february 7, 2025

stages of death

if i explained this to my former self i reckon she would kill me. if i explained this to my former self i would tell her i have killed her. it is ironic that i have dreamed of suicide for so long, and in a sense, i have finally achieved it. it is ironic that i was trying to detach from things and events and people and objects and feelings when all i needed to do was to detach from my entire damn self. not detach as in the snapping of the branch, the breaking of the clasp, the severing of the want, but detach as in murder, as in annihilation, as in complete and utter abolishment. it is ironic that i was trying to transcend the pain – as if i would witness my spirit be possessed by some auric light – as if some emancipating numbness would take the reins and leave me in some state of bliss – when all i had to do was to erase the i. the i that wants to detach is still an i that wants. the i that wants to be in alignment is still an i that seeks. the i that has told herself a story that no longer appears to be a story but in fact some gospel damn truth is still an i that must now go. i am writing slowly now, which i have not done in years, and it is all linked. none of this matters anymore. there is no urgency that is embedded in and asleep inside a body desperate, desperate, desperate to prove. even if that desperation itself is couched in grandiose ideas – it still lives, and breathes, and reeks, of self. even this – is ultimately a story narrated and situated and embellished and engraved inside the mind. i am beginning to see that anything that is so involuntary and insisting inside the mind is a reaction to something that has been invented – to a story that has been quietly written and scripted and swallowed. and though everything is a story, some stories are particularly good at escaping their own label. some stories are a form of pseudo-religion, which tell us, for example, that we are entitled to specific forms of love. or that what we are on this earth to do is to find this calling and pursue it, but not in any genuine sense at all. even concepts that are in some sense true have been taken hostage by the mechanics of modern life – which place the i at the centre of it all, which depict the ideals of calling and love in suffocating ways. the idea of calling is no longer a calling in its essence – it is an image of itself. it is imagery and iconography and a sophisticated marketing folio of what it means to embody your divine essence. it is money and it is fame and it is a body that has somehow been placed inside a frame with garlands, and lights. it is a thirst trap, a documentary, a capitalised name that sets one person as superior to others. and it is dangerous – because it has been painted to transcend ego – it is painted as perseverance and authenticity and dedication and commotion – as spiritual truth seized and captured by hollywood, or media, or all our wounds combined. it is junk food fed to a population fervent and hungry, but dressed, and presented, like ripeness, like salad. i mean, it may not be untrue that those who follow their calling do possess some spiritual truth, but the manufacturing of it all – the manufacturing and artificial capture of ideas of purpose and calling and meaning – does not exist without creating further separateness. without creating further attachment to ideas of ego and me me me me me, except now framed as exceptions to those rules. and don’t even get me started on love. that we have collectively abandoned any real understanding of the nature of love is perhaps the gravest, most consequential sin. that we have come to entirely and collectively confuse love for all that is advertised as it – all that is a con – all that is not it – is at the seed of all other failures. i am convinced all horror is found at the end of a road that begins at lovelessness. but not lovelessness as in the absence of love, but lovelessness as the misunderstanding, the mass mis-definition, the mass hysteria of believing it is what it is not, and then spending your entire life seeking its shoddy dupe. i have spent my whole life seeking its shoddy dupe, even when i was convinced it was real. i have spent my whole life feeling entitled to receiving it – which dissolves its quality and content entirely. they have sold us on love as romance they have sold us on love as attachment they have sold us as love as the very very very specific form of affection your body wants to receive. i have spent my entire life believing some version of this, and my entire life entitled to believing it was a law above all ego – a spiritual law – love. and it is, don’t get me wrong, it is the only truth, at least in my opinion. but it is not interrogated, and therefore not understood, and therefore morphed into everything that is in fact, what it is not.

