The Friend At Night
By: Timothy O'Neill
Tags: Self, Spirituality, Depression, Grief, Life Lessons

I have been undergoing a dark life of the soul and I have never known peace, joy or happiness so I have to take it on faith that these things exist. But two pieces I just read, this one and the one my father just wrote, sparked ideas in my mind of how I could adjust my relationship to the darkness that has haunted me since birth. They talk about embracing feelings in order to heal and seeking balance and not equating darkness with evil but understanding it as one of the fundamental forces that supports all of creation.

That sounds nice. God certainly has a dark side and we humans make choices every moment what energies we will give our support and power to, all the while attempting to achieve a divine harmony in which light and dark do not conflict, but work in concert. Maybe I’m too rigid a thinker, too blunt an instrument to yet grasp the subtleties and nuances of the spirit. Maybe the problem is I am coming to the party with an agenda, with preconceived ideas of how I think things should work, instead of dropping my defenses and opening myself up to how they actually do. Maybe I’m still living at a level where my mental framework requires heroes and villains, white t-shirts and black t-shirts.

I want to evolve beyond this line of thinking, but it’s so hard, not because of what I’ve seen, but because of how it made me feel. I’ve witnessed atrocities. If you’ve watched a horror movie recently so have you, most likely. It’s the energetic reality of evil that shakes you to the very core. You feel it on you and in you, a slithering, slimy smoke comprised of hatred and fear that worms its way into your soul, squeezing all the lightness and good out of you. There is no balance to be had here, no elevation or sanctification through the most lyrical and transcendent poetry. No, this is your immortal soul faced with the painful truth of this speck of reality, that it is infested with a perfidious disease that threatens to annihilate all consciousness. Let’s pray on it and see what the good Lord has to say about it. Deafening silence.

My official dark night of the soul began five years ago this February. It wasn’t random or spontaneous. It was carefully orchestrated by my spirit guides. I had killed myself and they had brought me back on the condition that I give them everything, a bargain that is still in effect as I type these words. I traded away my freedom and my autonomy for a chance at a real life, for a chance to have an impact. I’d like to say it was worth it. But I’m just so goddamn tired.

Do you know what the worst part of the deal is? Having eyes on me as I write. I hate that they’re reading this in real time. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. I compose it and then I give you a finished product to edit. I don’t want notes while I’m actually in the middle of a thing. Very unhelpful. I want to go for broke with the fewest amount of witnesses possible. Unfortunately for me, I seem to draw a crowd when I perform. Everybody on the other side of the prison walls is waiting to see if the man with a demon in him can hold out against the forces of hell and heaven that are grinding him into the dirt. I think I have a few more rounds left in me.

I’m aware that I’m currently operating under some dangerous misconceptions. I have a feeling that when all is revealed to me that I am going to feel like quite the fool. You said there is beauty in simplicity, but there is nothing simple about what is going on now. I’m a trickster who took the bait and is now being made to crawl through the mud of his past mistakes. But I’ll spit out the mud and the blood and wipe away the sweat and the tears and I’ll get back up and keep coming even when everyone around me is begging me to sit down. You have to use reverse psychology on me otherwise I sit when I am told to stand and stand when I am told to sit. You had a good chuckle the other night when you gave me conflicting orders. Look at what I just did! Come and see! I gave him conflicting orders! What do you think he’ll do? I’m being micromanaged by children. You start recruiting at 16, correct? Yeah, I’d wait a bit.

This has felt like one of the darkest days of my life and nothing actually happened. I just vented. Or just sprayed the fire of my anger with gasoline. I feel so tired and so alone and so unwanted. I feel wrong and rushed and used. I feel like a machine. I’m depressed. I feel like a papier-mache sculpture that’s been left out in the rain. I feel like I’m pointed in the wrong direction. I feel hopeless and adrift. I feel terribly fat. I feel like I miss Susan. I feel like I don’t enjoy watching TV anymore, but I wouldn’t mind the excuse for a break that TV provides. I feel like falling asleep, but then I think, why bother? Whether I actually sleep or not is not actually up to me.

