Working My Way Through Madness

I feel like I'm losing my mind. So much rage, so much pain. Anger is just blazing inside me. I want to tear apart everything I see and throw it into an inferno. Whatever purpose anger is supposed to serve, it is twisted in me. It is all I can feel other than depression right now. I'm not saying that it is all there is to me, I know that's not true. Just a few days ago, I was feeling fine. But right now, nothing is in me except fury and hate and despair.

I want to run away from everything. Leave life behind. Take a couple of people with me and leave the world I know behind and never return. The world can get along just fine without me. I can't take life. The rage is tearing me apart. All I can do is grit my teeth until they scream in pain, pound on everything in reach with my fists, and shout curses at existence. I don't know why, I don't know what's causing it and, really, does it even matter? I have to cope with the way things actually are, rather than the way I'd like them to be.

I'm trying to call to mind some spiritual principle, some meditation practice, anything that can alleviate the torture. Nothing works. I feel like the powers that be are plotting ways to drive me completely mad. Maybe it's a test of some kind; if so, I think I'm failing miserably. So much in my life is going wrong and I can't manage the most basic coping mechanisms. Thoughts of death are hounding me. Perhaps it's Karma. Perhaps in another life, I did something truly awful. Whatever it is, I do not believe it is part of the loving plan of any deity. This has nothing to do with love or providence or some unearthly paradise. This is anguish and it is right here and right now. It is not sin, it is insanity.

I will try to survive this for my wife and father. I will try to continue to live even when I feel nothing but loathing for life. There has to be something worth living for; I've found it other times, I can find it again. Now that I have vented, I'm calmer. Maybe that's what I needed to do. Release the poison. Hopefully, it won't just build up again. To my wife and my new dear friend who will probably read this, don't mind me if I indulge a daydream about all of us running off to some obscure part of an obscure country and living the rest of our lives in some wilderness somewhere, being mad and joyful and magically ourselves, with no one to judge and no one to mock us. I know it will never happen, but it is a nice fantasy. It gives me a certain amount of peace.

The Transcendence of Despair

I find the strength to carry on, through a life that has often seemed committed to breaking me, in despair. This is not the self-pitying heartache of the love of your life breaking up with you or having failed some important task and feeling bad for yourself because you think you weren't good enough to succeed. This is a powerful philosophical concept that looks deep into the mystery of life and finds nothingness and finds its  triumph in that very nothingness.

We all get wounded by life. Someone we love dies. We lose an important job. Our closest friends betray us. We have moments of hopelessness, spiritual barrenness, times when nothing seems to make sense. There are remedies for this ranging from religion to the bottle. But few people seek the answer to the problem in the problem itself. Despair is its own victory, when it is taken in one's hands and heart and kept close and used as a guide through what comes after.

 When you suffer from severe depression, you learn very quickly that nothing, not the love of family and friends, not drugs (legal or otherwise), not the God or Gods that we all want to believe in, nothing will just take it away. So, if you want to transform the experience of that depression from something negative to something positive, you've got to work with the depression itself. Despair is more than just an emotion. It is a worldview, as comprehensive as Medieval Roman Catholicism or Marxism. Just ask Nietzsche or Cioran. It colors everything you experience. You go from cooing over how cute a young child is to knowing that someday it will die and sometime after that, unless it's one of the chosen few, will be forgotten, as we all end up forgotten (if, again, we're not of that chosen few) when those who loved us are also gone. This is all-pervasive. You begin to see death and life's powerlessness everywhere. You come to doubt and outright despise the idea of any spiritual agencies who would act to "save" you from the suffering in this world. You know that medicine can take away the edge but, once you've glimpsed into the abyss, you can never un-see what you saw. Hopelessness is something we merely cover up with hope, just as underneath our clothes, we're all naked. Take that away, and you become yourself, bare and defenseless, against the reality of a life that does not love you, does not care one way or another what becomes of you. This is where you find the power in despair.