there are so many trojan horses here, and that is the only problem. there is a trojan horse of love that is not love – that is attachment. there is a trojan horse of love that is not love – that is precise expression. there is a trojan horse of love that is not love – but our entitlement to it. i could not grasp this for 30 years, and i am only scratching the surface now. i have spent my whole life not feeling loved, and therefore insisting it does not exist, and therefore insisting i need it and therefore confirming i do not have it. i can’t even seem to identify what the precise story is, but i know it has haunted me for too many decades. i know it haunted me when i was four years old and screaming when i saw my brother receive. i know it haunted me when i was eight years old and convinced i will run away and never come back, so then, maybe someone will say the right words. i know it haunted me every year of my twenties and thirty, and i will not go there at all. but all this haunting is predicated on a lie. even where the ghost exists, where there is darkness or absence or truth, the haunting possesses a body and life of its own, and does not leave. the haunting – the suffering – the agony – is premised on a story that love is an object that others receive, or i am at least born needing, born entitled to. the i is not entitled to anything at all – let alone a very specific display or expression of love. the i is not entitled to anything at all – let alone a very specific manifestation of what it means to have purpose. the i is drunk on a belief and story about the world that is in fact, a lesson for all that exists beyond it. the i is addicted to believing there is a truth in this world that is in fact a lens. the i is born to convince itself that this lens is reality, or gospel, or all that it is being deprived of, or punished for. the i is obsessed – utterly and innocently obsessed – with confusing reality for the meanings that are so fundamentally and wholly layered on it. the i is innocent – because it is born inside that reality and eats and breathes a philosophy without consenting to the matter. but if so, it cannot escape this suffering – this believing and lack – this endless yearning and pain – by adhering to that same philosophy, or possessing any identity at all. the only way to escape – i have learnt – is not by reasoning with a world that is built on illusion. it is not reasoning with itself – or by any form of reasoning at all. if the world is enchanted by the self – by craving – by thinking – by endless squirming in the fist of unknown forces – the self will not free itself by playing by its rules. the self cannot free itself when it is the prison. the self only exists – at least with such form and firmness – because it was named and labelled and cast at birth. the self only exists because it takes that casting, takes that role, and decides, quietly and unknowingly, to become the director. it does not matter whether the film is tragedy, comedy, drama, romance – it will be some discordant mix as long as it is here – as long as it forgets it is inside a theater. and that theater is of such remarkable sophistication – that all the exits are blocked – and the film never ends – because it always has a sequel to the sequel to the sequel to why why why that happened and what what what will happen next. the crowds will clap and cheer and laugh and shrivel. they will leave and they will come and they will throw stones at your face. they will stay and they will go and they will kiss your feet. you will be addicted, and you will be convinced, the next scene will be it. you will be attached to that one season, or part, where all was alright. you will be attached to that one season, or part, where everything went to shit. you will diagnose why each was this way and you will endlessly write stories to be convinced of salvation. you will endlessly write a script that will seduce you into thinking there is a point where you arrive. the same script will make sure you forget you are writing, forget you are acting, forget you are living, forget it all. because everything is exaggerated and everything is defined and everything is a caricature of a caricature of a caricature of a lie. and a world built on caricatures not only begins to appear as truth, it causes great suffering even in your attempts to catch the lie. the hardest part of the journey is when you are partly the self, and partly the yearning for the peace and emptiness that exists behind it. when you are still ruled by the same rabid impulses that you are seeking to escape – and your body is revolting at the symptoms of change. when your misgivings and illusions about ideas of love and purpose – what it means to be alive and why we are here at all – begin to crumble at your feet. when their precise manifestations begin to abandon you entirely – friends leave, love leaves, validation leaves – the clapping stops. it will feel like you are being attacked by a demon, when you are being freed from the devil. you will lose the battle, or what you think is loss, when you are closer than ever to winning this war. and winning the war will mean killing the self entirely. killing all that is known, or thought to be, killing all that is believed, or thought to be, killing all you say you need, when you need very little at all. the actor is only relieved when the story finally ends. the script is over, and there is nothing left to see. your body will revolt. your mind will revolt. but all that remains – all that guides you quietly and generously – will simply be. and it will break rules of being, or what you conceive it to be. it will break rules of loving, or what you have confused it to be. it will break rules of striving, and what you think you need to be. there will be fear, doubt, crippling, visceral, hesitation. there will be desire, to know, to confirm, to check, if you will survive. there will not be an answer, but there will be knowing. there will not be an answer, but there will be this feeling. if you are ready, if you are inclined, if you are destined, if you are here – there will be fullness. the fear will go, the fear will go, the fear will go. the haunting, the grasping, the clutching, the wanting – the needing to know, the needing to need to know, the needing of anything at all – it will all go. not smoothly, or slowly, or all at once. but soon enough, and not a second too late. and when that moment comes, do not narrate it at all. do not define, do not recede, do not return to the method of the madness that is over. do not cling to the theater that has been your life, nor to the expectation that it will be gone overnight. but over and over and over and over again – be.