I have been writing some dark stuff as of late. There have been two reactions to it, far as I can tell: very genuine concern for my welfare or "Oh, it's Nate being Nate". The genuineness of either is not in doubt, but one is accurate and the other is not, and it's the "Oh, it's Nate being Nate" camp that's closer to the mark. This is not meant to denigrate the former, however, but to explain one of the gradually evolving goals of this blog and the logic behind it. I am far more okay than most would like to think. The time to have worried about me would have been about six years ago, not now. I will explain that first.
Modern society has always felt very odd to me. The oddest part about it, however, is the insistence that people are completely conformitve creatures. This is patently false. People are inherently conflicted beings, who seek conflict and need it to help them process what they are. If you put people into a spot where there's not a lot of conflict it is a psychological fact that they will invent conflict. We have to have it. If a person wishes to stay sane that have to find a way to channel their need for conflict and they have to own up to this need.
If you don't think that a fact of human nature you're not just wrong but you are a danger to yourself and others.
I am open and honest about it. I admit my need for conflict and therefore am actually at peace.
Yes, I said peace. Peace is not the same thing as calmness. Peace is about acceptance. I'm working on the calm part.
Six years ago? I wasn't ready to admit it. I was not at peace with my need for conflict, and that really messed me up. I blamed the darkness in my soul on the trauma and horror inflicted upon me, instead of seeing that experiencing such things merely increased my appetite for conflict. I took the need home and instead of channeling it properly I sat on the flashbacks and the rest of the horrors and sought conflict in my own house, where that sort of thing isn't helpful. I thought the flashbacks were the problem, but as I continued on in EMDR and therapy I realized three things:
1) Rage is frustrated energy
2) The flashbacks were not the source of my energy, but they made a handy scapegoat to not live up to my own potential.
3) If I didn't figure out what to do with all the energy I find in myself I would inevitably become frustrated, turning the energy to rage, as sure as damming a river leads to a water back up.
It's an ongoing process, but the intent when facing myself has changed from merely nullifying rage to redirecting the energy to other things. And it has been marvelously freeing. I'm not terribly good at it yet, but it has been a breath of fresh air for me.
But sometimes that energy doesn't get handled properly. And so I write, and I make a conscious decision to publish what I write. It is extremely purposeful. I do it for one very simple reason: my experiences of reading Gene Wolfe have taught me that reading a frank confession of human nature as it is exists in an individual is healing for others to read. It is not a question of whether or not I am a good writer. That is not the point, although I do think I am getting better. The point is that the mere act of reading about someone else having trouble and trying to figure out what to do it with can be a good thing for people.
Now, if you've read my posts and you go "but I don't feel particularly helped", that's fine, you might not need what I've put up on the web yet. Maybe I just suck at writing. That's always an option. But someday you might. Someday your own nature may get the better of you and the lie that somehow you're anything like your sterile modern surroundings won't be enough anymore. This state of constant calmness, without death and illness and killing, does not calm you down, it makes you itchy, and if you don't deal with that itch you will go crazy. You need conflict. You need challenge. But few will tell you the truth.
And here is that ugly truth:
You need contention, and that contention starts right betwixt your own ears and in your chest. Different people will need different levels of conflict, but there is not a person alive who doesn't need it.
The calmness of a first-world environment will not help you channel your need for conflict, if anything it will frustrate you further. The privilege of a first world denizen isn't to stop suffering and conflict, but to choose a type of suffering and conflict that won't necessarily kill you or others. And that is better than 99% of all human beings who have ever lived. What a gift! You may need help learning how to channel that energy other places and you may need to grieve the bad shit that happened to you, but the end goal is not to eliminate the energy, but to just get it to where it needs to go.
I publish these posts because someone may feel relief from knowing they are not alone in facing the conflict from inside them. I publish these posts because I know others assume their inherent uniqueness in this fact, which is the type of lie that destroys families and nations. I do not publish these posts to ask for help. If I need help I would not ask on a blog. Or online.
But maybe you, the reader, will benefit from the meanderings and musings. I know I have benefited from such things myself. So I try, to the best of my ability, to pay it forward.
And if I can help someone face the real problem head on, no matter how slightly, that's not a life poorly spent.
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