The Horror of the Self (aka, The Stacking Up of Existential Crises Atop Each Other)

'Tis the season for spooky shit and gory stuff and mangled realities. And after all the years consuming all the movies and all the books...the best and most efficient of the horrors is that of the self (should you choose to reflect upon it fully and appropriately). I've spent much of my last 15 years dissecting, trimming, and flat out destroying old bad habits and toxic personality traits. Doing so has made me feel more solitary than not. 

I can look back and see the bad behavior and the unintended douchery if I peel back the veil on my own hazy memories to gaze upon the truth. While it's completely ridiculous and illogical, I worry that this phase of my life is experiencing a level of karmic retribution for the things I did as a younger man. 

I have an exceptional group of friends who all enjoy many of the same things. And, I've been fortunate in later years to find romantic partners that fit my particular likes and dislikes in lovers, though nearly every instance was brief in duration Some due to external reasons beyond control, others because of reasons simply unstated or not vocalized, leaving me confused. The end simply came and that was that; great on paper, but apparently not so much in actual execution. 

But the older I get, the harder it seems to find someone that fits into my life as "more than friends" for a significant amount of time. It's easier to see the red flags and the green flags, but that also makes it significantly more difficult to find the right one as the pool of options continues to shrink exponentially. After having spent so much time focused on my education RATHER than dating, this has proven to be incredibly frustrating. 

I'm feeling much the same way with my creative projects now, like I'm just going through the motions to kill time. Like my brain is built to move at the speed it does and the only solution is to let my hands do the deciphering of the synaptic codes traveling throughout my body. As if to say "Here, this is what you're built for, now work. For your body and your gifts belong to a muse you'll never meet." 

I catch myself wondering "what's the point?" Am I satisfied at the sheer amount of creative output from the last 25+ years? Not at all. In fact, I'm never satisfied. I'm never done. There is always something more to do, more to craft, more synapses to address when every sun rises. The irony being that I will never be satisfied with an entire ouevre of work, that I will never be done, no matter how tall that ouevre's metaphysical structure goes. And you'd think I'd be used to the feeling by now, but I am not. And the feeling continues to grow with each passing year. 

This is not the depression of the last year and a half; this is simply my own emptiness opening up and saying "feed me" at the moment. This kind of horror, this dissection of the self, is the worst because there's no running away from it. You can't hack away at it with a blade or a blunt object. You can't pray it away or hope it dissipates on its own. You're stuck with it. It slinks out from inky depths and wraps its tendrils around every fiber of your being to let you know it's there and that it's never going away, no matter how much you feed it or try to starve it completely. 

I really love this statue of Mephistopheles in the front and Margaretta in the back. We dual-wield the natures of ourselves at all times; the good and the bad, the chaste and the lewd, the masculine and the feminine. Visibly separate but forever entangled with each other in every moment. A permanent type of smoky, swirling moral gray emerging from the mixing of staunch black and gleaming white. 

I'm actively attempting to address my inner angels and demons. My words have been sloppy as of late, my cadence choppy and unsteady. If I were to actually use my voice, I'm sure it would crack on every word. 

It's getting harder and harder to find the true wins these days. Even more so trying to keep them around when they appear. 

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