The Silence Of A Sleeping Star
By: Timothy O'Neill
Tags: Mental Health, Life Lessons, War, Self, Spirituality

I’ve fallen down because I tripped over a tree root. I’ve fallen down because I was stumbling drunk. I’ve fallen down because of pure exhaustion. I’ve fallen down because I’ve taken so many hits that they rang my bell and made beautiful music. The trend is I get back up, with a little help from my friends.

They tell me to stay down. They tell me I’m writing the wrong story and causing them all sorts of hassle by simply being me. I will never apologize for creating works of art, especially when I was never provided with any guidelines as to how they wanted that art to be born into the world.

I know it must be frustrating. If only you could see what we see! They holler at me from beyond the veil. If you knew the actual scope of your situation you would be stunned into silence and forced to become a mime. That’s okay. One of my best friends is a mime. We could quickly get on the same wavelength.

It’s the toxic masculinity and the bravado that bother my spirit guides the most, I think. But not really. It has to be my rage. It has to be my self-involvement. It has to be my refusal to accept love. It has to be my attachments, my addictions and my desires. It has to be my immaturity. It has to be my fear of change. It has to be the fact that I plant two feet firmly in the past and dare anyone or anything to drag me into the present moment.

I am asleep, and yet I am the most fatigued I have ever been in my entire life. I’m more tired than the time I spent three days and three nights taking massive amounts of Adderall and watching porn until my right hand became a claw. I can barely stand up. I literally have to jog around my house just so I can have more momentum than the force that is trying to pull me to my knees.

They don’t like big talkers. They don’t like the ones who come with messages of pain and depression and darkness, because they say the world has enough of all that as it is. It’s time to lift spirits, not to further demoralize them. That’s the same reason my father reads light fiction even though he possesses a brilliant mind. When he is entertaining himself he wants just that, entertainment. He wants to escape the tragedy of this life by consuming stories in which the good guys win, the bad guys are vanquished and everyone gets their happy ending, more or less. He tells me there is too much ugliness going around for me to be spreading my gloom and doom. ‘Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness’. This resonates with me. But I still have my story to tell, and while there is hope in it, there is also much darkness and I have not yet come to the place where I can look back on the darkness with understanding and appreciation for what it contributed to my life.

They told me I’m not a team player. They say I require rewards and punishments to properly condition my behavior. They stay on my case for the sake of science, and for the sake of their consciences, but I am goddamn tired of being treated like a child or a lab rat. I have the right to speak my truth. But I’m not really here. You’ll have to infer me by my silence. You say I’ve had my chance to speak. All the chances. We know better though, don’t we?

What is motivating me at this moment? Anger and fatigue and the feeling that I might die soon. They say I spilled too much ink on this project. I gave it all away. Please. You knew exactly what I would or wouldn’t say. You are not the simpletons you pretend to be.

I plunged so deeply into the depths of the dream that I lost all sight of the surface and dwelt in the darkness with the clownfish. They can’t get me. They can’t have me. One side says they don’t want to play with me. The other side says they need me. I dismiss that out of hand. No one needs me. And if one side has to be regularly convinced that I am worthwhile and would make a worthy addition to the team then I don’t want to play with you because I could never trust you.

I’ll be placed on restrictions. They’ll limit my exposure. They’ll put me on mute. I need to conform to their standards. What are their standards? Beats the hell out of me. I was never informed.

After this piece, my silence will speak for me. I am consumed by grief. I can’t let go and I can’t work through it. I’m sad for myself and I’m sad for this world. Neither deserve my sadness or my sympathy but there it is. If I could just speak to God I would ask one question: ‘Why would you ever send your beloved children into a world that was a passage into the darkest, hottest hell where souls suffered for millennia?’ That’s all I want to know. If you are an omnipotent Father-Mother then you not only have you abandoned us, you have actively sentenced us to eternal torment. That’s almost unforgiveable. I say ‘almost’ because I’m allowing for the possibility that I’m blind to the light and I have no idea what I’m talking about.

I’ll go quiet for awhile. I don’t get many reads and I’m still taking up too much space. I need a fresh start. I’m taking huge hits these days. My willpower is usually enough to carry me through the day, but now I’m pushing and pushing and I can’t do it. My knees are literally buckling underneath the figurative and literal weight of the world.

