In what hell have I steeped myself? Like a strong tea, with twisting and turning leaves bleeding out underwater, in heat above the boiling point. The truth is, I seem to be in the process of taking the scalding dip. And I’ve seen where it ends. It is a submersion that will one day find me dressed in an orange jumpsuit, known only by a cold number, which means I’m not really known but cataloged, herded, caged. A submersion that will find me staring down one of the members of my cell block, who has punched me in the mouth for no reason other than the frustration and existential furnace of the hell we both find ourselves. Hell, I mean, as exactly what hell is: a wasteland of the self. Isolation within ourselves – sharp loneliness and rattling emptiness, forever.
Where am I in this journey?
Am I spinning out in the dry desert air, burning away with every increasing rotation? I am. Or at least it feels that way more times than I’d like to admit. And even harder to admit: I am in love with it, like I’m in love with a happy key scratch on the car of the person who cut me off on the road. I love it because I feel it’s all I know or will ever know. It’s all that makes sense, because there is no purpose to the whole thing. Right?
The reality I’m desperate to embrace is one where I can look at other human beings as objects. Where I can consume flesh with my eyes, like eating full plates of food on a full stomach. The selfish indulgence, the burning emptiness in the fullness.
And spinning out of control in the empty air of life, I reason that all I can do is love my own destruction. I attempt reason, despite my hopeless state – but do I reason far enough? The process is at best unconscious and at worst intentional and wholehearted. Truthfully, it’s intentional long enough to cause it to become unconscious; so, at best and worst, it’s both.
Here I write in part to raise something else toward my own reasoning: it is possible to escape this terminal inertia, this vast emptiness expanding inward, forever. There is another way, a way out. But not some triumph of the self. Not some heroic rise and increase of power. That seems like it would be right, doesn’t it? But no. That simply puts a gloss over the cover, the vast emptiness expanding inward still goes on, despite all effort to the contrary.
Why?
Because the hell I am steeped in is my own doing, and won’t necessarily lead to a literal orange jumpsuit, a cold number to replace my name. It will lead to imprisonment in the daily sighs, the ache that pounds at my stomach as I look for the next high – the next thing to serve me and to numb me more to real reason. Reason that acknowledges a foundation. Reason that acknowledges my contradicting choices; why I think I’m free but still feel so judged. I am choosing the orange jumpsuit, choosing the number that is slowly overriding my name, letter by letter. But I don’t have to choose this. But oh, left to myself, my deep love for my own end will be exactly this: the end of me as a walking corpse lumbering through empty hell all my life, or as literal ashes sprinkled over the ocean.
I need a greater love to counter my self-inflicted poison. I need a one much greater to affirm me and steal me from the furnace. The furnace I superheat with my own empty intentions, whether I want to see it or not; whether it’s escape attempts or indulgences in further emptiness. And this affirming one cannot be another who is dying and loving it – I need someone who has faced this death – the empty, lonely hell of cosmic separation – and risen above. I need one who has not just walked out into the empty plane of hell, but one who did the impossible and walked through it, emerging on the other side.
I need to acknowledge my inability to escape my private hell – or it will be all I know. I need to admit that all attempts are stupid, because I will sabotage myself with my own contradicting wants and needs. I need to own the fact that I am scared, without someone to pull me out of the big empty – I am scared to death.
I am scared to death when I put the weight of my existence on something that will die.