I have this awesome new phone, and I put a 32gb card in it,
and downloaded all of these games and apps, and I love it so much.
Lately I have been doing a word search game on my phone. I find
it very soothing. I noticed that whenever I can't find a word, I start to feel
anxious and prepare myself for disappointment, but then I find the word - every
time. When I am searching and searching for something I know is there but can't
find it, I start to wonder if there has been some type of mistake made, and the
word was accidently left out of the search, or the word was never in the
search, and was added onto the list of words mistakenly.
But I eventually find the word - every time. It is very
reassuring, and I think I am starting to really trust that the word is there
and that I will eventually find it, even if it seems like it is missing.
We just started watching the fourth season of Breaking Bad
last night. That show is sooooo triggering for me. I mentioned it to my
husband, and he asked me why I watched the show. I told him I don't like the
triggering parts at all, and I spend a lot of time with my eyes screwed shut
and my fingers shoved into my ears when I'm watching it, but the show is really
fascinating. Also on a lot of different levels, I can relate so much to the
characters.
I've witnessed and been involved in a lot of violence (A
LOT); I used to use meth; I am a parent; I have been desperate; I have seen how
I can do things I never thought imaginable before getting so desperate that
horrible, awful, crazy, ludicrous ideas become logical; I know what it feels
like to detach from violence and pain; I know what it feels like to be scared.
These are the things about me that are also portrayed in the
show, and it is not difficult for me to imagine myself being in those
situations.
Last night it seemed, though, that I was seeing much more
logic in killing people (not real-life people, just the characters in the show)
to get out of tight spots. I'm usually not so callous. It makes me remember
that I am capable of doing that kind of thing - of becoming emotionally and
psychologically shut down enough to survive the most horrific experiences,
regardless of whether or not I am a perpetrator or an innocent bystander.
I hate violence. I mean, I HATE it. It is ugly and cruel and
unnecessary and destructive to anyone touched by it. Violence is like a
poisonous gas - you can survive being exposed to a poisonous gas if you don't
breathe too much of it in, but over time, being repeatedly exposed is not
harmless. It is going to hurt you, if not kill you, eventually.
But for whatever reason, you are unable to stop being
exposed to the poisonous gas. It may be that you are continuously forced to be
in the vicinity when someone else releases it, or it may be that you have
survived releasing it yourself so many times that it just makes more sense for
you to do it than anyone else. It may be that you have been exposed to it so
many times that you know the damage is done, and you don't give a fuck about
furthering the harm of repeated exposure. It may be that someone else offers
you some irresistible incentive to do it.
Whatever it is that puts you in the place of poisoning
yourself and other people over and over and over again, the result is the same:
being poisoned and poisoning other people becomes part of who you are. At that
point, you keep doing it because it is who you are. You know how it works, and
you are good at it.
And let's face it - committing mass murder by gassing a room
full of people is much easier and simpler than trying to come to terms with
their existence, or trying to convince all of those people to do what you want
them to.
It's just that you lose your soul in the process. I guess in
some ways losing my soul has been a relief, but in others, it is the worst pain
imaginable. I haven't lost it completely, though - I actually have a good bit
of it left, but I have to be careful about what I am exposed to, because the
damage that is done is done. Souls don't grow back, they just get stronger if
you work really hard at it.
And let's face it - it is easier letting something die than
it is to work so hard to keep it alive, even if it is your own soul or your own
self that you are letting die.
Its fucked up. It is so completely counter-intuitive to our
fundamental human instincts of survival.
But it's there - it's real. I mean, what the fuck else are
you going to do?
I don't know why I still have some soul left. By most
accounts, I would be locked up in prison or a mental hospital by now, soulless
and vile.
Evil is a strange thing, and resilience against it is even
stranger. I don't feel like I had any choice in getting clean and sober, or
staying that way, or in learning how to get along with a big chunk of my soul missing
after my own parents systematically lobotomized it over my childhood, and into
my adult hood. For some reason, there has always been a solid bottom line for
me where I land after I've been sinking.
It has nothing to do with willpower, or goodness, or
righteousness, or any other bullshit mind-fucking ideals like that. It's just
what is there.
I'm writing my second book. It is about the way people come
to the point of committing irretrievable violence. I don't think it is necessarily
a healthy thing for me to be writing about, but it's what I have; it's what I know.
Maybe the writing is what is holding the complete destruction of my soul at bay
- it feels like that sometimes.
And if I can make a living off of doing what I know how to
do to keep my soul from imploding, then even better still.
Seriously, what the fuck else am I going to do?
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