The Mighty Rio Grande Is Bound By Its Bed

 This post is a direct sequel to "The Report of Misery Must Be Full."

 

 

I've been preoccupied with my death for years. People with PTSD usually are. Life can get so painful you can't help but wonder what it's like to die, just as a release valve. The idea that this world is something worth holding onto is a relatively new one to me. It began to sneak up on me when I began dating my wife. After I married her this idea began to invade, in full force. 

I did not take kindly to the intrusion.

I did not want to change.

What if my wife died? What if she left me alone? What would I be left with then? All that work to integrate her and my child into my life.... and if they died I would be even worse off than when I started. How was I supposed to trust that this would be worth it to me? It was a problem I didn't really have much of an answer for.

Well, as God would have it, I was placed on gate guard detail, for six months. Most of the time I was placed on a gate where this was around, far as the eye could see:

Yes, Oklahoma really can get that pretty.

I was sitting in air conditioning, for the most part. I'd sit and read for hours at a time, surrounded by prairie. It was peaceful. I really needed it. I still miss those days, sitting out there, more or less alone. Of course I'd have my music.

The Mighty Rio Grande, by This Will Destroy You, is one of the most important songs in my life. It got me through the horrors I endured in Atchison. And then me playing that song in my head during boot camp got me through there.  And then me listening to the song got me mostly through deployment. It's a song that I had used to attempt to accept the lack of control I had over my life, and to accept that controlling said life would lead to disaster. I had to sit and wait for all of the garbage I was going through to pass, like a virus. 

And then my brain broke on deployment.

And then they sent me home.

But before they sent me home they put me through three psych wards. And I couldn't listen to my song. And if there's anything you should be listening to in the middle of three different psych wards, it's the freaking Mighty Rio Grande! So I sat and pined. One day, in one of the groups, the nurse asked us to say what some of our favorite songs were. She would look them up on Youtube with her phone and play them for us, right there.

Of course I knew what to ask for.

The whole room was filled with peace for five minutes. And then the nurse turned it off. I couldn't blame her, The Mighty Rio Grande is about eleven minutes long! She had to get to other songs. But everyone was different after hearing the song, including the nurse.

But then I'd remember that I got six straight months of being able to listen to it without interruption, out on the prairie, and I would feel calmer.

Because I was so freaking lucky for those six months.

And during that time, I would think about death. And try to contemplate what life would be like without my wife. Like, I really sat and just cracked it out in my head. I knew that, if I was not the first to go, I probably wouldn't last too long after that. No matter what had changed for me during that time, my wife will always be the lens I experience God's mercy through. All the weird things that I write about on this blog? 

Those are when the machine stops working and I can't get summon the willpower to get back to her. 

One smile, one laugh from that woman is enough to make me decide to live another five minutes, just to see it again. Sometimes it burns my soul, but the burn cauterizes whatever's bleeding deep in the unconscious and, as much as it hurts, I know there's a lot more down there that's hurting and needs more of that type of pain.

So what happens if that stops? And if there's more? And I'm tired and old? I realized that I'd want to just die and get it over with. Part of that would be coming back to Oklahoma and sitting under this wonderfully large sky. I'd sit and just be at peace, feel the oppressive sun, smell the prairie, and just take it in. Sit. And just be, once again.

Time for the hard left hook.

What does this have to do with last week's post? 

Everything. 

There's this gaping hole in my soul. Turns out we use mass narratives as part of our identities. And we're designed to do that, that's what religion is for. 

By writing the above I was trying to convince myself that would be enough.

It's not.

You can't just take out the American narrative, one which includes the luxury of being able to pick the cause you're angry about, even if it's not healthy You can't leave a void, nor should you put the wrong type of narrative in. I was hoping, hoping, hoping that by writing the above it would be able to undo my need for the lies of the American narrative. And make no mistake, every single narrative I've found in America is fundamentally wrong. Not one of them passes any litmus test I have. Period. The basis of American narrative (secular humanism) is so fundamentally poor in describing life that anyone who takes it on or who teaches it is doing harm, to themselves and to others.

But at this point I'm not sure that leaving a void, or to forcefully cram in something else, is any better. And from what I can feel it is worse to have a void than a lie. That void hurts even worse than the knowledge of Afghanistan. It hurts so much to not have any collective narrative there's times I just wish the earth would swallow me up and get it over with. There are precious things worse than not being a part of the whole; choosing deliberately not to be in synch with the whole  is one of those few things, at least for one so extroverted as myself.

This is too much. So I tried to unblink it. Maybe, just maybe, just maybe I can unsee it. People do this, right? Everyone else seems "fine", if you count SJW/Alt-right rage culture -they are two sides of the same coin- as fine. Maybe I can just keep my doubts under control with a series of finely cocktailed drugs and stimuli, like everyone else! It works for others, why not me???

Nope. I can't go back. Won't. No thank you. Never, ever, ever again will I knowingly embrace a series of lies that lets me excuse what we excuse. If there is anything I loathe it's the lies that we feed ourselves.

