The Truth

At some point in life, the anger must subside. To live so many years and to be impugned with ire throughout those years is to lose out on life's most precious treasures. I profess to being one such that cannot live without the broiling fervor of anger bubbling forth from within. I love, I cry, I run the gamut of emotions from hither to yon, but nothing fills my body so completely as the rage which beholds me. Maybe it is something deep inside of my psyche that leads me down a path, a path wrought with pain and suffering for which I can suckle the ambrosia of life's darkest emotion.

It would be prudent to ask why. Why should I suffer myself to such dark leanings? Why would I wish to feast upon my own soul and pain myself thusly? Why not embrace all that is light and good and fill my heart with joy?

I am a man of dark desires. My soul is endless but my corporal essence is not. It is my belief that through the pain of the flesh is born pleasure and through pain of the soul is born joy. Many would ask how this could be. How could this dichotomy of such simple things exist? And why would anyone have these beliefs?

The Poet speaks.

To know joy without knowing pain is akin to understanding the pangs of hunger that infest the famished when you are obese and have never missed a meal. Yes, you can be hungry, but you do not understand true hunger. Thus, it is with joy, you cannot truly appreciate its candor until you have known the depths of depravity that life can lead you to in suffering. Happiness comes to all, but true joy can only be fostered by those unfortunate souls who have been awash in the turbulent crashing of life�s most debilitating events. And it is for THIS reason that I find myself the victim of life�s most heinous cruelty.

I knew happiness once. Within my arms she stood, gracing me with her care and love. We were but children on a quest of discovery. Life�s first love came unbidden, powerful and unyielding. Yet in our youthful exuberance, we missed out on its meaning, we had no understanding of its nature. We toyed upon the shores of that massive waterway thinking somehow that we could easily wade across it to the other side. We were wrong. Our immaturity protected us from the true pain that lay ahead with certainty. It shielded us from the outcome of what could pass. I look back now and bow my head in reverence to whatever supernatural force tore us from each other before we waded too far into the waters and discovered the gaping maw of that abyss. Surely it would have sucked us in and turned our happiness into disillusionment. Surely it would have hardened our hearts and bore us nothing but ill will. But we never reached that abyss. We never even saw it before we were ripped asunder, standing alone on separate shores. It was my first touch, my first experience with pain. It was not my last.

I searched through the years, like a man possessed, trying to rekindle that happiness I once had. I delved deeper and deeper into wallowing pain. My soul hardened as my mind began to sing the praises of pain. Under every rock that I looked, in every closet that I rooted through, in every nook and cranny that I DARED place my hand, I searched for what I had lost. Nothing could satisfy my yearning. Nothings could bring light to the darkness that had encompassed my soul. And with each passing day, the pain increased, and with it came the anger. Roiling fury infused deep within my breast. Passions lost, I seethed with it. My vision blurred with that fiery abundance which bordered upon feral infuriation.

Again and again, I suffered my soul to bear the wounds of my past. Ignoring thoughts of happiness, I set out to punish my very essence. The degradations that I brought myself to were immense in nature. Relationships that were doomed from the day we met. I sought out the worst suitors possible. If I liked them dark, I found them light. If I liked them short, I found them tall. I made sure that if anything could possibly go right, that it wouldn�t. I was my own worst enemy, I was my own dearest friend. I built the network of anger upon me. I tended to it as if it was the palace gardens for the Queen of some far off land. I made it grow like the fall harvest in some mid-west town. I nurtured it until it grew into a wild and unrelenting behemoth that threatened to turn on me, the one who had been its master. And in the end, I consumed that anger, feasting on its glorious nature, reveling in its powerful ambiance. It became me. I became it. Anger was my name.

But now that I have completed my metamorphosis, now that I have wallowed so deep in the misery of my own soul, I can fully understand what joy truly is. I can see what it is to be lifted amongst the clouds and to walk with the angels. I can fathom the depths of how pure unadulterated bliss can feel. I have delved into darkness so that I can now see the light. I both yearn for it and welcome it. My anger, my ire, my pain, they are the truth of my joy. My path is secure now. I see that. And soon, my joy will be resplendent.