Despair

“Despair is the only cure for illusion. Without despair we cannot transfer our allegiance to reality — it is a kind of mourning period for our fantasies. Some people do not survive this despair, but no major change within a person can occur without it.”
~ Philip Slater

When does despair finally kick in? Some of us don’t dispense with the fantasy of having the life we’ve felt entitled to, expected, or pursued endlessly, until every door “seems” to close on us. And then we are left with a barren reality, which may be another illusion, like a room of windowless walls that keep us trapped within an even deeper sense of despair.

Two in One

Sometimes our lives split in two, like traversing a fork in the road, where the two parts diverge and move in different directions. One part continues to circle around an old trauma or deficit, including whatever is associated with the age of occurrence; and another part evolves outside of the pain, but attempts to manage or contain it at the same time, often without complete success, as the pain spills over into one’s relationships and dealings with the world.

Personally, I recognize both a wounded 12 year old—inner child—and old wise man—inner parent—residing within my body/psyche; the youngster still clinging to life, and the elder being the support and voice of hope and reason. Yet, I’ve discovered that acknowledging and attempting to soothe a painful past does not necessarily resolve it; the traumas and deficits being so entrenched within every fiber of my being, that they remain as a chronic condition, following me into old age—physically, mentally, and emotionally. Sublimation through ruminative daydreams and writing seem to be my most effective means of dealing with whatever still hurts or remains in deficit.

Lost pieces

Pieces of yourself remain attached to the things, people, events, and times that had great value to you, but were lost upon their exit from your life. The fear or reality of losing those pieces forever, may be the most painful feeling of all, leaving you diminished or less than before; one of many deaths that you will perpetually experience over a lifetime, as you mourn the lost pieces of your former self, until they’re recovered in weakened form, or finally discarded and put to rest.

In the end, the many pieces of you will be scattered by the proverbial winds of time and consequence, leaving them here, there, and everywhere, still attached to their hosts, but nowhere to be found as what was once the wholeness of YOU.

Dissolution

“You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.”
~ Paul Auster

By middle age, a myriad of wounds had accumulated, one on top of another; the sheer force of their emotional weight clarifying my predicament, that no matter what I do or where I go, the “road of dissolution” is beneath my proverbial feet, poking holes in my existence; an inexorable progression of decline, moving me forward like a conveyor belt, from cradle to grave.

There was and is no turning back, no stop button on this road, no return to the garden of blissful ignorance—AKA childhood—despite my resistance and great protest. The long, painful takedown being an incurable, terminal condition of existence, shared by all of humanity.

Oh yes, the demons of Thanatos are lurking from beginning to end, lining our roads with their pitchforks, poking holes at will; tasked with disassembling and removing the many pieces of human lifetimes.

If I’d avoided my road for a time, then it was only through the wishful illusion of invincibility and immortality, set against the background of my all too human fate: the slow dissolution of body, mind, and spirit.

Final hour

Blood is everywhere on this final hour of my final night. The ground gurgling from it; denuded trees drizzling with it—like red maple syrup; and strewn body parts being drained of it—gravity at work. Nature’s dramatization of the end in progress, a mental spectacle of death’s metaphor.

Red streaks the sky with a neon fluorescence; plumes of black smoke twisting into funnels, crisscrossing the expanse, headed eastbound along invisible rivers of wind. Concussive blasts multiply along the horizon, shattering my brain; the last stands of the living, dying, and hanging in limbo; the resilience of mind over matter, to observe one’s mind on self-destruct—its last hurrah!

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