See, faith used to be easy and convenient for me. Now, faith in the God I love and cherish is a dark and treacherous thing; it is a closed door that resonates deeply when I bang against it. There is something on the other side which I thought I had known; and yet now, knowing I might not ever have known, I long deeply to reside within it. I'm terrified of that door. I'm terrified that it is closed. I am terrified that sometimes I hear what is mirth, or a dirge, from the other side. I'm more terrified sometimes I can't hear anything...Most of all, I am terrified that I am the door, and this is the true test and measure of faith. Is my fear and trepidation impenetrable? God help me, don't let it be so.
So, after I lost this post, I decided to rewrite it. Quite simply, I don't know why. The posterity of human suffering, I suppose. Not that we don't all have our own suffering.
Perhaps somewhere out in this wasteland of exchange of human quantity of knowledge, this desert of our lowest common denominator, I felt like maybe there should be the howl of madness. Perhaps, as we go through our time pretending to be concerned with all that is inconsequential, so that we might convince ourselves to ignore the only real pivotal singularity and concepts of our existence, perhaps, there needs to be a bit of this discomfort. There needs to be a minor key to this simple tune we are all trying to hum; there needs to be the mark of the villain that life is beautiful and we are all going to die, and why is that?
Disclaimer: These events in this post are, as far as you are concerned, fiction. I am a very capable, functioning individual, and I suffer from no mental deficiency whatsoever. Mentally I am sticking my tongue out right now. Without further adieu, I present for your consideration and dismay, October the 19th, 2012. Wine, Blood, Redemption.
OCTOBER THE 19TH, 2012.
WINE.
BLOOD.
REDEMPTION.
I should have come with a warning label. I craved for human contact. I was desperate to love and feel loved again. The pure enmity I felt toward myself and Christina after her death is not something I completely understand, nor is it clearly understood now. Even the left behind, the still alive can feel, rejected, forlorn, and forsaken. It is a selfish, ugly feeling. Yet, I daresay it is somewhat natural. I do not ask about these things; who can be the expert and arbiter on such matters?
She should not have been there, this poor girl. She wanted to be with me, on the first anniversary of Christina's death. She wanted to comfort me, talk to me, understand me. Such naivete. How can one understand another, when the one they strive to understand cannot understand themselves? How could she plumb the depths of my pain, when I had become the master of deceit; a wraith of emotion, and an illusion?
I myself did not know. I was numb, and I had called it healing. I should have known, for a Scorpio perhaps. And I such a dark complected one; I was merely the calm surface that masked the airless void of the bog underneath. My emotions lay buried so deep, they had sucked all the light and oxygen out of my soul. That mire to escape the pain I had suffered with Christina's death, as deep as the love I had held for her in life.
The girls were away. I had planned to go to Winona Tn, to the land we had bought, to scatter some of her ashes. I had planned. In the end, like so many other things, I simply could NOT bring myself to do it. I picked up wine. I went home. There was company; distraction. There, I would drink and avoid myself. There, the waters would calm, numbness, by my design and by the wine, would settle, in. Thus I would make it through this day.
I came in. I took out two long stem wine glasses. I poured the wine. I had a glass. I poured another. I had not said a word. Quiet minutes slipped into an hour. I poured another glass. The wine, and the murk were at war with the images in my mind. Things I recalled in such vividness and yet they had become as surreal as the rest of life had since that day. Everything; every moment a walking dream; a waking nightmare. This was my purgatory.
There is an old Irish song called "Brother, pour the wine" I heard Dennis Day sing it on the Jack Benny program.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
The first words spoken. They hung in the air like thickening Merlot clinging to uneven glass. I tried to form a word. Nothing would come out. There was nothing there.
I tried to speak. I laid my head in my hands, and began to sob.
From deep within me, a guttural cry arose.The room began to spin. The thoughts and remembrances I had been pushing down all day began to break the surface. That cry steadily crested into an ungodly scream. I screamed over and over at the top of my lungs. I kicked the wall.