God, nothing new is under the sun, and this song, as wonderful as it is, cannot patch the hole in me that was left from the ripping out of a lie. What I'd built to keep me from running away from my marriage is not enough here. Individualism and hedonism isn't a counter to the need for a collective narrative, it's just a pretty little lie that we use to not look at the narrative we pretend doesn't exist.

Now what?

How does one actually exist in a society so inherently toxic that the individuals in it can't think there is anything better? I don't know a single American who would say our situation is good, but it is a dramatic failure of imagination that most cannot say anything better exists.

But that doesn't answer my question this time, doesn't it?

All of Life is Grieving

So I went to my EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) session. For those who don't know, EMDR can go to some rather weird places. Memories that EMDR bring up include singular moments in time... up until this point. This round an entire entire span of years was contextualized. And it's brought me to a most inconvenient truth, one which my father has been trying to teach me for years; all of life is grieving.  There's never a moment when you're needing to grief, on some level, no matter if you like it or not.

Most of my teenage years were defined by an emptiness and a rage that held no clear purpose. That loneliness, that desolation, would keep me up at night. I was unable to understand what was happening. For years I've still felt it, even as it's begun to fade with Maria's return to my life, as well as the advent of our children. As of recently that feeling has begun to return in full force. I've done my best to deal with this sudden resurgence of nihilism and self-loathing, but it's not been easy. There's just been this hole in my heart that I've not really been able to figure out. 

And then this flashback happened.

There were very few times in my life where I've felt in control. One of those points was the summer when I was thirteen or so. I was living out in a dilapidated trailer behind Maria's house, on thirty acres of woods. The children who had tormented me for over half a decade were miles away. I awoke, ate breakfast, and went outside to peace and tranquility. I'd hang out with Maria and her family. I'd run through the woods and get myself lost so I didn't have to deal with anyone if I didn't have to. I would go in the evenings to train at the dojo, prepping myself to become national champion. I'd come home and go to sleep. During the day I'd draw, read, and not see a single soul that I did not want to. It wasn't an easy time. It was one of the few times I had a knowledge of who I was, where I was going, and how I related to those around me. 

And then that fall we left. I stopped training Muay Thai, due to a lack of a dojo. I'd had what I thought was a falling out with Maria, and so I'd stopped seeing her.

Every single day after that point was a living hell.

When I was a senior in high school one of my friends told me that when she had first met me she was terrified, because she had no idea what to expect from me. The druggies were apparently discussing what I could possibly be on to make me so volatile. Shaken, I turned to one of my sisters, who confirmed I was mercurial, on a very good day, and that in general it was a good idea to just avoid me altogether. None of them, of course, had been there at nights to watch what happened when the sun went down and all my disappointment came crashing in. But at the time I couldn't remember: there was a time when I was in control. I may not have been very happy (happiness is overrated), nor had much peace (highly underrated), but I was in control. 

And all of a sudden I have that memory back. There was, indeed, a time when I felt myself, the master of my own fate. For many that may not make sense. But knowing that the holes in my soul were once plugged, that I had found some form of equilibrium, no matter how flawed and fleeting, is enough. It also explains why, when I try to train Muay Thai now, a feeling of emptiness and grief overwhelms me. My life had been broken for years; it's not going to repair overnight.

I called my father and told him what had happened. My father responded with regret. He hadn't taught me to grieve the emotions I had been feeling all that time because he hadn't been raised to do it either. How much could have been prevented if only I had been taught how to process and not judge what I didn't understand! I did not need to know why I was sad to process it. It's fortunate I know now, but my father was himself grieved by how badly the ball had been dropped.

I mean, how else was I going to know? As a culture the United States is terrible at grieving. We still labor under the delusion that work equals a result, and therefore  if we somehow keep pushing ahead we will find meaning in what we are doing. Nothing is further from the truth, of course. You must grieve. You must sit with your sorrow, process it, and allow it to influence your personality. Missing things is normal. You cannot restore balance by ignoring the warning klaxons in your nervous system that tell you that not all is well. And there are so many things in the world that hurt! And yes, if they hurt you you have to grieve them. That doesn't mean pausing your life; not grieving stops your life, even while your heart is beating. But it does mean you cannot separate your grief from the rest of your identity. You cannot see yourself without the grief over things that went wrong. You are not just your happiness.

I keep finding that, whenever I pray, actually pray, that I find myself in a state of heartbreak. It's not that praying breaks my heart. It's that I find that I am broken. Encountering God; encountering wholeness, is going to include at least one moment where you realize that you're not. And those things, those breaks in my soul, will stand out. Isaiah, upon meeting God face-to-face, cried out "WOE IS ME". He wasn't crying out because God terrified Him. He cried out because he realized that his heart was broken in a million pieces. And he was overwhelmed by what he saw, within himself. Like anyone else he probably had pushed aside his emotional damage, tried to ignore it, wanted to focus on something that wouldn't make him have to face his own heartbreak. But looking at the face of God requires you to see it; Isaiah could not ignore it.

And so he grieved. He had to accept what he was.

And God helped him do it.

Because of all the names that we've given God, the most beautiful (and therefore most true) is Mercy.