Beyond the Will of the Soul

Beneath the stains of time, the feelings disappear. You are someone else, I am still right here.

-Nine Inch Nails, Hurt

..Tears from a Stone..

I am out of practice. This is the reality of the situation. I tell myself that I do not want to write because I have nothing left to say, but the constant nagging of thoughts suggests otherwise. Though there be atrophy, there is still will left to flex these emotions.

My father killed himself ten years ago today. Ten years seem so long that it is almost funny. How can someone just disappear for that long? Did he really exist, or was he just some elaborate fantasy? He seems like a fantasy, but perhaps only because my sole interactions with him these days take place in my mind, and in the deep places of my heart, that is, when my heart is unprepared.

I have willed my heart to be stone toward him. It isn’t an issue of malice against my father, but rather an act of survival- I simply cannot spend my days longing to see him. My heart grew a callus through continual thought and emotional stimulation. The callus thickened as the phantom persisted in agitating it. The feeling grew dull as the callus calcified to stone. Ten years of hard labor will turn hands into rock. Likewise, a decade of unrelenting, dissatisfied thoughts and desires turn emotions into brick. The itch cannot be scratched, and so I am done with feeling for him.

But I am not, not really.

Years of clutching a rock in your chest is wearisome, though I will tell you that it is less burdensome than attempting to fill the vacuum this rock entombs. I suppose writing this is an act of survival as well lest this rock in my chest grow to become my tombstone.

This is not fair. I did not ask for this. But that does not really matter. Reality often demonstrates its power over us by pushing aside those things we think unbreakable, including our own sense of justice or equity. So though I acknowledge that this situation is awful and not fair, I do not wish to harp on that. The time for lamenting these particular facts has passed and I have already reflected on them in other essays. This current work is not intended to be a repeat of previous works. There is another topic I wish to explore, though I am unsure of what it is or how to even start upon it. I merely see it from the corner of my mind.

I want to say that I will never forgive my father for killing himself, but I already have and absolutely would do again without question. Besides which I do not really want to say that- I just really want to be able to want that. I suppose that is the stone trying to crush him as it winds up crushing me instead.

I can no longer live with a heart of stone anymore. It will be impossible to love my wife as I should with a heart that can only operate to defend itself by suppressing my feelings. So I have to just deal with this:

Ten years of the lack of you…

The reality of future decades without you…

You will never meet my wife…

You will not attend my wedding…

You will not hold any grandchildren…

This is too much. I need to take a break.

..Mine Shaft..

Feeling for the edges- imaginary fingers tracing out the grooves of an imaginary hole that is sealed by an imaginary rock. Gaining a grip and sighing deeply. Lifting up the stone and peering into the hole. Empty as usual.

Empty, yet present all the same as I climb into the darkness and explore the mine shaft yet again. I explored this darkness for several years searching for answers. I didn’t really find any that satisfied my need to see my dad or to fight my dad or to hug my dad. Back then there was only wisdom to be found. Great, painful chunks of it. And here I am attempting to hoist more of it up.

..The Me in Me..

It has been weeks since I have last written anything, but this has been on my mind near constantly. Just staring into this hole, willing these words to manifest on their own or to have the burden of them go away. Neither option has availed itself so far. So here comes another attempt to manually execute this procedure, though really I am looking for any excuse to step away from the computer.

Sometimes I imagine just staring at you to see if I can remember what you looked like and how you acted. I imagine you staring back at me and I wonder what you would think of what you saw. And sometimes we will say mean things to each other, but then I realize that it’s just me saying mean things to myself in order to make a rift between us.

I cannot cope apparently. And I cannot imagine you saying kind or encouraging things to me. This is not because you were not kind or encouraging- I just cannot cope with those words or actions. I cannot cope with exploring the loss of your love and affection. To no longer have access to your love has been devastating. And I cannot imagine it because it was your unique and personal love. That is something that just cannot be synthesized in memory or imagination, no matter how long or well I knew you. It would involve encapsulating you, and you were just too big to take up permanent residence in my heart or mind.

