I literally wrote that title up there before I started, like a command. I am in pain, I’m depressed, and suffering, but there’s part of me that wants to document this pain. I believe that in writing through it I can be free of it. And I believe the document will help others move through pain. These words alone, just a couple sentences, already are helping to take the weight off my mind. There’s comfort in knowing that a part of me can sit down and act like a normal human being, a writer, a spiritual writer even. Though the feeling part of me right now is on the brink. My world is awash in grayness. It’s entering the darkest time of year. I feel exhausted at my job. My toddler keeps me up at night. My father’s seclusion makes my heart ache. My bank account hovers at negativity. And these are just details in my life. The real pain that I feel, that is pulsing in my chest, in my head, and deep down in my gut is an inexplicable pain. Words fear this place. It is the pain of true sadness. The sadness of experiences long forgotten I suppose. This is spiritual pain. The pain that is beyond my ego. I am humbled in my explanation of it. Is it the pain of the universe, of God, aching to express itself, to reach out through the imperfections of the human mind? Forgive me my senses, which perceive things disjointedly, which perceives things outside of me as separate from me. I know it is not true. I know that all is God. God is in all people. All events are of God. There is no time but the present. I know these things.
But feeling this truth, believing this, is to stir up the sadness I feel. The sadness of every cell in my body, which came from another cell, that ultimately had to die. I came from my ancestors who ultimately had to die. They too lived with sadness in them, in their cells, in their relationships, in their actions, in their thoughts. When they created me I carried their sadness for them, like a sealed box of contraband, hidden in the hold of the great ship of humanity. When I allow this sadness to come up from within me I am the warrior who is sent below to retrieve the box, to pry open its centuries-glued lid and breathe in the sadness and pain. And all these generations, all these people have come before me and lived their lives and experienced their sadness and failures and shame and destitution and then stowed it away in the hopes that the future generations would take care of it. And here I am. You have chosen me. I accept this. I happen to be quite good with a crow bar. It’s true.
Well, I’ve carried the box up, this black, heavy box. I’ve carried it up all the stairs, tripping and banging my shins. I’ve skinned my knuckles on door-frames. I’ve carried it through the heat of the engine room, scalding steam shooting out of myriad pipes. I am on the deck now. I am weeping. The child in me doesn’t believe it’s fair. Why should I have to carry the box? Why am I alone on this great ship, on this dark sea? How can I pry it open with my bloody fingers only to have the darkness enter me, to kill me? But it is not my choice. It is my destiny. It is my path. God is crying within me to open it. God moves my limbs, pumps my blood, steadies my feeble frame on the rocking ship. I am on my knees. I surrender. I pry the lid a little at a time. The nails screech and cry and I chuckle at the ridiculousness of it all. Like a whacked elbow I chuckle at the pain, at how I’ve gotten here, how I got to the metaphor. I am on a ship out at sea? What is this, a movie? I am an actor, yes. But I stay in character. The lid comes loose, the last rusty nail twisting and snapping. This is it. This is the accumulated contents of my million ancestors’ grief, their wounds which they have passed from ship to ship for thousands of years. People have risked their lives, have died, have killed and loved and lied and fought to protect the contents of this box. But this can’t be it. I’m looking in it. I am breathing it in. I wipe the biting, salty air from my eyes.
The box is empty. Empty space. The wood inside is clean, untouched, fresh. There was never anything in the box. There never will be. The box is in my head. The ship is in my head. The sea is in my head. The journey down to the box and the journey up, this is the long journey from my head to my heart and back. This is the pain. This is the angst and shame and anger and darkness. This is the hatred at the ancestors for their contraband. It’s merely synapses receiving impulses, over-worked, losing touch with the wings of the heart, which never doubts, never complains, never stops offering life to the farthest reaches of the body.
I feel like a fool. I am madder still at their ignorance, at my predicament. Now what do I do? What do I search for? Who do I blame? Who do I fight and fight for? Me. I’m the only one here. I’m the only one on the ship. I’m the only one writing this. I am the contents of the box and the box itself. I am the journey down and the journey up. I am the ocean and the waves and the air and the tears I shed are also biting, salty water; the ocean coming through me, cleansing me, reminding me where I come from, where I am, and where I am going. Stand up boy. Leave the box. Leave the crow bar. Walk to the edge and look out. The storm has cleared. There’s beauty out there. There’s beauty in your eyes. There’s beauty in your cells, there’s beauty in atoms, in between atoms. The beauty is the emptiness. You are not alone in the world, in the universe. The world, alone, is within you. Let it out. Bring it up from the hold. Open it. Breathe it in. Release it. This is your empty breath. This is all you are. So breathe. Right through the pain.
