Music And Poetry And Luciferianism And My Desire To Create

Well, last night I was pretty distraught. I hope no one thinks I was being a drama queen. I was really fraying at the edges. This move is taking a major toll on me. But I'm not as nuts tonight as I was last night. So, tonight, I'm going to babble about some things that are important to me and are helping me through this process.

First, musically, it's been all about The Cure. Old Cure, new Cure, in-between Cure. Everything from despair to psychosis to giddiness to humor. I have loved them since Disintegration, which was already well into Robert Smith's career. But it's been 22 years, so I guess I can say I'm a real fan. I have every full length they ever released. I saw them in Nassau Coliseum on the Wish tour and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen in an arena. I generally prefer the more intimate settings of a club and, generally, the bands I listen to only play clubs because hardly anyone has ever heard of them. But Robert Smith and co. lit up that arena that night. It was magical. There is a lot of pain in many of the songs but listening to it can be so cathartic. No one has musical depression down like The Cure.

I've also gotten inspired to read poetry and stuff about poets again. Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Georg Trakl, and, more recent poets, Louise Glück, Galway Kinnell. All geniuses. Of them all, my favorites are Sexton, Berryman and Glück. Anne Sexton wrote to tear your guts out. She usually succeeded. Very raw. The words are filled with the sense of agony and losing one's grip becoming an imminent threat. Berryman is less easy to understand. He wrote very obscure but emotionally powerful poems. He's probably one of the poets to blame for the fact that most modern people think poetry is completely inscrutable. But I love him. The puzzle, the reward of figuring out a line or two, the sheer ecstasy and anguish he went through in the writing. Brilliant. So, two insanely genius poets who took their own lives. Louise Glück is still among the living. I love her work just as much as the others. She's my favorite living poet. She has a more delicate style while still writing about powerfully emotional subjects. She also likes to use simple words to convey deep thoughts, something a lot of poets think is beneath them. I tend to find many possible meanings in her works. Her books tend to follow a theme. She has built a body of work that is highly esteemed by critics and regular readers of poetry alike.

Also reading (and practicing) Luciferian path stuff. I wrote last night about how it didn't seem to be helping but that's not entirely true. It didn't help last night. But I don't think I'd be getting through this whole move situation without it. I am generally stronger now than I was before I discovered it. Identifying with a God rather than kneeling and begging for forgiveness and mercy and love appeals to me a great deal. I think there is a chance that there are real spiritual entities in this universe but I do not believe in approaching them like a slave. I want to be more like them. That is the essence of the Adversarial path. Identifying with the beings who would not bend their knee before any God and thus were branded as enemies of goodness. Adversaries. Those who walk their own path at all costs, willing to go into the dark places and find the light within. The Gods do not demand faith or love. They don't demand anything. They simply wait and see if you are worthy of their respect. It's entirely up to you what you make of your life. Last night, I obviously wasn't doing too well with that. But I think I haven't squandered all my opportunities and one day, after much invocation and meditation, I will come to see myself as the living embodiment of those deities. It is the path for those who reject the idea that those who remain true to themselves over any other being are damned. Rather, they are the ones who are truly saved.

All of this ties into me feeling like I want to start writing again. Creative writing, not blogging. Blogging is helpful but I want to express my ideas either as poems or stories or poetic stories. I won't have the chance until the move is over but after that, I will have time. I am looking forward to it. In Thelema, Ceremonial Magick, Luciferianism, there is the concept of one's true will. It is what you are in this world to do. Without that will, you are less than fully yourself. For me, I feel that my true will is to write, to create. When I am not writing, I am miserable. When I am writing, I feel that kinship to the Gods. The act of forcing my will and heart upon a piece of paper or a document screen on a computer monitor and making it into whatever I desire it to be, that is divine for me. I need to get back to it, for the sake of my sanity.

Well, hopefully, this is a bit more cheerful than last night's wrist-slitting festival. I am focusing on growing and expanding my personal strength and beating down the depression with both fists. I *will* make my way through this life and I *will* become the person I want myself to be. I simply have to.

The End Of The Line

This isn't a suicide note. Which isn't to say I haven't been having suicidal thoughts because I have but I don't want anyone getting worried that I'll be checking out in the immediate future. What this is, I'm not entirely sure, except an outpouring of the fact that I am shrieking and tearing myself to pieces inside.

I wrote a post about how deep depression is true despair and not just sadness or "the blues." Well, there's a point beyond that, a point where you really start to lose your grip on reality. My diagnosis is schizoaffective disorder but I've also been labeled with "Major Depression with Psychotic Features." Depression can reach the level of a psychosis. Common symptoms are hallucinations, paranoia, feeling like the person responsible for bad things that have nothing to do with you at all. I am reaching that point. I do my best to hide it, I do not want my dad to see me falling apart in the midst of this move. I know he's probably going to read this but I have to write it. I have to get it out somehow.

One of my meds, Risperdal, is keeping me from a full blown psychotic break. It may be the most important medication I take. But my soul is being put through a shredder. I am so overwhelmed that it paralyzes me. I've been trying my best to work on this move and people have been telling me how proud they are of how I've been handling it but they don't all see that I feel like it's killing me. I blame myself for how much there is still to do. I blame myself for not being able to work and maybe find a way to keep the place. I blame myself for my dad's cancer, in an odd way. I don't know how that works, but the feeling is there. I have been reading up on this Luciferian path and trying to follow it and yet my old and seemingly eternal self-hatred arises in the midst of attempting to meditate on self-love. And having inner strength.... if I have any inner strength at all, it's completely used up in trying to keep my mind from just rending into dozens of pieces and leaving me shattered and even more useless than I feel.

This isn't the worst I've ever been. Not by a long shot. There was a time when this pressure would have probably resulted in me killing myself. Thanks to modern medicine and a lot of support from friends, family and Coco, I'm not that far gone. But I see the fractured edges of myself scraping together and the shards from the friction lodge in my heart and mind and leave gaping wounds. I am not the person I want myself to be. I am just a faint shadow of that person. A faint, extremely distorted shadow. I want to say that this won't break me... but I honestly don't know. The people I love seem to think I can make it. But I don't have the confidence in myself to fully accept that.

I am haunted. I am haunted by the ghosts of loved ones passed on and failures I've been responsible for and mistakes made and lessons learned too late and the specter of the child I once was, looking at me, sad and angry; sad that we share the same pain, angry that I let all that potential go to waste. Not only am I not the person I wish I was, I never have been the person I wanted to be. I have always been let down by myself. Some people think my expectations are too high. I always thought expectations should be high, aim high, don't aim low. But I've achieved low. I have people who care a great deal about me and that means a lot. But I so frequently have nothing to offer them. I don't feel like I bring anything to the table. While they talk about jobs and friends they have in real life and some of them about their own families that they've started, wives, husbands, children... I look at myself and think "What have I done with my (almost) 39 years?" I can think of a lot of stalled projects, plans given up on, people hurt, jobs I screwed up, possibilities squandered. All because I have this depression. Something that some people don't even consider a real medical condition.

I honestly don't know any other life than this. Whether it's a real medical condition or not, depression seems to be the core of my being. It has carved out a niche in my soul and taken up permanent residence. Either that or the depression actually IS my soul. That feels more likely. My spirit is a spirit of despair and hopelessness.

We have a few days before we have to move and leave this house behind. I can't get my mind around the enormity of that reality that is looming so close. What I'd really like to do is pack up my mind and move and leave Chris Ropes behind and just be someone, anyone, else.