I miss you and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Denial and silence are a delusion- you seep through any wall I build up. I want to love you, but I feel like I just collect that love in a bucket and pour it onto the ground where all it does is foster weeds.

I suppose that isn’t true, but sometimes it feels like it. I can be as dramatic as you were sometimes.

I feel like a ghost. Not in any sort of spectral or otherworldly way, but in the sense of being unnoticed. Of course, I know that people notice me, but they cannot see me wandering in my own head looking for you. That is what I mean. People see me, but they do not see the me in me. And now this is conflated because is this about my personality, or is this about you? More than likely it is both.

The me in me is at a loss for words. The me in me still misses you desperately and has not been okay just carrying on life without you. This is the me that is still sad about all the unresolved issues that will remain unresolved. This is who is encapsulated within me, not you. The conversations I have with you are really just conversations that I have with myself, or rather the person I remember you to be. In the end it is all still just me. You will never answer me and never comfort me, and that is the hard part about all of this: you did this terrible thing and now it is on me to not just deal with it, but to move past it. And that means moving past myself. Moving past the part of me that is tied up with you.

Is me in me still angry? Sure, sometimes.

Is me in me still sad? Absolutely.

Is me in me noticed? I do not allow him to be.

I do not know what to do about this but walk away for a while. This is not what I imagined.

..Glance..

I’m a keen observer, or rather, I try to be. I notice little things that typically go unseen because of their function. Droplets of water on a cobweb. The fine scales of a dragonfly’s wing. The pattern of sunlight that draws its way across my bedroom ceiling throughout the course of a day. Little things that call no attention to themselves, but just exist as a result of how the world works. And in these observations I attempt to draw greater meanings and motivations.

I apply this same principle with people. Especially with their facial expressions when they think they are unnoticed. People are wonderful when they are in a state of social ambiguity. They are their genuine selves in a system of lives and physics that makes everything seem insignificant except the greater whole of the total’s immensity. To notice a person’s small role in the greater machine is to take note of the craftsmanship of that machine and wonder at its goal. Furthermore, to see the subtleties that undergird that role reveals a person’s humanity. It lets you know that you are not alone in the immensity of this life, and that others are just as important and complex as you are.

I glance at people as they walk by me or wait in line or sip their coffee or take a break on a bench. Where do their eyes wander? Do they connect with mine? Do their lips form a hard line or are they smiling? Are they squinting?

From these details I try to discern what I can about them, or rather, about their experience in that given moment. Are they happy or sad or somewhere between? If I know them, does their expression add a layer of depth to their personhood, given what I know of their current or past circumstances? Are they revealing that they are more than what they let on to the world around them? Yes, undoubtedly, but beyond my ability to interpret. My understanding is finite and localized by the breadth of my limited experience and learning. Besides which, subtle winks, grunts, frowns, and hasty scratches are mere shadows of an individual’s identity. How can they do more than merely hint at what is going on in their owner’s mind?

If you were to glance at me, would you know that these words were stored up in my heart? When I stare at the void in my heart, the image I have to represent the absence of my father, what intentions lay behind it? What does the me in me think and experience? When I stare at the image of the void, or my father, or just myself I perceive my redounding ache for him. More than that I feel the weight caused by his absence. I feel the distance of time that separates me from the reality of being able to interact with him. I feel my mind attempting to create him again and again out of mere memory and failing and knowing it is failing. I feel the dissatisfaction of helplessness in not knowing where these feelings are coming from or what I can do about them.

But what beyond that? Mere shadow, thick as wool yet formless as night.

..Word Anvil..

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate, And though I oft have passed them by, A day will come at last when I, Shall take the hidden paths that run, West of the Moon, East of the Sun. -Tolkien

The thoughts do not make any more sense than previously- they just have words now. It is a great effort to wrench from the coalmine of grief logical materials that can be shaped into somewhat cohesive ideas. And they are weak ideas. My ability to comprehend these thoughts and thereby bend them into rationality is limited, and perhaps useless. These emotions and thoughts do not bend easily on the anvil of intellect, and therefore yield a somewhat weakened and incomplete product. My words will never describe what I feel, only the shadows and refractions thereof. I will only ever understand peripherally, and so will only be able to describe abstractly. I will only ever have a sideways glance at the thing that effects me body and soul. I will only be able to experience it and never able to verbalize the experience, not fully or directly anyway.