When you've come to the point where you know for a certainty that life will never deliver what the cliches promise it will, you come to a point where the only thing you trust anymore is yourself. You are the one who survives the slings and arrows. Nothing divine or human survives them for you. And nothing in this life will give you peace; it can only be won, after long struggles, inside oneself. If you think marriage or children or your first home or a new car or some blessed spirituality GIVES you peace, you are underestimating your own power to be the one thing that can be truly relied upon from day one to day final of your existence. A wife or husband can die. So can children. They can decide they hate you, whoever may be at fault. Homes and cars... well... we all know how impermanent those are. And spirituality is only as useful as it applies to practical, everyday life. I have no time for a spirituality that teaches me how to live to be happy in a world after this one. THIS is the life I am living. THIS is the life I am concerned with. If there is anything beyond THIS life, then I blame it for making me so easily overcome by emotional agony. I have made many choices in my life. Depression was not one of them. I do, however, believe in the power of choice. And taking responsibility for oneself involves accepting oneself as the only savior there is. We are each responsible for what gets us through the day. It doesn't come from material things or on high.

Despair hates life because it sees life as either the architect or the idiot god ultimately responsible for suffering. If there were no life, there would be no suffering. That hatred for life contains the seed of strength. Because, if you hate life, you strive to overcome it. Make no mistake, life is a brutal affair. Every time someone speaks admiringly of someone else who rose to a higher state in life through their own efforts, they are tacitly acknowledging the fact that life is cruelly unfair and that success in life only comes by fighting against the odds. If you have everything handed to you, you haven't done a thing. If you never strive for anything better, you also haven't done anything. So, the secret is in not having and fighting for what you do not have. Fighting. Fighting against whom? Against life, of course. Against the life that did not give you what you seek. Fighting to attain that which you seek but do not yet possess.

Hatred for life sounds so negative to many people. They want to say they love life. But, if they have accomplished, truly accomplished, anything, they have done so in a struggle against the entropy and decay that is the end result of life. And, if they haven't accomplished anything, watch how quick they are to blame life. We all know life is the enemy when we're feeling broken.

Only in despair do these insights come. And yes, despair can result in things like suicide. But, a philosophical despair will ensure that one does not impulsively commit suicide based on emotional disturbances that may go away after a few hours, days, weeks, months. Philosophical despair will only permit suicide when one can rationally see that either the pain will not get better or that one's time is truly at an end, that one has accomplished and experienced all one can or wants to in life. I make no one any promises that I will never take my own life. But I will not do so rashly and I will not be unaware of the consequences of such an action. And, I will fight. I will fight for the best life possible for myself because I know that life itself will never give that to me. It must come from my own efforts. And, if I triumph or if I ultimately fall, I will do so as a sovereign being, truly free and truly filled with the unlimited power of despair.

Psychosis

This is a challenging blog post to write. In it, I will admit to some things that are either embarrassing or not at all flattering. I just told one of my adopted little sisters about some of this last night and breaking the barrier of not really telling anyone about it has sort of inspired me to really open up about it. I honestly don't know what my motives for writing this are. I think it has something to do with the fact that I want people to have a better idea of exactly what's wrong with me. I don't want to be completely defined by my illness but I also want people to really be aware of the fact that there's damned good reasons why I am on Disability and not being a normal, productive, independent, responsible adult. Most people don't understand at all how profoundly disturbed I am because I'm better than most at hiding it. No longer. This is to tear down the misconceptions that I'm just a regular guy who gets sad and anxious sometimes but is mostly okay other than that. It's time to be understood and see who accepts the real me and who doesn't want to have anything to do with me any longer.

I see a psychiatrist I believe on the 19th. I am not 100% positive I will make it that long. I may have to check myself into a hospital at some point before that. I don't feel that I badly need to right now. However, that could change at any time. I may need to change my meds in the near future. I don't think my old meds are doing the trick as well as they used to. Kind of sad, I had developed a great deal of loyalty to Risperdal. Maybe it's odd to have customer loyalty to a drug, but it probably saved my life. I need to talk to someone about something new because I think my body has adjusted too much to the meds I'm on now and they are no longer at optimal effectiveness. I have noticed some of my psychotic symptoms coming back. That is what this post is about.

I have always been paranoid. I have been afraid of people for as long as I can remember. I have thought that when someone laughs they are laughing at me for just about the same amount of time. I can be very nosy because I am always worried that people are trying to bring me down behind my back. My wife (yay that she's now my wife since my birthday!) has remarked on how nosy I am. I have a compulsion to look at her computer screen when she's using her computer. I am normally not paranoid about her but that is essentially the reason I do that. I also listen carefully whenever I hear conversations near me because I'm positive they are about me. At some point, years ago, these paranoid inclinations blossomed into full-blown psychotic delusions.

