No-Thing #41

"I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me now is a beginning or an end."

---Jack Gilbert

I've been ill/unwell for the better part of six to eight weeks now. No matter what I do, no matter how much I try to rest, no matter what I do with my diet, no matter what I try and do with my mental state, I'm just ill. My body feels like bone grinding into bone, every step a punishment of some sort. I've had a fever off and on the entire time, the sweat coming out of me doesn't feel like relief, it feels like concrete. Sleep, as always, elusive and not real. When I do sleep---usually between three and four hours a night---I have terrible nightmares. The nightmares run the gauntlet of what some would classify as regret/playing the tape back over things beyond my understanding and/or control. Fear, it seems, just won't leave me alone.

I wish I could tell you that I feel like things are going to be okay, that I feel like this is some kind of emotional/spiritual process and something is going to change soon. It doesn't feel that way to me right now. I feel very disconnected from the world/people in my life. I feel like this is the end of something.

Maybe it is, I know no-thing.

Every day I fight back the urge to just step into traffic or step in front of a train. Every day. It's exhausting. I fight the urge to try and goad somebody into beating me to death. I don't know where this darkness comes from inside of me, and I don't know why it's here. I work very hard all the time to forgive myself and to forgive others for the things that have happened, but it doesn't change the fact that I don't want to be here, not like this, not with all this weight in my heart. It's heavy and it hurts and it's killing me.

In Buddhism---and really, every system of belief or unbelief---suicide is frowned upon. I do not believe that what I'm dealing with is actual suicidal ideation. It feels more like the thing my mind runs toward, the black hole of my emotional core that feels inevitable and some line of code inside of me feels like I have no other option available beyond the oblivion that's already waiting for me, so, when shit gets bad, that's where I run my thinking, straight into the black hole. Maybe what the truth of it all is, is that something has to die, but it's not me. Maybe it's a way of thinking, maybe it's a way of feeling, maybe it's a way of reacting.

Maybe no-thing needs to change.

Maybe I just need to carry on.

******

It's so hard to wrap my head around the way time passes and how much of it is gone. I've been alive much longer than I'm going to continue being alive and that is a thing that makes my anxiety churn and my heart vibrate in a way that doesn't feel very good.

One year ago I was running around the Highlands of Scotland and felt free and sane and closer to peace than I have ever been in my life, even though in the smallest corner of my heart I knew it was over and I was going to have to come back here. I allowed myself the joyous surprise of feeling that peace instead of doing what I've always done, which is worry and scurry around in fear. It was amazing, and the experience changed me. It will never happen again, and that's okay, because I experienced it and it was fucking real. Sitting at the top of a massive cliff overlooking the sea and putting my palms flat on earth shot-through with veins of quartz and just letting the wind pull tears out of my face and vibrating and connecting with earth and God and letting all of it pass through me like no-thing ever has was a gift at the end of some really ugly shit that didn't need to happen the way it did, but it did, and now I'm back here, but will always have this memory/movie to sit with, a reminder that I have in this life felt the presence of something far more ancient and divine than my own dopey self.

******

All of this is so much more than what it seems, and, at the same time, it means absolutely no-thing.

******

There's this thing that happens to people in recovery that I've witnessed over and over and over again, it shows itself when they start to collect some time and then they start to wrestle with their ego in a different way than when they first started the undertaking of this kind of work. The ego is a motherfucking deceiver, a demon, a poisoned carrot on a stick. My own ego is what got me into this position to begin with, thinking I was the all-knowing center of the universe while simultaneously believing I deserved all the bad and ugly shit that had happened around me and so I poured alcohol and drugs into that center because of fear and everything around me was just chaos and a puddle of piss on the floor.

Ahamkara, in all of my kleshas/dukkha, crying through shitty actions for attention and recognition for just existing. Emotional vampirism. Terminal uniqueness.

I'm more than capable of being just as self-destructive/impulsive/compulsive without the alcohol and drugs, and this is the thing I have to keep on myself about. Sobriety, for me, is far more than no longer imbibing. It's also about working toward accepting that I'm flawed and I have to put in a shift and do the work because I'm only here for a short time and doing my best to not complicate that short time with poor choices/actions/patterns of behavior, well, that's what's best for me. I don't want to keep looking over my shoulder like I've done for the majority of my life. I don't want to upset anyone anymore. I don't want to add to anyone's discomfort or hurt anyone with my cowardice and fear. This is why I surrender my will. This is why I trust a process. This is why I keep putting my ass in a chair in rooms full of other people, all of us trying to get well, to heal, to learn how to live.

But that's me and what I have to do. If it resonates with you on some level, welcome. You're my people.

******

Just wanted to acknowledge that there are some new folks who have come around recently, and wanted to thank Jerry Stahl for recommending my weird little substack and sending them this way. Not sure if what I am doing here is anything of value to anyone, but it feels good to have a writer I've long-admired recommend what I'm doing to folks who are fans of his. Much love and thanks to you, Jerry.

******

I'm gonna keep at it. Will you?