Rumble Strips

I am reminded that there is a duality to life. An inherent dichotomy to our nature. Two sides to the same coin. Darkness and light. We are conflicted. A constant disagreement shuffling around in a state of confused bickering. Yet we’re sold a pup and made to believe that we are one. Coherent. Together. A single being. We are given a name for this singularity of ours. A cursory label. Those around us use that label and we all think that is who we are. I am Adam, named after the first of my kind. A good, strong name. Pure. Steadfast.

I have never felt lesser than I am right now. I am not that name. I have none of those qualities. I am a thousand discordant pieces. Shattered and chaotic. A jigsaw puzzle with no coherence of image to help me bring the pieces together in any useful let alone meaningful way. 

I’m not Adam anymore. If I ever was. Instead, I am pain.

But even in the oceans of trauma I am suspended in, I know that this is not me either. I am lost and the better part of me, the better parts of me. The pieces which have retained meaning and hope. They need me to pull myself together and move away from this place of dark and hungry loss. 

I tell myself that I am too scared to attend to that need. I am besieged with foul thoughts that undo me all the more. And I will not admit my fear. I tell myself that I cannot give voice to my terror. That to name my fear will be to call it forth. To say its name will be to give it dominion over me and invite it to consume me piece by shattered piece. And it already hurts too much. Pain beyond imagining. Pain beyond bearing. I hurt all the more for my weakness and lethargy. Reality swims around me. Stalks me. Taunts me with its presence. It will not leave me be. It’s dead eyes are hungry for my bleeding carcass. This is a waiting game that I can only lose. Reality won’t crash my pain party. It has no inclination to. It doesn’t need to. One way or another, I will eventually crash into it with a crushing force and it will be indifferent to my presence, as it was indifferent to my passive rejection and betrayal.

How did I get here? 

What was my original sin? 

Was I loved too much by a parent and too little by the other?

What was the imbalance that sent me careening off course? One of my trolley wheels digging in and misbehaving as I bent my back and pushed my way through the busy aisles of life. What have I been desperately seeking all my life, whilst running away from at the same time? 

I’d call it love, but I know this to be a travesty. Yet another incendiary lie to pile onto my growing funeral pyre. I wanted it to be love, just as I wanted love. That want was never enough. People spend a lifetime attending church. Saying the prayers. Singing the hymns. Sitting stony faced as they are sermonised to. Yet they are no closer to what love is. Our ears calcify and we become deaf as a defence to the pain of an existence we have chosen over the life that was always meant for us.

Love? God is love. But I don’t know God. And I can’t know Him. He may have made me in His image, but beyond the image, we are alien to each other. He is beyond my limited comprehension. He is infinite and glorious. I am but a burp in the span of time and space. That’s why, after quite a bit of old testament frustration and anger, He realised we were far too simple and finite to understand sufficiently. So he sent Jesus to befriend us and help us understand. Made Himself flesh, so we could relate in the most basic of ways to that which would save and restore us to the state we were originally cast in. 

Degradation is in our very nature. A sorry deterioration that requires saving. We are arrogantly fragile projects, but we don’t put the time and effort into the project of us. Strutting around behind a mask of ego. The best part of us shrinking in shame as we get it more and more wrong and recede from the world in a cocktail of anger, hate, shame and blame.  

Jesus would be my friend. But would I be His? I doubt it. Not now I wouldn’t. In my self-imposed hurt-exile I am a creature of denial. He could walk into my life and I would deny the best thing to ever happen to me. We all make a habit of that betrayal to a point that it comes far too easily to us. We should not have to choose to love. Love should be a natural default. We’re born with the overriding urge to love and we have it nurtured from us along with our innocence and a curiosity which is really a hunger for love, understanding and meaning.

That is the lesson, right there. I am surrounded by lessons. That is all that pain is; truth and meaning. The hurt warns us and teaches us that there is a better way. I am the way. The truth. The life. There is a path that is meant for me. A path steeped in light and bordered by pain. The pain herds the sheep towards the place that is meant for them. I heard a siren call and I strayed. Oh how I strayed! In my ignorance I left the path and the light and I stepped wilfully into the darkness and lost myself.