My mother used to get angry at God and scream at him to strike her dead whenever anything went wrong. I believe I inherited my inclination to paranoia from her but somehow learned from her the specifics. I don't even really believe in God, at least not in a monotheistic sense of one absolute all-powerful king of humanity. But I blame God for my misfortunes because the madness in my mind believes that only an omnipotent deity is capable of manufacturing the conspiracy that is operating against me. I also don't demand that God strike me dead when things go awry. Instead, I scream at him to come down from on high and, essentially, do battle with me so that either I can kill him or he can kill me and thus end the torment. Yes, when the insanity bursts through the dams of my mental defenses, I honestly believe I'd have a chance to kill the almighty Creator in one on one combat. I told you you wouldn't think I was normal after this. It gets worse.

So, I think God has it in for me. He has a plan too. He wants to drive me to suicide. I am convinced of this. I can't really explain why but I know it in my soul. God created me solely to (perhaps) get some kind of sick pleasure out of crushing me beneath his heel. Delightful. I am locked in a mortal struggle with the Divine. The Divine I only believe in when I am out of my gourd and convinced I am being persecuted unto death. So, how does God go about his evil plot? That's where it gets really nuts. See, God knows how much I want the stuff I order online. I buy myself stuff compulsively to make myself feel better when I am unhappy. That's a whole other post by itself. It's part of my whole sickness. But I digress. So, he knows I feel like I need those items I buy for myself to save my sanity. We've already established that he seeks to destroy my sanity. Thus, it makes perfect sense that he'd try to keep those packages from me. He goes about this by collaborating with African-Americans in the USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc. to delay, damage or lose my shipments. Yes, blacks in the shipping industry take orders from God to not deliver me my stuff in a timely fashion in order to deny me the satisfaction I derive from it and to ultimately drive me to kill myself.

I told you I was embarrassed and not proud. I don't even know where to begin with this. I mean, first there's the plain insanity of this thought. I could also point out the racism involved, even though I fight against being that kind of person with all my might when I'm not in the grip of psychosis. It doesn't make me feel any better about myself when I remind myself that I did, after all, vote for a black man in the last Presidential election. That isn't enough proof that I'm not a racist to my disgusted self. I don't know why my brain picked blacks specifically to be afraid of in this instance. No clue. Anyway, it's a mad, racist, sick thought. And I can't get it out of my head lately. And this delusion goes back years. Medication made it go away for a long time but I'm slipping back into it lately. Maybe, as I said, it's my body adjusting to my drugs. Perhaps it's the fact that I've been under a lot of stress lately. Stress amplifies mental illness out of control. Whatever is the cause, I think it's quite understandable why I have been considering checking myself into the hospital. I get anxiety attacks when I check the mail in case something I'm expecting hasn't arrived yet. Definitely not sane.

That's not everything. I wish it was. Sunday night, I was convinced I wasn't real. I didn't think anything was real. That's a common symptom of psychosis. I also have been terrified of all of my friends conspiring behind my back to break me and then abandon me in my time of need. I can't just trust my friends, I'm always so very suspicious. This is one reason why many schizotypals, schizoaffectives and schizophrenics don't like to make close relationships with others. They are too paranoid and afraid of what will happen. I decided some time ago to force myself to take the risk and it has been good for me but I can't honestly say there aren't times I regret it. If you are reading this, odds are, at some time in the not-too-distant past, I have been deathly afraid of you and what you will someday do to me. Sorry.

If you hate me or are afraid of Crazy Chris now, don't worry, I was prepared for that. You're just confirming my fears of people. If you pity me, don't. I fight this shit with all my might and don't want to be your favorite victim. If you support me, bless your heart. That's what I need. I fear someday taking my own life or ending up as a permanent resident of a hospital or possibly being a madman living on the streets ranting to himself. But I haven't given up. I will have to lose my marbles completely so that I can't even contemplate fighting before I give up. If you read all of this, thanks. It's a sign you care. Or else you're morbidly curious. I would be too. Madness isn't pretty, but it sure as hell is interesting.

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.

Continuation Of The Self Or Dissolution In The Void?

The Luciferian books and articles I've been reading lately, mostly from The Order of Phosphorus, have caused me to face an interesting philosophical conundrum. The Order includes, as I have said before, both atheistic Luciferians and more spiritual, Theistic Luciferians. They take a very hard stance against the dissolution of the self, and that individuality and self-hood should be protected at any cost. They view the Christian doctrine of turning one's will over to God and entering an afterlife spent in devotion to that God as spiritual dissolution. The atheists want control over their selves and individuality while in this life and don't pay much heed to any life after. The theists want their spiritual life to extend their earthly individuality into whatever lies beyond. They want to maintain their uniqueness and personal paths.

