Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Nothing convinces me of the utter lack of divinity quite like the excruciating pain of this existence. Pleasure is evanescent, satisfaction is a mirage, and one never fully knows what is needed for completion or contentment. What kind of god creates something in this state, with this incapability for balance? (I'll save the divine diatribe/dialogue/debate for another musing. It's vitriolic, trust me.)
Granted, my family tree is riddled with addictions, suicides, and just overall bent behaviour. So maybe I'm just genetically predisposed to a flawed existence, and I should just shut up and sit down.
Mostly, I think I never stood a chance at being "normal" (whatever "normal" is), and I'm not sure that ultimately that's my purpose on this planet anyway. (Yes, yes, despite my disbelief in Divine Providence, I DO think that I might serve a purpose while here.) Perhaps I'm just one of those tortured souls that's always ahead of the conventional curve: think Galileo, Davinci, Victoria Woodhull, think anyone who was miserable and/or maligned while alive because they didn't think or act like the rest of the population but were later respected after death for their contributions and insights. In their current time, though, they were reviled, suspect, or ostracized.
Newsweek had a great article recently (http://www.newsweek.com/id/107569) about why happiness and contentment don't necessarily exist for folks of a certain programming. It alleviated some angst I feel about "what's wrong with me;" I constantly rail at the status quo, constantly instigate change, constantly question and agitate myself and apparently anyone within a 50-mile radius of me. This is all common behaviour in change agents, who all have fairly lonely existences, and while the article helped quiet some existential angst for me, it did nothing to help me expunge any of the tempest within.
Of the many abuses humans can visit upon themselves, one of the few I understand is cutting. I understand feeling driven to let something buried deeply within OUT. While I recognize the mental state that often drives this behaviour is self-loathing, what might drive it in me is feeling like someone else is inside my skin, with alien plans and nefarious yearnings. I identify with feeling like the only way to free myself from the inner demon is to open my veins and let it spill onto the ground.
I ask "Why?" alot. We don't do that enough, us fancy humans with the Big Brains and the Ability to Reason. We seem to operate by habit like the gekko or the slug do by instinct -- by rote -- and that seems such a waste. We rarely say, "Why do I feel this way? Why do I act that way? Why, why, why?" We lose that questioning ability early on, when we collectively drum it right out of the kids with lame answers like "Just because," and "Because I said so."
I ask "Why?" all the time, and on little issues, I get some clarity and move on. But on the big stuff? The life-altering, fundamentally shattering "Why's" more often than not don't get any answers. I get silence as a response. Occasionally I hear my inner voice reply, "Just because," and then shrug, and it makes me want to pick up that knife and feed the ground with my hot, restless blood.
In true, tortured fashion, lately the one thing I want more than anything, to initiate a meaningful discussion about the volatility of imagining "what might have been's" -- to DISCUSS my latest why-why-why with another person -- this conversation and any actions resulting from that exchange are denied.
So I'm left with my lesson from today's torture, which is the same lesson I get too often: that I bear my burden alone, in silence and confusion. There will be no relief or respite, there will only be more unanswered questions tomorrow.
And if that is to be my legacy after I'm gone? Fine. Let the cutting commence.