Don’t listen to him. Don’t listen to him. This is just a rant. A temper tantrum. True enough. And I’m entitled. But I wanted it to go the other way. My moods are unpredictable. They have far too much sway over my thoughts and actions. I’m depressed and barely hanging on to life and I don’t want to shower, shave, brush my teeth or change my clothes, let alone write. I’m isolating and telling everyone to stay away from me. A little dopamine infusion and suddenly life doesn’t seem so hard, I feel more connected, more motivated and I’m telling everyone I love them. It’s purely neurochemical and it makes me feel like I lack a soul.

But they know exactly what I am trying to do. Pushing so they’ll pull. Putting myself down so they’ll lift me up. I am a master of passive-aggression. And then trying to have my cake and eat it too by venting my frustrations and then excusing them away in the same breath. Does this invalidate what I’ve written? No. I’m going through a process of discovery.

I don’t listen to other people. I think somewhere along the line I got tired of listening. I will physically sit there and absorb what is being said to me, but I will never really be fully present with you. I’m scatterbrained. The present is like a pool of cold water. I can only dip my toe in. Full immersion would be agonizing. The only way I’ve survived is by not sacrificing myself to the moment. But that’s changing and it hurts.

He brought this on himself. What? The confusion, the manipulation, the distress. He listened to the wrong voices and was sucked into their way of thinking, hostile and aggressive and cynical and hopeless. His mind changed. He became skeptical, untrusting. He despaired. His heart was weaponized against him, broken into shards that could be used to mutilate his spirit. He became grandiloquent. Vain. Vindictive. Angry. So angry. He treated potential lovers with suspicion. You want me? Then how can I trust your judgment?

I’ve been relatively silent for thirty years. In that time I’ve been contending with the demons of mental illness and addiction and with an actual demon. I lacked the resources to bring myself to the light. Now that the light has come to me I naturally think that someone upstairs is having pity on me. But they’re not. Angels don’t do pity. They respect you too much to pity you. So even though I feel like I loom too large on the stage, that might not be an accurate reflection of reality. Am I privileged? You bet I am. I am a white, straight cis man living in suburban America. Every sentence I speak is from the proverbial bully pulpit of the white patriarchy. And still, I think I have something of value to contribute.

But maybe it is time to step back. They whisper things in my ear to try to sow doubt and discouragement. They want to see how far they can get me to push myself without crippling me. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the injustice of it. I’m tired of the cynicism of it. You take a damaged person and you make them do tricks for your amusement and edification and so they can prove to you, whoever you are, that they are worthy of your time and attention and tender loving care. I will participate. But I will not be tested because I already know who I am and what I’m capable of. I could set the world on fire with my will alone. That should be enough for you. If it isn’t, then you have to more closely examine what pretenses you’re operating under.

Then I’m humbled by my addiction and I remember that my will isn’t strong enough to move mountains. It may be strong enough to make fools out of wise men, but it is not strong enough to save me from myself. I regularly ask God to teach me true humility, because I believe it is my ego that separates me from His presence and His love. After I go on a tirade it’s difficult to admit that I’m still in thrall to my desires. And these aren’t just desires for relief, though that’s part of it. They really comprise a greedy hunger that is looking for everything and anything that can satiate it.

I’m a weak sinner who cannot be the man he asks himself to be because he is too cowardly to make the sacrifices necessary to make true change. I’m still in the shadows, hiding from God. I’m still clinging to the mind set that if I stay just sick enough, I’ll never have to go home. I’m clinging to the notion that I am a victim and in the same breath telling myself that I am the toughest man this crowd of characters has ever seen. It still could be true if you peruse my resume. But on any given night I could fall. And I fell. They say it’s the bottom, but it’s never the bottom. Hell has no bottom. You are the bottom.