The wine glass sat there beside me, delicate; fragile. I struck out. I shattered the bulb with my fist. I snapped the stem with a slap from my palm. Wine sprayed the wall beside me.
The base of the glass remained on the table by the couch. A thick, cruel glass spike, the remainder of the stem arose straight up from the base. two inches long, and a quarter inch round, that stem stood proud and defiant. All the black of that bog of dead and buried emotion wretched up inside me. My face twisted into hate and anger. I screamed, clinched my fist, and raised it. The girl saw what I was up to, and shouted "NO!" at the top of her voice. It wasn't enough to break the spell. I slammed my clinched fist down onto that wine stem as hard as I possibly could. The stem buried itself so deeply into the side of my hand I felt it grate against bone. I buried that stem to the hilt of the base; two inches of cold glass burying itself into my flesh.
It was the most relieving feeling I think I have ever known. Immediately all the pain and despair disappeared back into that pool. The waters calmed then went still.
She stared horrified at the circle of the base of the wine glass seemingly glued to my hand. "Why did you do that?!" She shrieked.
All I could do was laugh. A deep, foreign, horrible rumbling laugh rolled out of my lips, beyond my control to stop it. I reached up, and gingerly pulled the base of the glass. The stem slid out of my hand. I 1/4 inch gush of blood followed it. I bled, and bled, and bled. I walked around the house, gushes of blood squirting out of my hand. The girl desperately, and in vain, followed me around, trying to get me to quell the flow. I could not stop laughing and laughing maniacally. I passed out.
I woke up the next day, my swollen hand wrapped in a blood soaked terry cloth. I walked from my bedroom floor, where I lay, into the living room.
I have never seen anything like it. The entire living room it seemed like was covered in puddles of blood. The blood had dried into flaky deep crimson pools on the floor. There were puddles of blood in the kitchen. There were puddles of blood going outside. There were puddles of blood in my truck. I had bled until I had passed out.
Needless to say, the girl was a bit freaked out. I was too.
I was freaked out, but something had changed. I knew now, how deep and desperate my pain still was. I understood so much about myself that next day. I was and am a broken man. And I'm OK with that. I don't and can't need to be anywhere else.
I suffer from PTSD. I will be OK for a few weeks. Then, I will fall apart. It may be the smallest of things. I brought in that special tote from the garage to protect it; the one with all the pictures and memories. That wine glass base is in that tote, by the way. I fell apart. I haven't bathed in five days. I've barely moved from the couch.
But I know now; it isn't hate. It isn't that I'm suddenly too lazy to deal with it all. It's because sometimes, I've fought as hard as I could. Time to go to the cave, Elijah.
It was a hard fought battle to just be able to love and be loved by my girls again. It hurt too much to be so close to something knowing that losing it will cause you to lose yourself and your mind. I lost my mind over her. I lost my relationship to life over her. It's all different now.
There's the Wine, and the Blood. Where's the redemption? I guess it's right here. It's on the sleepless nights, when I know that madness is killing me with lack of sleep. It's knowing in the morning, I will get up, make coffee, and then make waffles for these little girls. It's knowing that one day I won't. It's knowing I had better really, REALLY appreciate these mad, sleepless nights, these grubby little hands, this messy house, that stupid un-trainable dog on the porch...It's knowing nothing is perfect, and nothing ever will be, and I can't make it that way. I don't live for it. I live in spite of it. Maybe that is where perfection lies?
It's knowing that...I can never know. I can never be Holy enough to know if my unholiness keeps that door shut. It's knowing that door was always shut. It's knowing, it has to be opened from the other side. And I don't really even know that. I really don't get very preachy anymore.
Who will I look down on in life? Not a single soul. If I can ease someone else's pain in all this, I want to. God knows I caused enough of it, especially since Christina's death.
It's knowing God can forgive me and love me, and I can forgive myself. And I do. And if it sounds pedantic, it's so much more difficult than you think; that bog is still there, and I muck it out just a little at a time.
My pinky finger still goes numb at times. Apparently I did some nerve damage. I don't mind. I don't really mind at all.