The quandary for me is that I have speculated and put forth many opinions and educated guesses that we are all dissolved into the Void after this life. Is this the same as being dissolved into God? Does a reflecting pool of consciousness, when absorbed into an ocean, still retain any iota of individuality? If I keep to the atheistic principle, that of maintaining total individuality in this life, then it doesn't matter much what I think if I believe this little thing we call consciousness becomes absorbed into an eternal void and vanishes. But if I take a spiritual view... a theistic view... it matters a great deal. I have permitted myself to think that the Void contains a kind of mystical consciousness. Perhaps the reflecting pool dissolved in the ocean remembers and can still reflect the images it reflected before being swallowed by the ocean. Perhaps through strength of will and the proper meditative and magical practices, some notion of self survives outside the Void. In this case, my interpretation of the Void as Satan would be wrong. The Void would be God, who calls unto Himself an endless multitude of souls that are created in His image and gives them an eternity to worship Him. That, to me, would be a Void.

Perhaps I will find the answers to my questions in further meditation and ritual practice. I do not claim to have achieved the highest possible consciousness available to humanity. There is much that remains a mystery to me. All I offer are ideas and those ideas change as I discover new parts of myself and stumble upon new ideas. To want this self, this being I am, to survive death and not be dissolved in either a Void or a Divine Rapture, but to think and feel and act completely independently requires a great deal of self-love, something I have never been very good at. It requires wanting this being I am to survive into unforeseeable ages into the future. Perhaps my practices will bring me to the point of this self-love, where, seeing myself as the only God, I will wish to reign over my own personal Heavens and Hells for as long as time allows. It is an intriguing prospect. I must first conquer my depression and anxiety and my "Worship of Death" I wrote about in an earlier post. I must learn to love not just life... but life as me. And want that existence to go on and on. The journey continues and no one knows where it may lead.

Invocation Of Ahriman For Assistance of Az/Jeh/Lilith

Today, I meditated. As I have for the past few nights, I meditated on Set. The original Adversary. I am drawn to his story and his modification from great beloved God to Demon. It seems the God or Gods of an old religion invariably become the Devils and Demons of a new religion. Set took rather well to his role as Adversary and slew Osiris and battled Horus. My meditations have been quests for the rebellious and strong spirit inside, the self within me that can conquer all obstacles, pass any test the Adversary may put to me. I do not feel like I am that person yet, but I am striving for it.

In light of this, what I did after my meditation makes sense. In some strands of Persian Zoroastrianism, Ahriman, their Adversary, suffers a defeat at the hands of the God of "Goodness." He hides in darkness for 3000 years. Nothing his demons tell him can rouse him to action. Until Jeh, identified with Az and Lilith in Luciferian circles, promises him to spawn demons that will destroy the forces of Ahriman's foe. Ahriman rises from his deep despair and kisses Jeh, causing her to menstruate. This is apparently a "curse" that is invented at this point in time, although it is obviously the result of the theology of men who were terrified of women and their natural cycles.

I invoked Ahriman in the darkness, lit by one candle. In the Luciferian way, I invoked him as a part of myself, despite the fact that I believe the Adversary is a real spiritual force. I requested from this inner Ahriman that he send me a Jeh/Az/Lilith to awaken me and my strength and free me from the chains of depression and anxiety I have been held in so long. I felt stronger during the ritual and the rest of the night. I feel I will have to repeat this ritual, with greater and greater intensity, until I finally receive from within myself the gift that I seek. Many people have told me that after all I've gone through, that I am strong. I will admit, I have dealt with things that would break some people. But that's not enough. I don't just want to be strong enough to cope with difficulty. I want to be strong enough to forge my own fate, no matter what stands in my way. This ritual is my attempt to do just that. To awaken the Adversarial Light within myself in such a brilliant blaze, it burns away the darkness of crushed hopes and dead dreams. I will rise again from the darkness. I will wage my battle against the Sheep Gods and the forces aligned against me. I will become my true self. I will conquer and control both the light and the darkness within and be master of my domain, which is my mind and soul.