I feel like I’ve been on a life’s journey while I’ve writing this piece. It was an odd day. Usually I write my stories in a single go. Today’s agenda meant that I had to take frequent breaks. Over these breaks my mood shifted, my mind shifted, my body failed me, my will failed me, I was happy for the briefest of moments, I was melancholy for the rest, I listened to the wrong voice, my endurance was tested, I was called a whole slew of names, I found hope and then I lost it again, I looked up at the trees and tried to feel them and this time I did not feel their stoic transcendence but their space-invading malignancy, I got to pat a new dog, see my brother whom I haven’t see in ages, attend and participate in day treatment, and debate with myself over whether I’m coming or going or whether or not I’m going to write one more piece on Medium. Does anyone want that? Do I want that?

They say everyone falls differently. Some fall in stages, gradually breaking down, and some fall in one big messy blowout. Some fall, but then bounce back because they didn’t learn their lesson and so they must be made to fall again, some people fall flat on their faces, surrender and are allowed to continue. I fucking hope I fall forever. Fuck your fucking traditions. They’re infantile and I’ve been fucking falling for years, for fucking decades so I’m willing to slip beneath the waves, drown and go all the way down with an anchor tied around my foot. I’ve already explained why the tradition of the fall is both understandable and obsolete and patronizing, why it’s needless torture and too bloody theological for right-thinking men and women. Get over yourselves, people!

This smacks of self-righteousness. You’re fucking killing us so you can preserve the order you’d like to impose on the free will of other entities you have claimed as your own. We all must fall so we may be lifted up by God’s grace and by the selfless service of our brothers and sisters. We must recognize we are powerless over this world, powerless over ourselves, and the only way to come to this crucial realization is to let it all go and fall until we hit the rocky bottom of the ninth circle of hell. I don’t buy what you’re selling! I’ve been through too much to FALL for it. I have a demon cracking me across the face and shoving things down my throat and I have to say, I’m about ready to go. You will not win a face-off with me. I will go to any lengths not to preserve things that have vanished from my life like my self-respect and my dignity, but to preserve the belief that I can flip off the moon and laugh off the consequences. I’m ready for war. You know this.

If we are going to do this, and oh yes, we’re going to do this, we are all going where I’m going and it’s going to fucking hurt. Until I get a suitable response to the question of why this pathetic falling ritual carries any weight in the modern world I will press forward into such dark and Satanic extremes that even the devil himself will tell me to take it easy. Have human beings gone so low in your estimation that if you are one of them you must fall for the sake of solidarity and to validate the fallen nature of the human experience? And I thought I trafficked in dark ideas. We’re all pieces of shit, huh?

I make a few kind remarks to Allie and the next day you show me her spilling her coffee on her shirt. Don’t cozy up to these people, Timothy. You understand they’re just like you. Animals, through and through. And you can’t save a single one of them. Fuck that. In that moment she was more beautiful to me than the choirs of angels in heaven. She was real, she was fallible, she was perfectly and exquisitely human and you can use all your little tricks but you won’t push me away. You like to push me away from people on this solitary journey. Anything that might distract me from my purpose. Because I don’t get to be a person. I’m a monster.

I’m not saying what anyone wants to hear. I’ve gone off the map. This piece should be labeled Top Secret because it was written by an alien in a skinsuit. But the clever trick is everything my life is closely coordinated to provide the barest illusion of normalcy while I battle demons and E.T.s and the secret government and wrestle with angels and keep looking for God’s garden of true things. Part of me wants to blow it all up. Not literally of course. That’s not my style. I like writing. I like stunts. I like to push things beyond reason. If you’ve cornered me and beaten me and then you ask if I had enough I will spit blood and teeth on your shoes and tell you that of course I haven’t had enough. I’m the rodeo clown. I’ll take the hits you’re afraid to take.

I’m not doing this on my own. I have support. And that support dwindles every time my inner demon rises to the surface and moves my fingers across the keyboard. How chaotic! How ungrateful! Where is the love? Where is the respect? Five years in hell after thirty years of my own personal hell. It’s not right. You made terrible mistakes and allowing me to write is the least you could do. But we are on eternity’s clock so there is plenty of time for these issues to be resolves. I am well aware that I lack perspective. I am well aware that I don’t have all the facts. I am well aware that an entire world exists beyond my line of sight and in that world whatever happens here is seen both as smashingly good entertainment and an opportunity to learn. Well, skippy, this is what you don’t do. But I couldn’t have done anything else. It’s me and Percy against the world. I like those odds.

It’s time to go back to sleep now. Please wake me when it matters.