I have had so much going on in my life this year, Lent/Holy Week has come and gone and I missed it.
I didn't have the heart to meditate on the Passion of the Christ during Holy Week this year. I was too busy being in my own little corner of hell. Lots going on. Practically all of it sucks. It has been a long time since I have been this frustrated. Angry. Depressed. Not to mention just sort of generally fucking miserable.
The cause was not one big thing. It has been death by a thousand emotional and psychic cuts from a lot of different directions. Most of my significant external sources of support have all but dried up. What is more, a couple of my most important ones have "turned on" me for reasons of their own. I am angry, but most of all I am afraid. I don't see a way out of the situation because I don't have any control over what is happening. The negative stuff is coming from the outside of me, and I have no control, or even influence over it. The reasons people are doing this to me are because of their own problems and issues, which probably have very little (if anything) to do with me personally. A couple of people are openly taking their problems out on me. Others have simply dumped stuff on me because they knew I would pick up the slack while they are doing other things. In any case, I have ended up taking on a whole lot of crap of various sorts from a lot of different directions. And I have no where to go with it. What is more, I feel resentful and angry about it, but I can't express that without adding to the pain of people who are going through their own hell.
I feel trapped in circumstances that are becoming increasingly difficult. I have become lost in the woods somehow. I am afraid of the woods. The only way out appears to be straight ahead. I am afraid it will get worse before it gets better.
That would be bad enough but it seems that a lot of people are standing around hoping for me to fail, and a couple of the people who are closest to me (in every respect) are taking the chance to kick me while I'm down. I don't get down often, so I guess they have to take advantage of the opportunity while they can.
Even my fiction Muse has taken a vacation. The one thing I could count on when I felt lost, alone, frightened and couldn't cope with the world any more has withdrawn.
Hmmmm........... Wellsireebob, it appears that, while I may not have been paying attention consciously, I have been making the best Lent I ever did! [A fit of total hilarity should ensue here. Since I am such a hard case, god usually has to sneak up on me and catch me when I'm not paying attention. This appears to be a case in point.]
In contemplation, [despite previous preaching to the contrary here] I have always avoided identifying with Jesus. I can identify with everybody else in most of the Bible stories, but I always avoided identifying with Jesus. Despite centuries of Christian mystical tradition insisting that Christians should meditate on the experiences of Jesus, I took it upon myself to decide that it was somehow presumptuous and improper to identify with the Christ. The fact of the matter is it was just too damned terrifying. I managed to be a practicing Christian for most of more than 40 years without ever really getting the point. [Note to self: take some time to appreciate the totally ridiculous nature of that statement and experience -- someday ... when it won't hurt so much.]
So, while I may not have been paying attention consciously or "observed" it in any traditional sense, I find myself this Holy Saturday feeling bereft, exhausted, drained. Empty.
In other words, I am exactly where one should be at least one day of the year: Empty and dry, waiting for a Refill; Afraid but bordering on desperate enough to try just about anything, waiting for a New Gift; Dead. waiting to be Reborn.
Waiting.
In the dark.
Afraid.
Alone.
Holy Saturday.
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