thinking about you – and your ideas, or whatever you want to call them – a lot lately. This is due at least partly to Mr Dawkins. I'm sure you've heard about his book. It has some nasty things to say about you, and your ideas, or whatever you want to call them.
Myself, I hate the guy. He's elitist, he's flippant, he ends every sentence with a smirk. He doesn't see any merit in the various philosophies that have been built to accommodate and validate your existence. In fact, he thinks that anyone who has ever believed in you is kind of an idiot. Or, at the least, prisoner to a mass delusion that has endured since the beginning of recorded human history. But.
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.”
Heaven. Shangri-la. Valhalla. Elysium. Every culture has a religion and a god, a pretty picture of heaven and an ugly picture of hell. It always struck me that this uniformity – and the corresponding similarity of so many myths – meant that there had to be something to this god thing. I don't know if I have much in common with the ancient Egyptians, but I do know that the Christian mythos that surrounds me is remarkably similar to the stories of Osiris, not to mention Adonis and Baldr. I see an obvious continuum. Doesn't this mean that there must be some truth to the myths? Each story can be interpreted as fable, allegory, or symbol, but the ultimate truth of each – and the truth that the history of human thought has given us – is this: God exists, and we have known about Him since the beginning, intuitively. Given the world in which we live, we construct different stories to explain how he works, but the song remains the same: God exists, intuitively.
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
One of the arguments against god – and I'm not sure if this is the strongest or the weakest argument – is the 'if God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, why does he let bad things happen?' question. Pretty compelling stuff.
The Spanish Inquisition. The Holocaust. Jonestown. Rwanda. John Wayne Gacy. Slavery. There's more. Make your own list.
The Bible explains this away with original sin, and with the terrible punishment of free will. Seems like a poor excuse for what could be interpreted as simple neglect and lack of interest on the almighty Creator's part.
“And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.”
Okay, I've avoided talking to you directly for two sections now. I'm trying to figure some things out, things that make me feel uncomfortable, things that scare me, things that I fear may actually release me from the awful torment of belief. Forgive me father, for I have sinned.
I think I may be an atheist. I think that you may not exist. I think you may be nothing but symbol – a potent and powerful symbol, yes – but a symbol nonetheless. I think I have been convinced of your non-existence. I think you may be the product of a human desire to explain, quantify, validate. A human need to feel bigger and more significant than a grain of sand drifting across a desert. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust”, indeed.
“For thine is the kingdom,”
It's my kingdom, though, isn't it? Why am I always being told that it belongs to you, that everything and everyone who ever was and ever will be belongs to you, and you are a jealous and angry god, and you will not be denied, and I will do as I have been told by a book written over the course of centuries, a book in which a father is willing to kill his own son on an order by you, simply to prove that you are the only god, the one and only father, the father, son, and Holy Ghost all rolled into one convenient ethereal package.
Why do I need a set of arbitrary rules written thousands of years ago to live my life morally, today, here, now? I know the difference between right and wrong, and I've never needed a preacher to teach me how to distinguish between the two. My mother, a Catholic who left the Church at the age of thirteen, has always told me to be a good person. That's it. Be good to people, and, well, people won't always be good to you, but you will never go wrong.
“and the power,”
Fuck the power! Listen, God; I've talked a lot of shit about you over the years. I don't like what people, for centuries, have done in your name. I don't like that people use you to validate their xenophobia and fear. I don't like the hold you have over the imagination of 90% of the world's population. You're the punchline to a damn tragic joke.
I've talked a lot of shit about you, and I've wavered and called myself agnostic, but I've always, deep inside the secret heart of me, believed. I've prayed to you in my worst moments, and I thought you answered my prayers every time. I'm not dead, right? I'm not living in the gutter, I have a job, family and friends who love me and care for me. So you must have been there, inside or outside my head, watching, listening, helping, guiding.
But now I'm not so sure.
Mr Darwin made you irrelevant 150 years ago, but people continued to believe. Today, Mr Dawkins says you are a cultural meme, a bit of flotsam in the collective unconscious, a mutated gene, a by-product of evolution. Nothing more.
“and the glory,”
Dear god, I think I may be an atheist. I think I may be ready to take a huge leap into the unknown. Into a place where there is no celestial guidance, only the wonders of nature and science and measurable facts. There is still love and transcendence and meaning, mind you. But you're not there, and the heavenly choir is silenced, and most of human history is mistaken in its belief, but it doesn't matter. Because truth – and facing the truth that you will never be found – is beauty, and beauty is truth, and that is all.
“for ever and ever.
Amen.”
Good-bye.
Love, Unrequited
The awful, beautiful pain of unrequited love! I am interested in poetics today, so I shall dispense with the definitions – fuck defining one of the most powerful emotions you will ever feel. Fuck intellectualizing and sermonizing. Fuck everything but the raw pain of love. The raw pain of loving someone who doesn't love you back.
We have all felt it. We have felt it from a distance – loving someone who may not even care that you exist. We have felt it within a relationship – loving someone who will never, ever love you with the same awful intensity. We have felt it within reach – loving someone who ought to love you back, who probably even likes you a whole lot.
Despite all this, we continue to love. What does this say about us? That those who love unrequited are masochists by nature, that the other half who refuse to love are sadists by nature, and, well, fuck happiness? That the creator – whatever it may be – has a keen sense of irony? That human nature destines us to fail at love, again and again?
Probably, or not. This is no place for conclusions, remember. This is the place where lust and love and fear and and pain meet. No wonder this feeling has been the catalyst for so much art – “The Divine Comedy” is the first thing that comes to mind.
I have never felt so much pain as when I love unrequited. It hurts – no doubt, it rips the heart wide – but it's an exhilarating pain. Nothing makes me feel more alive and more human than loving someone from afar, than loving someone who will never love me back. What a paradox, what terrible irony – that unrequited love, by its very definition without conclusion or satisfaction – should move me to such great heights of love for humanity.
We have all felt it. We have felt it from a distance – loving someone who may not even care that you exist. We have felt it within a relationship – loving someone who will never, ever love you with the same awful intensity. We have felt it within reach – loving someone who ought to love you back, who probably even likes you a whole lot.
Despite all this, we continue to love. What does this say about us? That those who love unrequited are masochists by nature, that the other half who refuse to love are sadists by nature, and, well, fuck happiness? That the creator – whatever it may be – has a keen sense of irony? That human nature destines us to fail at love, again and again?
Probably, or not. This is no place for conclusions, remember. This is the place where lust and love and fear and and pain meet. No wonder this feeling has been the catalyst for so much art – “The Divine Comedy” is the first thing that comes to mind.
I have never felt so much pain as when I love unrequited. It hurts – no doubt, it rips the heart wide – but it's an exhilarating pain. Nothing makes me feel more alive and more human than loving someone from afar, than loving someone who will never love me back. What a paradox, what terrible irony – that unrequited love, by its very definition without conclusion or satisfaction – should move me to such great heights of love for humanity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