Depression, Not As Sorrow Or Sadness, But As Despair

There seem to be many grades of what people like to call depression. Some people think it's just "the blues," a kind of down feeling, maybe makes you drink a bit too much or have trouble sleeping. Then there's the gloom of deep sorrow and sadness. Staring out windows. No energy. Physical pain. No joy in things that once used to be perceived as delightful. But there is a deeper level. There is a level of depression that confines you to your own personal Hell. It is the depression of absolute, monstrous despair.

Some theologians call despair the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit. As if it were a choice. Despair is not a choice, it is a disease of the soul that no amount of prayer or kind words can heal. Some would say that despair is the opposite of hope. That is like saying a lion is the opposite of a zebra. Despair does not show up at the far pole of hope. Despair consumes hope. Rends it, tears it, rips bloody chunks from it. If one has not experienced despair, one cannot fathom despair. Despair even sometimes permits you some glimmer of hope just for the sake of snuffing it out. Despair is a disease with a thought process, a plan. Despair works tirelessly to wear you down and swallow the occasional flickers of hope that may alight. Hope is despair's food. When you have the disease, it is like a cancer and hope is like the healthy cells that get taken over. Despair's plan is one of ultimate self-destruction, for despair intends to destroy the being that carries it, thus wiping itself out.

To all the people who think despair is a sin, a failing, try to imagine how it feels like to be told you are loved and for the words to be swallowed up by an internal darkness that is beyond your control. Try to imagine what it is like to never know if you will be able to make it through the next day, hour, minute. Try to imagine that if you believe in any kind of Hell, that you think it would be preferable to the existence you have now. Try to imagine. But you've never experienced it. So you can't imagine it. You can only judge. Judging from beyond the reach of despair. This is where depression finds its purest expression. In the sin of cutting oneself from all imaginary help from beings divine and mortal; cutting oneself off against one's will, simply because one has had all that is good inside them served up as a feast for the beast despair.

If you either think you understand or think you are in a place to judge, think again. You do not understand, you are not in a place to judge. When all hope is gone and a person is simply waiting to die, beyond even praying for death, beyond even being able to bring about their own death, that is the Hell you seek in your lakes of fire and canonical texts. Despair is nearly the ultimate self-destruction. The only thing that subverts its plan is when the slightest hope that one would be better off dead arises and there is a suicide and the person and their disease both perish. Judge that only when you can say you have stared it in the face.

One Nihilist's Take On "The Meaning Of Life"

As most of my readers know, I suffer from severe depression. I frequently have thoughts of suicide. Dealing with thoughts of suicide, even if you don't plan on acting upon them, you just simply have the thoughts in your head, sort of inevitably forces you to ponder whether there's any meaning or purpose or point to life. It is the core question one faces. If a profoundly nihilistic individual was faced with thoughts of suicide and came to the conclusion that there was absolutely no hope of any meaning, there might very well be one less person walking around. But suicidally depressed people carry on all the time, as do nihilists, living life while in the midst of doubting that it is worth anything.

I was contemplating suicide, not actually doing it but having rather obsessive thoughts about it, last night. I came to the conclusion that I couldn't go through with it. This conclusion did not come from a fear of death. It did not come from concern over what it might do to those who love me. It arose, in the most bizarre fashion, from the fact that I simply felt I had to know what was going to happen in the future in Doctor Who. Yes. A nerdy sci-fi show is keeping me from ending it all. Trivial? Perhaps. But it points to something larger. Life has any meaning that you give it. The ultimate question of existence, "What is the meaning of life?" can be summed up quite simply as, "Whatever you find the meaning in." This accounts for the wide range of religions and politics and subcultures and national identities and people with mundane, hateful jobs that they go to day after day dreading. It accounts for every single person who has ever lived or ever will live. Even the suicide finds some glimmer of meaning in death. We don't have to examine the cosmos or 1000 page philosophical or theological tomes to discover the meaning of life. We just have to look at ourselves and our thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Those are the meaning of life for us.

The meaning of life is as unique and individual as a fingerprint. No two are exactly alike. And the meaning of life is not always something positive either. Since he's in the news so much lately, take Bin Laden as an example. His life had a meaning. It was a meaning that made it a good call on our part to kill him. But it was still a meaning. He believed in it. Other people's meanings were to cut short his meaning. They did so. And on it goes. One person's meaning may conflict with another person's. My meaning would conflict with someone's who was trying to convert me to be a Southern Baptist. But there are parts of my meaning that make it possible for me to be friends with people who are Southern Baptist and parts of their meaning allowing them to be friends with me.

