| I think it happened when I was 14.That was when I stopped being afraid of my father, and started being afraid of becoming him.?That was when I first really understood that my father wasn't a monster, he was insane.?In a strangely Banner-like way, my father had a monster inside him.?He always had.?It was Vietnam, not gamma radiation, that had set the monster loose, but the potential for it had always been lurking, just beneath the surface.I see that potential in myself, from time to time.?Little signs and indicators of fragments of his madness, passed on to me along with his intelligence and curiosity, tied into my genes as surely as my mother's eyes and nose.?Insomnia, mood swings, obsessive compulsion - all meted out in smaller scale, lesser severity; diluted by genetic recombination and suppressed by sheer terror, but still there.Acting in ways that make no sense to others, performing pointless rituals, and observing self-invented rules with a fervor that would embarrass 12th-Century Christians; believing that mirrors unleash horrors from beyond the known universe when no light falls upon them; not going to work at all because you're terrified of what your boss will say if you come in late (when in truth he won't care much at all) - these things are each their own special form of madness.But the worst of it all is being aware - painfully, hopelessly aware - that the things you're doing, the things you're thinking, the fears that eat at you, are all nonsense.?Mirrors remain sheets of glass backed by metal, even when deprived of their light-reflecting function - they do not cease to exist.?Not calling work to say you're running late only makes things worse on yourself.?Failing to place an equal number of steps on each section of concrete on the sidewalk will not cause... whatever it is.And you tell yourself that, and you remind yourself of it, and you berate yourself for the behavior, and you keep on doing it anyway.?That is what makes madness painful and sad - the awareness of it.?The blissfully unaware are not mad, they are simply living in another world.?I am caught between the two forms of existence, and am sometimes torn asunder by them.I am incapable of living wholly in the world of the sane - my father, all unknowing at the time, saw to that - but neither am I willing to cross the threshold, to crawl through a mirror in the dark into the land of the fully mad.?I am unwilling because I fear my doppelgnger, the monster that would take my place in this world.I fear what it would do in my place.?I have seen such a monster, and they do not belong here.So what are my options??Therapy only works insofar as I allow it to, only as much as I am honest with my therapist and with myself, and that's one of the senseless rules: Lie.?Deceive.?Trick.?Make others believe the Untrue.?I don't do it all the time; I am not a pathological liar.?(Of course, I am sure that many pathological liars would make the same claim, if the question were put to them, so take that for what you will.)?But I do experience a perverse joy in minute, pointless deception.?I do not know why.?I just know that it hinders psychologists from helping me.Medication, then??I look to my father for example, and shudder.?His once near-genius mind is dulled.?New ideas are hard for him to grasp.?His learning is no longer hindered only by how fast he can read.?Worst of all, I see in his eyes the awful knowledge of what he has lost.?I see that he weighs it against the explosive violence that once ruled his existence, that terrified his children and drove them away, and that he feels the cost is worth the benefit.But I also see that the monster is still behind those eyes.?It is not banished, merely bound, constrained.My monster is not as powerful as his, my madness not as deep.?It would probably take less medicine to keep mine at bay, and so take less of a toll.?But what cost impregnable armor against an implacable foe??What would I have to give up to cage my demons, but still to feel them lurking inside me?My outlets: creation and destruction.?Creation; writing, crafting prose and song, none of these enjoyed by any beyond a few - less than a handful of select, close friends.?And even they see only a scrap.?But it's all scraps, really, all left unfinished, undone by the lack of urgency; with no one to read, there is no reason to finish.Destruction; readiness and action therein.?Readiness, the study of martial arts, collection of weapons, both hindered by a derth of time and money.?Action, the taking and breaking of a fellow human, a willing receptacle for my pain and chaos, exacted upon them with meticulous control.?The opportunities for that are far too few and far between, and I doubt I'll find as a subject capable of granting me ongoing fulfillment that way, not in this world and lifetime.?And I believe that's for the best.I lack in drive and purpose, so I find them both in the steps between cracks in the sidewalk, in the space between the tines of each fork, and in the moments between the flash of lightning and thunder's answering call.?Marco, Polo, a blind search for purpose in the storm.I look in the mirror and ask, what's my motivation? |
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