It is my battle. Maybe it will consume me until I die. Maybe I will succumb still searching, still left with much to understand. It doesn't matter. The journey is important, the steps seemingly disconnected each from the previous. Until I pause and look back, each time comprehending a little bit more. Forgiving myself a little more.
Perhaps too, finding in these words, the path to forgiveness of others. My parents. My mantra to the boys about this being "Only a day, not the rest of our lives." Seeing each day this way, finally walking the talk.
These pages full of my convoluted reasoning, the back and forth delving, the recurring themes, do they serve a purpose? I hoard a heap of unfinished stories in computer files, visiting each from time to time, adding a fresh paragraph here, another chapter there, never writing "The end." in any of them.
Yet this jumble of words, begun during a pause has continued day after day, consuming all my alone time. Taking chunks of sleep, tiredness ever present during my waking hours. The family irate, bemoaning this selfish exclusion of everything except my hunkering down in this room, in front of this monitor.
I write, hour after bloody hour until my eyes become dry and they sting, until my back protests, the agony insistent, unrelenting. Yet I push through. Pop some painkillers which have no effect and continue, with no immediate wish other than I should finish. This needs to be finished. Maybe I acknowledge it is the only story needing an ending. After this, I suspect the other stories will be freed, this fucking one holding me back, denying my further creativity.
What to do with it though? Is this for my consumption only, a way to exorcise the evil? Some obscure satisfaction in finally having found the strength to view my past with total honesty, these pages providing the consummate prison within which I in turn confine the fears and insecurities?
Attaining my freedom - this act enabling an entirely new series of steps? Like a spring-clean of the mind; a final tidying up of all the disjointed commentary floating around in my head... like the flushing of a mental toilet and the sacred ritual of preserving the resulting purity?
Most similar journeys culminate in a corresponding 'ending' of some kind. Triumph perhaps, the human spirit overcoming all odds and emerging renewed, re-energised. Some happy ending... with everything aligning finally - perhaps a new love to be discovered or past loves processed, fractured relationships mended, made whole again.
...Else the toll is too immense and the spirit succumbs. A terminal release, tragic yet in its own way forgivable, circumspect. No person is almighty; there are no Gods among us. The burdens thrust upon us sometimes too heavy to carry over an entire lifetime, the weight one is bowed by over time making it impossible to lift the body up, raise the eyes up, thus the notion of an eternal all-encompassing nothingness appearing easier to bear?
The fact this is neither? Recorded not after triumph or moments before tragedy but rather on some yet undetermined pause? Too long standing in shallows, shadows, pacing the surface, and the realisation that only by descending can I one day hope to rise? And if fear, uncertainty, guilt and dishonesty keep me to one spot then this too is a grave, a nothingness only ever disintegrating into final nothingness. Is there a hopeful next step? Time will resolve this too, time and each subsequent step after this brief interlude in which I now sit and I ponder.
There is still enough curiosity within me to see life through. Perhaps even some unexpected, excitement? Did I suspect when I began this haphazard stepping back and forth I was in fact breaking new, hopeful ground? Not only re-enacting but additionally observing from a safeguarded distance, this distance finally not reliant on anyone except myself.
To one day be worthy of the life rendered me. This is the pinnacle before me, the direction these pages point towards. A different reality up there, a life never celebrated. I feel I might lift my eyes upwards after this, no longer focussing on the ground with its pits and snares and reasons to fear. Rather, eyes looking toward the summit and the wonders I may discover there.
YOU ARE READING
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Non-FictionThis is my memoir. As such, I am letting you in on the most intimate parts of me. No glib opinion piece or a well-thought-out theory, this. It's me. I come with a warning. No child under eighteen should read any part of my story. It is raw. It is u...