Saying life has a meaning is not necessarily anti-nihilist. As a matter of fact, it is profoundly nihilist when one considers the fact that I consider the meaning of life to be an arbitrary conglomeration of loves and hates, pleasures and aversions, joys and sufferings in a person's life. It is outside the bounds of almost every orthodox religion and also beyond pure solipsism to say that we are the meaning of our lives. Religion would have it that some other being or beings are the meaning. Solipsism would lock that meaning up inside the individual's head. For me, my devotion to seeing more Doctor Who was an acknowledgement that there was something outside myself that had meaning. But that meaning belongs to me. So it is neither solipsistic or transcendent. For some people, God is the meaning of their life. This seems to make the meaning something transcendent. But really, the meaning for them is in the immanence. The relationship they cultivate with God. The mind can't grasp something eternally transcendent and beyond all human notions of being. So it relies instead of following a given deity's laws or prayer or worship. The meaning is still within the person. If it were an absolute meaning, everyone would find their meaning in that. But as I stated before, to a suicide, death can be a meaning. We may not agree with everyone's chosen meaning(s) but we should at least try to understand that for that individual, no matter how dreadful their actions may be, that person they are is the meaning of their life. It can be a terrible thing, this meaning of life. It can also be glorious. It can also be a nerdy sci-fi show. It is complex and ever changing. But it is our own, each of us owns our own meaning. Even if your meaning is like my nihilistic, severely depressed meaning, you will save yourself a lot of grief wondering "Why?" if you just embrace your meaning of life as simply the person you are.

The Worship of Death

I live with Death. The eventual death of my friends and family. The death of those I have personally lost over the years. The death of every person I hear about who has passed. My own death. We all live with Death. However, I am obsessed with Death. In a very unhealthy way, I think. And I have been for most of my life. There is a Cathedral of Death in my heart and mind. Perpetual adoration and perpetual terror. I fear it in the way a Christian fears God, as the ultimate mystery and judge of our lives. I worship it in the same way, as the ultimate goal of life. I love my friends and family, I love my pets, I love Freya and my conception of the Void. But I prostrate myself before and pray to Death.

For most of the years that I can remember, I've felt at least a hint of being suicidal. Since I was quite young. Even before thoughts of taking my own life appeared, there was a longing for and a fear of Death. I've believed in many religions; I was brought up Catholic and have explored other kinds of Christianity as well as Buddhism, various pagan and heathen faiths, Hinduism, Theistic and Non-Theistic Satanism, the list goes on and on. The one constant was my intense fascination with and terror of and desire for Death. My denial of Life. Even at my most heathen, a very life-affirming religion that teaches you should enjoy and make the most of this life while you've got it and not live for the hereafter, I have pined for Death and something other than this existence, this life. Life is the Enemy, the source of all suffering, the one thing that must be rejected over and over again until finally it is gone. Where some see God (or Gods or Goddesses) I see Death. It intrigues me, because a big part of me thinks I will be gone after this life and, like most of us, I have a hard time imagining this universe without me in it. We can be so egocentric. It tempts me, because I hate the alternative. The parts of me that do believe in some kind of afterlife yearn for it. It is always there in my mind.

I honestly do not know what other people's experiences of Death are. Knowing they will die. Knowing everyone they love is either dead or will die. It is not something one can easily bring up in casual conversation. If there is an animal on this planet other than humanity that knows beforehand of Death, I would be interested to know what that creature's thoughts about it were. Is it possible there is a creature out there that understands Death's nature better than we do? I've seen footage of elephants doing something that absolutely looked to be some kind of funeral service for one of their fallen brethren. Do they know something we do not? We may never know.

If my fears, hopes, worries, neuroses, psychoses, what have you, are correct that we all just blink out, I can't help but ponder what non-existence is like. It scares me but it is also so alluring. If I look back to my earliest memory and then push my mind farther back than that, there is a comforting nothingness, that lack of Being, lack of Life, that I so crave. I can almost feel what it must be like to not exist. It is dreadful and yet seductive. If I imagine a life after this, I can't help but think it must be better. When you've experienced really bad and know of much worse, it's hard to imagine some other life offering up greater torments than this one. Certainly no visions of Hell are enough to make me walk the path of the people of God,  affirming Life in words while denying it in secret, living not for Life but for Heaven. The possibility of a paradise after this existence, in the bosom of Freya perhaps, is enough to make me celebrate and leap for joy and run to throw myself off the nearest cliff. The pinnacle of despair would be reached if I found out absolutely that reincarnation was true. This life again and again. No! It must not be. I would live to keep killing myself over and over again, down the eons, until my spirit and consciousness had exhausted every possibility for life and just collapsed from exhaustion into extinction. Give me my awful but lovely Mistress, Death. I keep teaming up adjectives in this post because my thoughts on Death are so opposed but complimentary. I can't seem to have one thought about Death without a bunch of other thoughts popping up too.