I feel that this is my destiny. Or one of them at least. If I am a duality, then surely I have two or more destinies? I am imbued with freewill. I have been afforded choice. All that I am and all that I have is conveyed via the choices I make. Even if I tell myself I did not choose, that in itself is a choice, and a choice we make far too often. 

This though is not my destination. I hang suspended in a tortured limbo. I dilly and I dally, but I am aware that this is not where I belong. I am wary of movement though, let alone escape from this purgatory. So very wary. I still want what I deigned to call love. This brand of love I found is sugar sweet on the surface, but poisonous as it finds its way inside of me. It feels so good, right up until it reveals its true nature. And then it is too late. Far too late after all the sleepwalking and pretence and clinging more and more desperately onto the illusion of what could have been.

Do we ever reveal our true nature? We fear our vulnerability and so we retreat into that fear. We hide in plain sight. Dress ourselves up and play a part that we hope will mean we are liked. We try so desperately to fit in by being something that doesn’t fit us.

Am I more me for the fragmentation I am suffering at my own hand? At least there is an honesty here, not only in my state, but also in the fact that no one will want me when I am like this. And so I have a choice. I can create yet another mask. Put a brave face on it all and hope that no one ever sees the mess beyond the facade. Or I can do something about it.

Most will deem the work on their broken state as too hard and too difficult, and they will make of their excuses reasons. They will tell themselves that it hurts to work. Which is to say that it hurts to live. And that it hurts to love.

A life without love is no life at all. Instead it is a falsehood. A shame and blame filled existence. A self-made torture that we were induced to construct by a childhood that failed us. And all the while, we do not see that we are failing to grow up. A seed lives in the darkness and instinctively moves towards the light to become far more than what it ever was. This is what it is to live.

Love does not hurt. Love awakens us to the bad, growthless existence we have indulged ourselves in. The pain we experience is the lies we dressed in being burned from us by the light and truth of love. We fear our nakedness as love shines through all our deceit and denial. We yet again question our worth when our worth was never to be questioned. Our worth is not ours to own. Our worth is the miracle we are gifted with. Our worth is to be witness to the majesty of the universe. Our worth is love.

I am loved and I love. I know this, and yet here I still am. I feel like I am not enough for this life and in that unworthiness I dare to judge love. Stupid, stupid man! Selfish man! Idolator.

I adored her, but I was careful not to put her on a pedestal. If she sat upon a throne, I sat alongside her. The throne a worn and comfortable sofa with no barriers to our connection. A safe place for us to curl up together and share loving moments. We shared something special. She was the one. I was the one. We were one. We were together in that oneness for many a year. There were storms and there was sunshine. We had our fair share of ups and downs. But we were always there for each other. I held her in my arms when life was hard and I held her hand when life was good for us. 

We embraced in every way imaginable. I wanted for nothing. I had what I needed most. One person can be the cornerstone of a life. They can be everything. Home. Family. Life. The reason for being. The motivation to go that last, hard mile. I idolised her. I cherished our life. We were inextricably intertwined and I could not imagine a life or a world without her. 

She was the constant water that carved the stone. I was the conspicuous one. The strength and energy. But she shaped our lives. She decided upon the form of how things were. There was balance. We complimented each other. Everything worked.

Until it stopped working.

Everything changed in a single moment, but I could not tell you which moment it was. As we imploded, so too did our life. My memories were scattered hither and thither, and I did not have the wherewithal to conserve their meaning.

Nothing makes sense anymore. Not unless I use the present moment as a jaundiced filter for all that went before.

But was it always like this?

I have to accept that it is now like this. I can no longer pretend. I can no longer keep up the pretence of a facsimile of a life. I know I am meant to grow through this. There is no other way. I have to return to the path and make sense of myself once more. Embrace the love that I have and return it boldly and fiercely. 

I have to let go in order to make room for the life and better days that await me.