I must settle for the periphery. I must settle for never being able to fully understand. I must accept that the full understanding of my thoughts and feelings, though they be mine and though I feel the full brunt of their sway, is not mine to have. They are too great to fully know, at least for now. They are like the winds at sea. They cannot be controlled. They exert their power despite my opinions on their method or timing. All that can be done is to move with them. To maneuver with them so as to guide me rather than let them topple or drown me. So rather than attempting to bend the wind of thought with the iron of intellect, perhaps the better approach is to focus the wind into the sail of the heart till I reach the destination of the will of my soul.

..Will of the Soul..

And this is what I will. What I desire. What I see peripherally and feel fully, but will never experience in reality.

I wish my father knew my wife and I wish he could attend our wedding.

I wish my father knew that he was integral to me becoming friends with my wife, though he had passed on several years before I had even formally met her. I want to imagine his face light up as she and I told him how it was the books he gave me to read as a young adult that became the sort of foundation upon which she and I built a dialogue and eventual friendship. He played matchmaker without even knowing it. She and I love him for that. I wish you knew the love she has for you.

I wish you could meet and know my future father-in-law. He is a wonderful man, and he reminds me so much of you (so much sometimes that it hurts). He loves the same books you did, and has the same depth of thought. He reads as voraciously as you did and can converse on any number of subjects, just like you. I am sad that you will never meet him. Your bond to one another would have surpassed the mere obligation of family ties- you would have been friends. Great friends. You wouldn’t have to be lonely anymore.This, of course, creates a paradox in my mind. You died in your loneliness, and it would have been impossible for him to be friends with you before I even knew his daughter. Herein lies a tangle of thoughts and emotions that I make a note of, acknowledging that they will never be mollified in this life.

I wish I could have seen your life turned around. I wish you could have been happy, and that we could revel in our shared happiness together. I wish I could invite you to my home and I wish I could have meals with you again and I wish I could discuss books and ideas with you again and I wish I could watch stupid movies with you again and quote dumb movie lines with you again. I wish I could look forward to possibly placing grandchild after grandchild into your arms, and say, “See?! Can you believe it?! You were right!” I wish these things could take place in reality, and not just in my imagination. I wish I did not have to suppress these thoughts. I wish they didn’t have the power to overtake me and cast a pall upon reality.

I wish I could tell you sorry, or somehow take away the consequences of your actions. Ten years later and I still feel responsible for what you did. I am so sorry. I know I shouldn’t be, but I am. I wish you could tell me it wasn’t my fault. I wish you could take back your last action and come out of hiding.

Herein reality flexes its dominance in the face of what I deem to be fully just desires. Though I will these things to be, they can never be. This is the will of my soul. This is the empty island the sail of my heart leads me to, and it hurts enough to crawl under a heart of stone.

..Isle of Stone..

Are you proud of me? Are you ashamed of me? Do you care that I still care about you? Do you feel the weight of my sorrow as I feel the weight of your absence?

I will never hear your answers with my waking ears, and the only responses I will ever have will be the ones I conjure on my own in the synthesis of memory and imagination. This is unfulfilling, and so I must cast it aside. It cannot matter what you think of me, not anymore.

I hope you would be proud of me, though.

..To be Heard..

I said earlier that I was talking to myself through all of this, but that is not entirely accurate. Obviously, there is you, the reader, who is receiving these thoughts, though you do so peripherally, and not directly. And this is to be expected and it is proper. All reading is a peripheral viewing of a writer’s thoughts. I acknowledge you from the periphery (that is, I acknowledge that you may exist and that you may be reading this), and I thank you for taking the time, whether you mention to me that you read this or not. Even if you happen to find this 100 or 200 years from now and cannot talk to me because I am long gone, I thank you. Around the invisible and unreachable corner connecting life and death I peek over with this written thought and I thank you. Though we only meet here at the juncture of my written thoughts and your reading eyes, I thank you. And that will have to be enough.