I'm sure the people who know me and are reading this are, by now, concerned that I will do myself in, possibly before I reach the conclusion of this blog post. Well, I have doubts it'll happen that soon. Because there is just enough fear of Death in me and because I have promised those I love to fight at all costs, I will most likely survive to see another day.  But my prayers to Death, those will continue. Services in my Cathedral will go on.

I think of how no matter how divided humanity is, we are all joined in this one thing, this thing that we all must experience someday, even if there is no "we" left at that moment any longer. We share Death with each other and yet it is so often unspoken. While my mania for Death is probably quite sick, I do not think it is any sicker than those who would do everything they can in order to hide Death away and pretend it doesn't exist. It is our common bond, the final journey we all must take. In my faith, this is celebrated, for it is the only way we can achieve any kind of unity. Whether we go away for good or pass into some glorious other world, we all will find that we are on the same road. The road to Death, always thick with traffic, enshrouded in mystery, a promise and a threat at the end of it all. Live if you must but die you will. Death - the perfect ending, no matter what your life may have been.

R.I.P. Sarah Jane/Elisabeth Sladen

I found out today that the actress who played Sarah Jane, one of the greatest Doctor Who companions ever, died earlier from cancer. Elisabeth Sladen was my first ever nerd crush and I have wonderful memories over her dating back over 25 years. She was my first Doctor companion I ever saw. I'm heartbroken. At times like this, I find myself wishing I believed in something substantial after this life. I hate thinking of her basically just blinking out. But she will be remembered by many. I will miss you, Sarah Jane, I will miss you and your nutty adventures with all manner of nasty alien beings. You brought me great joy as a child and now great sorrow as an adult. It was all worth it, though. You are cherished in my memories.

On Dealing with the Suicide of a Loved One

This is going to be my most personal entry thus far. As some of you already know, I lost my girlfriend of almost five years to suicide in June of 2007. It has been no easy feat to regain any of the emotional ground I lost when that happened, there's still a lot of work to be done. I grieve every day, even though I have a beautiful fiancee who is firmly on my side. Thankfully, she does not feel threatened by Janine's ghost and, when I am troubled by thoughts of her, I can easily speak to Coco and she will understand. I need to do this on a fairly regular basis.

My first thoughts when I heard the news were simultaneously, "This can't be happening," and "Oh, my God, I knew this would happen." I think the cognitive dissonance with those two thoughts clashing added to the feeling of unreality that many people experience when they lose someone close to them. I was shocked, horrified, heartbroken, but not surprised. We had often in our years together discussed our mutual suicidal tendencies. If I'd really been courageous enough to think about it, I might have suspected from the beginning that it would end that way. She'd attempted multiple times before she'd met me. But, in the dopey way that love has, I figured somehow I could save her. Now, I am haunted by the fear that somehow, in some way, I might have contributed to her end.

When we got to Philadelphia for her memorial service, I was deeply moved by the anguish in the faces of her family. It mirrored what I felt inside but I don't know if they could read it in me. I tend to hide my emotions when they are that extreme. I came away with the conclusion that, despite my suicide attempt on the night of my 19th birthday, despite the fact that I'd always predicted that I would someday die by my own hands, despite my harrowing depressive bouts, that I could never do that to those I loved. I was not angry at her. Never have been. I understood all too well the pain that drove her that far. But I promised myself that I'd never hurt the people I cared about in that way, abandon them with all that agony.

But, something strange happens when people who have dealt with suicidal thoughts and feelings are confronted with the suicide of someone they love. And I've actually read about this in a book, so I know I'm not the only one this has happened to. Knowing someone who went through with it can make it seem like you now have permission to do it, it legitimizes the act. You feel that if they could do it, so can you. I began to forget my vow. Suicidal thoughts started creeping in again. Before I met Coco, I strongly considered doing whatever it took to rejoin Janine.

