Yes, It's Worth It

 

"For some time, it has seemed to me that it would be even easier to maintain the position that pain proves or tends to prove God's reality... What pain does do is act as a motivator in all sorts of less than obvious ways. It is responsible for compassion and the hot foot; it makes people who do not believe in God think about God... Very few people seem even to have noticed that although Christ was a 'humble carpenter', the only object we are specifically told he made was not a table or a chair, but a whip.

And if Christ knew not only the pain of torture but the pain of being a torturer (as it seems certain to me that he did) then the dark figure is capable of being a heroic and even a holy figure, like the black Christs carved in Africa."

Gene Wolfe, Helioscope 

I have endured a lot of pain in my life. Raped, molested, betrayed, ostracized, and more have been done to me. There is a ball of rage in the pit of my stomach at all times, one which must be continuously dealt with and soothed in order to not fly into random bouts of rage, on reflex. I know this is true because, when I get upset, I have a hard time not yelling at my wife. I don't mean yelling at her in a "HOW DARE YOU" I mean that my voice just naturally goes to a volume that one should only reserve for true trouble or when you're trying to mentally break someone. And I don't want to do that to my wife, or kids, or anyone, so I have to watch my voice. And my words. And my thoughts. And everything, really, because once the rage gets started it takes me a lot to get out of it.  It is constant work. It feels like an illness of the most pernicious kind, requiring around-the-clock maintenance to live anything resembling a life.

The worst part isn't that I must fight myself in a constant knock-down drag-out war. I mean, that part sucks, sure, but that's not the worst. The worst is when my defenses drop and I do hurt someone. It's easy. I'll find myself yelling, or a random extra sentence is said that I really didn't want to say but fuck, it's out there now and I have to do damage control. I find that worse because I can't undo the harm I just did, and if I let myself get rolling there's a truly epic amount of harm I'm capable of. So if that ball starts it takes a lot of extra work not just comforting the person I just hurt, but also in calming myself down. I have to pull double duty, and fast, because both me and the other person matter and things have to get cleared up.

And that's not comfortable, at all. Rage is weaponized grief, so I have to get down to the bottom of each instance of rage, find out what's causing the grief, and try to find a way to comfort what's down there. Because it's not necessarily easy to figure out what's being grieved over, and sometimes I find myself asking "Wait, that's it? That's the thing that's giving me so much grief right now?"  But grief is grief, and trying to downtalk it inevitably leads to more rage. And that just makes my own job in being peaceful that much harder.

So, let's just say that the end of each day I am exhausted, all the way down.

And it is worth it.

God, it is so worth it.

Because, somewhere at the bottom of all this, I'm aware that rage wants to turn the world from a collection of subjects that deserve my veneration, love, and forgiveness into a collection of objects that don't get a say in what happens to them. It's a nice, simple, quiet universe, where nothing else but what you want matters. And that's convenient. Quiet.... ish. I like quiet. I don't get that too often.

But you know what isn't there? Beauty. Love. Life. It's not the quiet of a meadow, it's the quiet of a wasted battlefield. And, as comfortable as it is, it's not the comfort of being at peace, but the quiet drifting off into the black, a surrender to death. This is no rejuvenation. And if there's one part of my anger that's useful, it's the demand that I arrive at this peace. I want it. I am not going to settle for less, nor should I. Whether I deserve it or not is totally irrelevant to me. It's what I want, and by God it's what I'm going to get, no matter what it takes. Fuck all notions of entitlement, of whether I deserve it or not, I've been through to much to let the things that happened to me win. I cannot let what happened dictate who I am. 

And, sometimes, it doesn't. There's just peace.

So far it hasn't been more than a few moments every few months, but each and every time it's completely and utterly worth it. For just a few moments there is no war. No pain. Just a quiet enjoyment. I can just be. Each time it happens it stays a little longer, each time is a bit more intense. And it gets a little bit harder to return to the battle. The good-bye to that moment of interior relaxation hurts all the more.

But if there is even a single soul in Hell Christ will go there and stay till they leave.

And there is a part of me still in Hell. It still screams and shrieks and promises revenge and kicks and spits. And if Christ is going to get that part of me out I have to be there. It's a pain that goes way beyond cruelty, and somehow getting my wounded personality to respond is more painful than the most fiendish of tortures. There are times I just cannot comprehend going any further, where I feel the interior pull to black and void. I sometimes wonder if that's not the moment Christ makes yet another whip and sends me back. Because if there's anything that I know pisses God off, it's when you abandon the misfortunate. Who is more misfortunate that I have power over than myself? 

No one. 

Not a single freaking soul. 

And yes, I would think that would warrant a whip made of cords. At least he doesn't put rocks and thorns into the whip! He just wants to get me moving. It's not the rage of a persecutor, but the anger of a parent who wants me to freaking act right I don't, by and large; if you think for two seconds I don't need such treatment you've not been paying attention. I've run from myself my whole life, at great personal cost. I'd be pretty mad if any of my kids did that to themselves for five minutes. Nevermind three decades. So, even though I don't do it very well, I'm finally doing it, somehow. 

And it's been better than anything I could have ever imagined. 

It's worth it.

No one ever told me the interior pain would be worth it. Not like this. I'm not sure anyone could have. But it is. 

To anyone who wonders, to anyone who is lost because straining is so fucking difficult that you just want to die, this is worth it.