There is no shame here, only guilt. My guilt. I have to take ownership of my actions. I came here of my own volition. No one else is to blame. How can there be? I am alone in the dark. Only I can leave this darkness. And only then, will I see the guiding light of love from those who await me back in a world where I truly belong. 

And yet I still worry away at when it was that she slipped me the blue pill. When did I fall into this waking dream that became a treacherous nightmare? I lament the loss, but most of all, I lament the red pill of pain. That pill does not feel like a choice to me. I know it too well. I know it for what it is. I cannot escape reality and I know that one day, I will be glad that that is the case. That I am sufficiently me, to understand that I have lost my way and must do something about that sordid state of self-imposed affairs. 

I am relinquishing the false safety of my limbo and I am feeling more and more of the pain. I have earned this. I need this. It will hurt all the more as I pass back this way and return to the path that I should never have left. I am learning and I am growing, even as I prune the dead branches from my life and discard them in my darkness. 

Soon, this Winter will pass and I will flower again. Soon, I will feel the rumble strips of pain that mean I am leaving the darkness and I am back in the light. I will savour the sound of those rumble strips and I will mark them well this time. And I will make myself a promise. Never to ignore that feeling of momentary turbulence. To attend to it with all that I am and fully decipher the warning, even as I heed it. 

I have been too long away from where I belong. I long for the feeling of warmth and light upon my face and my natural response to it. To smile and raise my hand to that healing light and watch in wonder and fascination at the interplay of my being with the energy of love. 

Already, I feel the pull of the path and now reality’s eyes enliven, sparkling with a welcoming glow of life. I have been too long in the dark, believing the lies that I was drowning in. She was my dream, but she concealed from me a nightmare that was our undoing.

On the path I will say a prayer for her in the hope that she will hear my words and will one day find her way back to the light, and not only feel true love, but more importantly, live that love with every fibre of her being. And in that prayer, I will give thanks for her and the times we had. The highs and the lows. The impossible dream that she was. She has taught me much and I will never be the same again. For that, I must give thanks. I am learning the lessons. I am dealing with the pain. I am healing at last. And healing old wounds that I have ignored for far, far too long.

And now I am awake.

Fully awake.

And I am free.

Free to choose. 

I love.

I choose love.

I am love. 

It may still hurt. I have a wound that is shaped entirely like her. Even if it the wound heals, I will see her and I will feel her and there will be pain. I will never know the truth of the lies. I will never know whether the hurt that remains is a memory of the pain she willingly bestowed upon me. The loss of a future that she single-handedly took from us both in an instant, and in so doing, stole away all of my dreams of her and for her.

Was she ever real?

I have experienced such overwhelming sadness as I have considered the reality of her. I felt. I felt her love as I rested my head above her heart and heard it speak only for me. I heard the words of her heart, and in return I laid myself bare for her. I opened up. I unfurled in the heat of her love and I gave myself to her.

That I did.

And that is enough.

I did my part. I loved her as best I can. I loved with a gentle ferocity and a constancy which I did not know I was capable of. I kept loving her come what may. I love her still. After all, love is eternal. And it is our salvation.

Maybe one day, in this life or the next, she will choose to come to me. She will choose me, and we will know each other in the way we were always meant to. Then, all my questions will fall away, answered by the simplicity and power of love itself. 

Love is real. 

The path is real.

I am a fantasy trying his best to become something more. Finding meaning in the life ahead of me. And yet I still dare to dream. And my dreams are a quest for more meaning. To be more. To do more. To dare to live. No more blue pills for me. No more forays into a beguiling and uncaring darkness. Eyes wide open. I dared to feel all of that pain in order to be here. Now I know how capable I am. And I want to feel it all in this life of mine. Every single gloriously miraculous moment of it, even the rumble strips beneath my feet as I stray again and again. A gentle warning of the pain of my wilful ignorance. A friendly nudge back towards what counts. 

I give my thanks for the pain and its lessons. I am grateful for it all. I have another chance. I have a choice. I will always have a choice. And I choose love. Above all else. I choose love.