So, I find myself on the horns of a dilemma. I made a vow never to do that to people I care about, and yet, the pain I find in living has never gone away. I feel it just as acutely as I did before, perhaps even more so. The thoughts are my constant companions. I contemplate my own demise at length. I sometimes find myself hoping to be diagnosed with a terminal illness so that would take the responsibility out of my hands. Some people say it's the easy way out. But anyone who has lived with severe depression knows there's no easy ways at all. Nothing is easy. The decision to end one's life is not something people do because they think it's the easy way out, they do it because they feel it's the only way. All other options have vanished. Hope has miscarried and been buried in a shallow grave. You find yourself at the point of ground zero of your own destruction coming down from the sky. It's never the easy way out.

I am so sad that Janine is gone. I wish her pain could have been relieved in some other way. That said, I am glad she is no longer experiencing that pain. She did the only thing she thought she could have done. I will never stop hurting from that but I have made a certain amount of peace with the fact that she made her mind up, planned it all out thoroughly, and did what she did because her mental illness closed every single other door on her, as far as she could see from her perspective. I support the right, yes, the right, of any human being to terminate their own life at any time. Only they can say if their pain is too much to bear. I hope it never happens to me again but, if it did, I would mourn dreadfully again and I would understand again. Anyone reading this who knows me personally, you know I fight. You know I do everything in my power to keep the demons at bay. But I was rash when I made my vow. I can't predict my future. I don't know where the torment will take me. I can't promise it will never be me. But, I can say this: every single day I have managed to scrape through in my life has been because of the love of my family and friends. So, I will continue to fight. I won't give in easily. But, if I ever do find myself washed away by the despair, know that I only lived as long as I did because you all loved me and I loved you.

Proof That I Am Not Living The Void

In my post on the Void of my Mystical Nihilism, I pointed out that this Void exists within all of us. However, it is usually not the dominant aspect of our beings. Thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, everything from bliss to suffering to boredom and sleep lies in a non-Void realm. A person who had truly realized the Void could do one of two things: become the next Buddha, sit in silence, live in inner solitude, perhaps teach others how to quiet the tempest within themselves. Or, he could take a gun, place it in his mouth, and pull the trigger, without even sparing a moment to bid the world farewell. I sense the Void in me... but I am not myself Void.

Every day proves that to me. Today for example. I had an extremely stressful experience. It caused a great deal of anxiety and sparked some suicidal thoughts. I don't have a gun, but I could have gone out and laid down on the train tracks. I didn't. I agonized. And then I read and listened to music and had fleeting moments of a glorious feeling of kinship with the authors and musicians. The Void is kin to nothing. Kin implies both similarity and difference as well as separation. The Void is one, indivisible, like nothing but itself and different from everything that is not Void, yet the basis for all of it.

The extremes of human emotion are the most human emotions of all and they can give us glimpses of the Void, the most human state there is, since it is the one we will all eventually return to. But they are not the Void. They are like the viewing binoculars on a scenic outlook that lets you see the sites more closely. You can see the contours of the Void but you are not within it entirely.

The extremes of human emotion paralyze the meandering, mundane mind. Utter ecstasy and utter despair are both states of complete freedom from all that makes us less than sovereign beings. I am borrowing a little bit from Georges Bataille here. But the simple joys and agonies of daily life is a challenge existence.... those just mire us in the bland states of hope and faith and worry and sorrow. The images that dance on the reflective surface of the Void without even realizing it.

These smudges hovering near the Void do not contaminate it, nothing of our material world can actually touch  it. But they distract us. And I have proven myself as distracted as anyone else, despite my passion for submerging myself one day in the Void. I flit here, flit there, sometimes with a great deal of intensity, sometimes with a dreary, drowsy laziness. If I were to attempt to walk away to spend my life in contemplation or else put a gun in my mouth and achieve the only possible Oneness, either way, I'd be saying goodbye the entire time. My bird, my fiancee, my father, my brother, my friends, my books and CDs and DVDs, even the jottings in this blog. I could do neither without a long, aching look behind me. And it is very probable that I could not do either at all. So, I am left with a question, a question only I can answer. Do I devote myself with a rapacious thirst to achieve the Void I preach or do I accept the fact that, until I finally pass from this world, I am a broken, incomplete man? I take comfort in knowing I must have reached the scenic outlooks onto the Void a number of times, lived to the extremes a number of times, just to be asking myself this question. It is my solace.