Attack

Attack. When pathology attacks, it can be subtle or it can be head on. I am under attack. The attack comes, violent, relentless. It is not subtle. It takes me out through my mind. Something is wrong. I can feel myself in reaction. I know it is the dreams that keep coming and also the homework I am in. The descent that started in Bermuda now has me standing on the stairs looking down into pitch black. The Anima is there, the girl is there, but they are not enough. In the dream, I don’t feel the terror; instead I simply turn away in a patronizingly prideful fashion and go back up. Only “up” is where my real demons await. “Up” is of the mind, the outer world, the oh-so-familiar. “Down” is the unknown, the terrifying unknown. I have explored the glittering halls of my mechanical mind. I know its grinding corridors, the hitching, stutter of obsessive thinking. The trauma drama stories reeling out in stop-action clarity. The oppression of nihilism lurks here. This is the place where shame wants to cover all parts of me until I can no longer feel anything. The shivering desire is gone and I am numb. I hold on to the only feeling left: dis-ease; the crawling discomfort of my own skin. Something has gone terribly wrong. I am no good. I see how I have been twisted and scarred, broken and corrupted and I see no way out, only pitch black and terror. The coil of anger draws me, the thorn of self pity woos me, nihilism presses on me. I want to take the battle up and out to the world. But I see that the real battle is happening inside me and I am fighting now only because I can’t go back. And yet, I see no light ahead. No hope for me. It cannot be redeemed, all is lost. Things have gone too far. I have given so much of myself away that I have nothing to surrender even. How can I find love in this hopeless place?

In the writing now, perhaps I feel a glimmer of hope. It comes in the form of the feeling of deep pain. I hurt somewhere deep inside. This is the simple truth. I hurt in the root of me, the core, a place so far away that I can hardly fathom it. But I can feel it welling up in the writhing dis-ease of my body. I am like the freshly hooked worm descending to its watery, toothy fate and the belly of the beast.