Here Again, on the Cycle of Suffering
on the Cycle of Suffering
It’s been my reality before, and here I am now on the cycle of suffering: numb, detached, overburdened.
Most of my lines of intimacy have been severed. I’m posturing to give away everything I own. And when I look out through this set of eyes, there is nothing in the world compelling enough to keep on. Each day I dread the transition out of sleep. I rue my commitments to my stamina-breaking job, but am grateful it gets me out of the house. Still, I sign my emails with “Keep smiling”… and promptly feel like a fraud.
As I read through old letters and diary entries, and rifle through a catalogue of memories, I’m struck by the consistency of suffering. I’m constantly immersing myself in talks and teachings which address the struggles of human existence. Buddhism even names suffering as a truth inherent to our existence.
Because we live in a dualistic plane, where each condition has a counterpart (e.g. light and dark, night and day), there is hope for transcendence beyond suffering. It takes courage, perseverance, surrender, will, compassion, and a whole lot of heart, but transformation is possible. I’ve been there before.
Yet here we are again. Conceptually in-tune, and holistically out of reach.
Burdens of Being
I stared up at the clouds this afternoon, watching the world turn in its kaleidoscopic way. One of the clouds appeared to be a child with a whorl of magic in her hands.
It was charming until I noticed the massive wrecking ball chained to her back. How quickly she would tire, I thought, dragging around a burden like that.
For several decades, this has been my existence. Like shape-shifting ghouls, the stressors change form; they do not always appear as a wrecking ball, and early on I was taught not to believe in magic.
Many homes have welcomed and pardoned me. Relationships have coiled around my chest until I can’t breathe, and in cutting myself loose I’ve lost almost every tie that once held pieces of me together. Jobs have come and gone with the roughness of the tides. My clothing has changed colors, radio has played new rhythms, and sneakers have trodden thousands of different landscapes and miles.
And when I stare these blue eyes in the mirror, I’m left asking the same question I started asking about 20 years ago.
Why, why, why?
Dealing with Pain… By Inflicting More Pain
For a while I dealt with my inner turmoil by seeking outward manifestations of pain. That’s why I wasn’t bothered by a knee-scrape after a fall: the cut, and eventually the scab, would hurt. Which was a very convenient cover for the pain gnawing at me from the inside.
This pain was not always accidental. In fact, when I started taking matters into my own hands, I began to feel more alive.
Following suit from the things I heard from peers and family members, I wrote mental scripts to keep myself entangled in negativity. Sticks and stones never broke my bones, but those words were microblades for the mind. Swirling around both day and night, with those words I struggled to sleep, and struggled even more to show up to life.
But those words became my beliefs, and manifested in time. As the world got larger around me, I shrank myself in body, will, and mind, petrified by the things it had done to me, no longer compelled to go outside. When I truly gave it attention, I could feel a caged tiger pacing within me: frustrated, defeated, alone.
Before it could bare its teeth at me, I would panic and cower and hide.
From Pain to Numbness
Eventually physical pain lost its potency, so I leaned into numbness. Whatever last scraps of control I could find, I greedily snatched and claimed them. I took the throne of this body and decided, “That’s it. This is mine.”
Down to skeletal bones I’ve dwindled, many and many a time. My hair has become so fragile and prone to falling out in clumps that I’ve shaved my head twice. Vital processes have gone missing, and when they return, they’re symptomatic of the distrust I’ve grown to have for the world. And the heart, despite its inspiring tenacity, has slowed to a saunter.
The more control I’ve duped myself into thinking I have, the worse and worse it’s become.
And this is where in slinks apathy, the devilish and deteriorating fiend. It’s apathy which always becomes my bind, the darkness through which I can no longer see.
In that darkness—the utter numbness and solitude—there is a foreboding sense of calm. Of resolute strength.
I know this calmness well; it is not one to savor. For it is this calm that celebrates isolation. Sabotages one’s energy. Mutes hope. Accepts forfeiture.
Yes… much as I ache to admit it, I’ve been here before.
Tonight’s Closure-less Cycle
Where to from here, dear reader? That, I do not know. But it seems that if we’re trapped in a cycle, then out of it we must grow. Otherwise, like a broken washing machine, we might just go… and go… and go.
This is a much more personal discourse than usual; so personal that it may merit its own category. Publishing it will be both cathartic and empty (and borderline absurd). If it had been delivered as a talk, for instance, the one or two patrons in the audience might raise their glass in solidarity, then leave so they don’t have to watch me sweep my heart off the floor.
The world turns. Scenes change. We move on. Maybe we’ll meet again, maybe we won’t. But until we learn what our existence is continually presenting to us, and why, we may have to keep revisiting the same pain.
Pain takes new forms and wears different names, but it’s up to us to endure it. To nurture it. To love it. And to give life to that love, there’s not one single way.
It’s unsatisfying to admit, but I have no goalpost to point my fellow sufferers to, no guiding star in the night sky. For now it’s enough to put words into the ether, trusting against pessimism that there’s a reason they chose today to leap from my brain and onto the page.
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