Handful of Dust: The fear of winning.

There is a certain peace in sitting in the dark that I've come to appreciate as an adult that would have terrified me as a child. Perhaps not a child, but perhaps in my early teens. I've come to realize now that I've always been afraid most of my life. Terrified really. A fear that seems to bind to the bone and refuses to let lose even onto death. the kind of terror that is given to a child when their minds are yet too mailable to hold to any thought at all. A primitive dread that is given to mother to child as I've come to discover. A dread that has in every way pulled me deep within the walls of my mind and kept me locked in for years.

The kind of dread that wakes you up at night and if there happens to be someone sharing you bed you burrow into them deep and hope that whatever holds you will let you go. Or if alone, you only pray that it never gets you alone. Then you count blessings or what small ritual that you have saved as a small child to protect you from the terrors.

I'm trying to prove a point with myself. Some would call it pulling the tiger's tail or even challenging God's wrath. I'm actually, as Salvador Dalli would hint to, attempting to submerge into my psyche as deep as possible in order to find what refuses to come to light. I'm feeling quite suicidal in fact. Not in the way youth would listen to an angst filled song and play with knives, but in a diving head first into an empty pool. By the end of this I plan on either understanding what still drags me back into the worst of myself or not see the morning.

I'm that determined.

I've always was fond of what Niche have said about staring into the abyss. How the greatest potential of evil always lies dormant within. The Jungian view would say that we gravitate to our symbols, choosing what we find as either talismans or even siguls that lay as warnings of greater things. We seem to find something to embody our terrors. My daughter has a terror of octopi. It comes to mind now since I would and have envied the concept of having something tangible to dread. Something to either physically run from or throw stones at. My terror is not as simple and yet it still grips me now as I try to meet what ever eyes it may have and force it to come to surface.

I'm having doubts even now as I wonder how I'm going to write this. Trying to find every corner in my mind where a thought may hide to may be hidden, I feel a bit of an arousal. The kind you get for walking into a pith dark room trying to remain calm and not run out screaming. I think this is why I love Lovecraft's work so much. The thought of some great overwhelming terror so huge that it renders the witness mute and limp as their mind enters some sort of insanity that arrives at the point where reality has fallen from it's hinges and the face of the terror that we all assumed we lies comes to be. It smiles into us, or so we think it does as we attempt to find some sort of handle that we can grasp and humanize it. The Olde Gods, the terrors that lies unseen in a flimsy vale that only offers holes into what we are almost able to bare. I adore those stories since in truth they do not frighten me in the least bit. The promise of Olde Gods tearing apart our world and making us feel once again that we are nothing but food to some, insignificant to the rest.

And yet, I've known horror. Not the kind with a monster or creature with some sort of mimicry of humanity, but from people itself. I've seen in my time on this world acts of horror that have cause me to bawl as a babe with no shame and cause me to pull hair out. I've seen individuals shamble about as one would turn in wretched fright someone who was torn asunder and attempt to pick up parts of themselves from the ground in an act of returning to a normal that is forever away from their grasp. Their, our, lives were never the same and we still stay up in the darkness of night wondering how a loving God could allow such horror to come true. How could civilized intellectuals simply allow in any part of their world. How such scars heal and leave so little unmarked flesh left of those who survived the ordeal. Some call us stronger or even survivors over those who were mangled in accidents and deserve pity. How our limbs still remain attached and how lucky we were to walk "unmarked", not "unharmed".

That horror.

And so, I look into myself and in my past and try to grasp that moment that I've became tainted with fear. I've always feared being weak or failing to do what is needed due to fear. Especially with so many depending on me. So many needing me to be whole and to carry on as if nothing has happened. I still walk hollowed time to time knowing that no one, but T.S. Eliot could understand such desolence. I understand now that most of my fear is given by those who meant well. Fear protects us and keeps us from doing foolish acts of stupidity in hopes of passing on our material to those who we will fill with fear also.

And yet, there is something within us all that yearns for rebellion against any tyrannical force that attempts to hold us down. I can feel it now deep within my loins how it plays with my fear. How it alters my self doubt and manipulate me with what I fear the most and what others may see. It drives me to stop writing and drink. It screams at me to get up and force my fist through the screen. It makes me run into the night and find any diversion to what I'm so close to unearthing. These are the moments are the point of time where we always turn away and cower in our skin or where we reach to hands onto the blade that menace us and grab hold. It will cut and tear us and the pain of it makes any of us cringe at the thought and yet U have to reach out and grab. Damned be my hands, I'm going to grab hold of it and shake it loose. I'm going to put fear of me into it.

I'm going to fight it on it's own terms: Dirty.

It does not care how long it has kept us frightened or terrified of what can be or will if we don't do this or that. Cross ourselves or say please or thank you. It tower over us and holds us down until it chooses when to let go and on what terms it will. Perhaps it's because of Avey or maybe I've simply lived enough hell to know that it can not be worse than this. Or maybe I've just realized I have nothing to lose if it bests me. Maybe I've come to realize that those who have "went down the street" have chosen to pull their trump card and meet the only terms of victory they have in the form of a stalemate only they can justify.

Damn it, I've done so much with my life and I've committed so much good and erred so severely in my youth.

I'm not a bad person. I'm never was a bad person. And yet, I can not let go of guilt of any errors. Guilt, the only thing I've gotten from Catholicism and I'm not catholic. My sense of shame from someone else and never mine at all. I'm amazed on how many battles I've fought and come to terms that it was never my battle in the first place. The costly sacrifices that I've paid only to realize that the battles won were of someone who never will fight them.

We are Hollowed.

And so I stare into the abyss and it stares back and it is me.

............

I once has an intervention. Seems that someone caught wind of what I wrote and tried to reach/understand/save me. I ended up laughing admitting that my face was sore since I do not laugh enough to have my face accustomed to it. they've asked why do I write it if not to ask for help. I told them that I write in hopes on not "going down the street". So that I don't feel suicidal and do something that I or more like others will regret. I stare over the edge not to plunge over, but to make sense of it. To understand what scares me I have to scare it back. If I do not keep it at bay it will come for me and drag me in. I've already had years lost to it as I somehow got turned loose and know that vigilance and quick and cruel action keeps it not only back, but may even give up some ground.

In truth, I write this because it seems as if I'm winning and it frightens me. I'm a creature of habit and I'm used to a struggle to the last second. I've never won anything by showing up and I do not expect to. And yet, I know that there may come a time soon that I can be at peace without worrying of what I say, how I act and what thoughts I entertain. There may come a time that I can live open and free from any fears that I've come to carry as a child or develop now. And to do so I have to challenge what ever lies silent and root it out.

.........and then again, I may not see the morning.

We will see.

I think I'm winning.

And that now scares me.