God has also been present. Though much of what I have written comes out as introspection and self-talk, it is not without Him peering in. More than that, I am talking to Him in all of it: like carrying on a conversation with one person within earshot of another. This is me peripherally communicating these issues to the Lord.

Why not directly? Maybe this is as direct as I can be with this subject. Being direct merely retreads old paths, and the thoughts expressed in this reflection could not be addressed by the old hikes. I only understand this so much, and I am limited in my ability to describe it. I am unsure how to even ask for help in it. I am hoping that I am communicating loudly enough for God to perceive that I need help, though I am unsure of what kind. And I believe He understands fully, even though I can only communicate abstractly about this to Him.

Though I will my thoughts to go in a certain direction, it is He that guides me beyond the inevitability of my unfulfilled and never-to-be-met desire to see my father in this life. And while He can understand fully and therefore address the issue perfectly, I continue to only understand peripherally, though I experience fully. The thoughts and feelings I can only loosely grab and make simple sense of, He knows in full. For though I stand peripherally to Him, He dwells fully in me. So my thoughts and feelings become His, and He makes them into more than broken dreams. Though I know them as broken, He has me experience them in their restoration.

No, this does not make any sense to me, but just as the feelings and thoughts of grief are greater than my ability to grasp them, so then must their restoration be. All I know is that I am heard and that I am known. I am known not peripherally, but in full. Though I only understand it dully, I experience it fully, and ever more fully. And that will also have to be enough.

..The Years of Mending..

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. -Psalm 139:6

These are all broken thoughts. The product of my writing is poor compared to the reality of the experience I feel, though I wish them not to be. Herein reality shows me how much I do not and cannot understand, though I think I have a right to.

What will it be like to be fully mended? To fully know and understand. Again, I only comprehend this peripherally. Oddly enough I only feel this peripherally as well. Words fail here. The only way I can think of describing it is like gaining a new ability, but only understanding that after the fact and not by your own doing.

There are aspects of my grief that I no longer endure, but I only found out in retrospect. I did not do anything to fix them, I merely received the repairs. I walked into them as they waited for me to acknowledge and pick them up. The process felt unbearable, but it made me ready to receive the mending. I pointed out the problems, but I did not fix them because I couldn’t. And yet they got fixed. Again, words fail here. I apologize.

I want this process to be over with, but it is ongoing. Each mending seems to be preparing me for the next issue, which will lead to the next mending. It seems there is no shortage of things to be fixed about me, and each fix seems like a minor bit of necessary preparation for the next big operation (which inevitably seems smaller than the one that comes after it).

To what end am I being mended? It is not enough that I get over my father’s death, apparently. That would have been good enough for me, but I only understand peripherally what is actually good. I am changed beyond who I was ten years ago. I did not ask for that, but here we are. I only see dimly the road ahead, but I hope to one day have mended eyes that can see as clear forward as they can reflect backward.

What will there be to see further down the road? Will the vision put to rest and explain the path that grows ever longer behind me? To what end am I being mended?

I daresay that I am being formed to turn the impossible corner, and finally see fully what I now only perceive the edges of. I hope that I am being made fit to jump the wall that divides the knowledge of my father’s continued existence with my inability to be with him in that new existence. I daresay that I am being fit to receive the gift of a seemingly impossible hope. That I am being made for a greater reality.

Dad, you took the shortcut, but I must take the long road. I hope that you are there at the end of it. I hope that my body is formed to overcome corporeality and finally be able to hug you again. That my ears are made to hear you beyond the silence of these intervening years. That new eyes will be able to pierce this dim reality and see you again.

Who knows what you will be like then? And who knows what our mending will look like after that? I do not understand what it is I feel or what the substance that produces that feeling looks like- I only glace at it peripherally as it tugs on my heart to carry on down the long road.

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. -1 John 3:2