demon

this morning, at 2 or 3 am, i woke up with this strong feeling in my gut... yes, it was back again... the old self-hatred. this inexplicable recrimination and guilt that has pursued me from i can't remember when... it is a feeling that claws at my life from the inside, hollows me out, claims that i am only a skin that has no right to fill out a smile, or bellow out a laugh, or even cry tears. it insists that there is nothing in me of substance or consistency... there is no reasoning with this feeling, since it has no basis in reason. my claims to the contrary fall into it like pennies into an endless well. the echoes of their descent rebound to me like a laugh, like a hissing angry want-to-do-me-ill sound...

i don't know how to respond to this feeling... there were times, when i was all alone, and nobody cared, when i would "invent a ritual" to mark and symbolize my internal hatred... as someone said in religion class, people get tattoos not because they want to permanency, but precisely because they HURT. there is something about pain that brings us close to some measure of truth... but of course, for me, the pain was purely aesthetic, a kind of tension, like muscles trying to break their housings... all self-hatred, in a sense, is aesthetic, at least when it is motivated by the ego... for the ego seeks control, and what better way to control things than by inventing an enemy that can never be destroyed, nor escaped from? so, as i was saying, an aesthetic ritual was invented... i would take things from my life, from my self, old letters, old things, that only reminded me of the confinement of my skin, only reflected the hollowness and emptiness of my life, and i would "destroy them." cd's, for example, since they seemed to be the most accessible and "shiny" offerings, i would slowly bend in my hands, repeatedly, until the hard plastic edges would begin to cut into my skin. over and over, i'd do this, and slowly arrange the pieces into patterns on my dorm room floor... and then, afterwards, i'd wrap my hands and bundle up into something warm, perhaps wearing my shin guards, and walk out into the snowy grove behind my dorm, out beyond the silent unhearing gravestones, and beneath the roar of the wind, i'd pound my fists into the bark of the conifer trees, i don't know why... back then, i pretended someone cared enough to see me, and then i hated myself for pretending this, claiming that there was no sincerity in my pain, because true feeling of any sort doesn't need an audience, in fact, it rebels against all audiences... but stubbornly, perhaps because there was at the heart of this stupid struggle, such a feeling of aloneness, stubbornly, there would be the residue of a hope, a kind of paranoia, a desire for someone to catch my strange figure (like a ghost) in the stormy night, someone to spare a thought for the oddness of me, someone to waste a moment in silent observation...

yes, i remember the dark times... days, weeks, passing, the struggle to maintain some facade of consistency, like styrofoam over a stormy sea... the nights were awful, alternating between a desire for exposure, to be seen, and this terrible clawing hatred that buckled me in the gut and found relief (only temporary) in stacking everything on top of myself, burying myself, concealing myself in a grave...

this is the feeling that i am always a fugitive of... i have always been a fugitive from. the voice that calls me nothing. the voice that says it knows me better than i know myself...

this is my demon. and my demon is so confounded with me, that i might as well call it myself, even though it is not. not me, no one else...

since it is unanswerable, since no philosophy or rationality can touch it, my responses have been largely irrational: again, the "rituals." or, my belief in "skin" and "blindness," the wisdom of oedipus, AFTER oedipus rex... he was wise, he knew the true stature of man, man who claims to be king over circumstance, man who is nothing other than a pawn for forces beyond his control or reckoning... how is it possible to continue after the realization? a continual contextualization, a continual blindness... to stand on the precipice of moments, and to just fall, usually fully unprepared, somewhat uncaring for the consequence... not a bravery, because what i confront in the outside world is nothing compared for the demon i cannot wrestle with inside...

sleep and dreams... i want to forget. i want to be clean... and now, i have those i love and care about more than myself... i can, for a time, be strong enough for them... i have to be...