I honestly don’t know how it happens so fast.
I spent the most incredible week at home in Bend with my friends. I had a wonderful day back in Berkeley and then… something started to slip. The entire day I’ve been fighting this daemon. Well, not really fighting him as much as trying to pretend, ignore and otherwise scoot around him, “Don’t worry… just keep going. If we don’t look at him then perhaps he’s not really there.” But he niggled and prodded and over the course of the day, the pieces of me that he was able to get to disappeared into the familiar brown-grey goop of my existence until I spotted him in shadow.
I honestly don’t know how it happens so fast.
This daemon is "the story." We all know the story… but we all have our own version. My story is that which tells me that I’m worthless, unlovable, boring, ugly, blah, blah, blah... an uninvited entity to be tolerated. He whispers a few words with haunting familiarity and I’m hooked, like some twisted lover's flirtation. I'm literally suspended on the hook… hanging, dangling… ungrounded, unprotected and raw. The daemon’s minions come out to poke at me from below with their sharp tongues. It's bloody. I can’t get away from them.
Maybe the ego is that which is a built-in part of the system that enables equilibrium of the machine. I can’t get too content, too happy, too joyful… if I do, then the computer fan clicks on to blow a crushing force. I try to remain standing in a few moments of defiance, determined that this time I won’t disappear. This time I won’t be at the checkout stand with the story in my cart. But then… I’m gone.
I honestly don’t know how it happens so fast.
I remember just 24 hours ago I was recalling beautiful images and impressions of my experiences of home. I was feeling sweet, peaceful contentment. I was feeling a deep sense of belonging. I was feeling utterly connected. I was feeling love.
And right now, I’m so far away from that feeling of love. I’m so far away. It’s a mere echo resonating through my body that just makes the pain all the more intense by comparison. I would rather have the memory of it gone, wiped out… than to have this widening chasm between the two. This emptiness feels like stabbing shards of sharp jagged metal.
How does it happen so fast?
This Gethsemene comes with a requisite slouch and intense disdain that brings me face to face with the rest of my lonely life where the story completes itself in my imagined future. “Why do I bother?” she asks from the line of demarcation. Indeed. I get caught in what something might be-could be-would be… and then I see the blunt objective truth… and then the whisper he whispers has an ear to hear and eyes to see. I don’t know if I can fight anymore. My strength drains down my arms as I can barely type.
How do I fight from the center of my being? How do I know it’s me who is fighting and not my ego trying to skirt around it? How many more times am I going to have to hear the story before I stop clicking on the ‘Confirm Purchase’ button?
I am tired of so many fears;
I cry myself to sleep at night, while
grief and feelings of guilt
bedim my eyes with tears.
All my doubts, my fears, are creating walls
so that I may not know love.
Depart from me,
you enemies of wholeness,
for the Beloved is aware of my cry;
Love has heard my prayer,
and hastens to answer my call.
Though my fears are running for cover,
yet they shall be forgiven
by Love;
Illusions that lived in the ego
can now turn to the Light;
I will know peace as I
return Home.
-from Psalm 6
Psalms for Praying by Nan Merrill