I feel like I could hold Percy forever and it would not be long enough and they would come over to me and say you were tricked into bonding to a transient form that was built to ensnare your soul and I would say leave us be and I would keep holding onto him until the universe went cold and dead and we would be lovers who would shame the very love of God. Because I tend to hold on tightly to the things that actually matter to me, to the things that make me feel safe, to the things that are so beautiful that their presence leaves no room for logic. I love Percy more than I love my own life. I would run into traffic to save him. You understand that, don’t you, El?

I don’t quite understand it, except expressing that sentiment makes me feel noble at the same time it makes me feel frenzied. I want to be the guy who loves too much and feels too deeply. I want to be too big for the world I’m living in. I want to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that they were wrong for clipping my wings. I was the one that got away. I was the one who shook things up. I was the one who changed the way the game is played. I was the one who made his mark on history and died alone, but died for a good cause, a cause that was, ultimately and at last, not his own but humanity’s. Is that too much to ask for? Maybe it is. In fact, I’m sure that it is. Oh well, here’s to trying.

They’re testing my fortitude. Can he still create under pressure? For the love of God yes, I can write when I’m feeling under the weather. This is not a test. This is mockery. This is an insult. This is punishment. This is torture. And everything I’ve written today has been one giant case against the intervention of heaven and I stand by every word. That being said, it hasn’t been all bad. I never mind an opportunity to express myself, even if I’m the only one reading it. I will write my way into a shallow grave. Because everything is serious now. Everything is dark now. The demons are coming out of the woodwork now. They smell blood in the water. I’m injured. I’m wounded. I’m still pressing forward, still climbing this damn mountain one uncertain outcropping of rock at a time.

The future will look back on this as one of the wildest dark nights of the soul ever conducted. It almost got out of hand, they’ll say. It made the angels question their own methods, they’ll say. This guy was a handful, I’m glad he’s finally at peace, they’ll say. Would we do it again if we could do it over? I’d love to hear their answer to that question. Notice that I’m not analyzing and making associations like I usually do. That’s well-rested Timothy’s forte. Insomniac Timothy’s forte is raging against everyone who ever laid a hand on him. Don’t worry, you’ll get yours too. They say it’s sleep deprivation, but what if it isn’t? What if they’re just showing me that I am now entirely reliant on them for my energy so I have to make the most of it? That chills my blood. To think I am entirely dependent on the charity of invisible strangers. I understand that I’m sick, but this isn’t exactly strapping me to the rocket of wellness.

When do you fight and when do you just go with flow? How many hits do you allow yourself to take before you stand up and say you’ve had enough? We pay our debts. Understood. I think I deserve a line of credit. But it’s never about what you deserve in this world. It’s about what you can manage. It’s about what you can endure. It’s about how much you can give of yourself without giving yourself away. And if you do give your whole self then maybe you did a good thing. I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the phenomenon of ego that attaches us to the things that aren’t really ours, the things that we should be pouring back into the ocean. I know my ego hinders my growth. Do I have to tame it or lose it entirely? Either way I don’t think it will be a thunderbolt revelation. It will be slow and systematic, like all good things in the world of the spirit. Thunderbolts can be awe-inspiring. They can also be traumatic. I can’t take anymore trauma.

I write like a man running out of time, and thus I oversaturate the market and don’t allow my readers a chance to catch their breath. I should hold back. But I don’t, for the simple fact that I am of the firm belief that my life hangs by a thread and I want to put this out there before it can be taken from me. Paranoia? Perhaps. It’s really no way to live a life. It means you have no faith in the future. And I do. I’ve just been hammered so gosh darn hard that it feels like I could give out at any moment and I want to make my last piece the one they’ll remember fondly.

So thanks, dear reader, for making this endeavor worthwhile. Thanks for taking the time to engage with my thoughts and I will see you in the next piece.

Be well,

Timothy