Isolation is a Gift

Dear Nightmare,

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness’s of other people.”
― C.G. Jung

                I’m tired of eating alone.

                I sat at the table in an empty apartment surrounded with my thoughts and the ghost of others. They hold no weight in the world, and that makes me feel utterly alone in the stillness of this place. I stared across the table day dreaming of some lovely angel or goddess blessing me with their presence, and I smiled at the thought. Whoever this faceless woman is in my daydream is the love of my life warp in the sun heading to bed for the night. I reach out to touch her, but as the wind, she flees from me. Gone. Gone, like the dream when I’m waking from sleep, and my mind comes running back to where I am;

                Alone in an empty apartment.

                I sighed a little and spoke the simple words to myself, “Isolation is a gift, use it wisely.” But is this the ultimate paradox of my heart? I long to be alone to work. I need to be isolated to create my work. All artist must have this during the day and their lives. And yet, my heart knocks at the door of my chest wanting someone to join in the isolation. I want someone to sit next to me and create along the side of me.

                My mind skips back to when Nyx was first in my life. She would sit on my bed reading a book planning to stay the night, and I would be buried in my art. A light would hang over me, and I would be fighting back the demons as she sat there. Sometimes, she would talk to me for hours while I worked and I love ever moment of it. Other times she would be fast asleep, and I would be up deep into the night trying to find God.

                Those memoirs brush across my lips a deep smile. I’m happy to have them. I have happy to be able to recall back to them. I long for them again.

                I finish my dinner, one I made myself, for myself and sit back watching the trees catch the wind. I see her walking into the kitchen taking my plate as I think about some foolish philosophical conundrum or the next plot of a story. I smile as the dream turns dark. The person in the kitchen suddenly becomes all the people who have taken a piece of me. If my heart was made of glass, it was broken a long time ago, and now, pieces are missing.

                The pain brought forth with the twisting of my mind leads me to dark places I wish not to go. The paths through the Realm of the Dead puts me at the doorsteps of your house. I knock on the door of Black Haven waiting for you to open it. I wish you wouldn’t. I wish you would.

                I can give you all my pain and let you go mad with it. I could watch you hurt all those people in my mind who poke and prod me through the day. The pain from their actions paint my day and then …

                Then I breathe, sit back, and think about the monster within. You are that monster, but you already know that. I think about all the horrors I read about, and I have read many things which would keep you up for nights. (It has kept me up for those nights.)

                The horrors of others are what I find myself dwelling in. Not to give you more ammo or ideas what to do next with my foes but to understand the darkness in the world. Carl Jung once said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Your shadow stretches all the way down to Hell.” What does that even mean? Does it mean anything at all?

                If you know anything about the shadow, then the words are profound but if you don’t then let me enlighten you a little. From what I have gathered the shadow self it the part of us we keep from the world. We mostly do this because the shadow is the darker parts of our personality. The parts that make you think of murder or wanting to see what it is like to watch someone gets beheaded. But the shadow does not always have to be the monster side of you. It can also be the side in which you keep secrets from all the world at all cost.

                It is important to understand because it allows you to see the monster you can be. Or to quote Nietzsche here, “you can stare into the abyss.” (I know the rest of the quote speaks of the abyss staring back, and it does.) The monster within you would be the Nazi at the camps or the slave owner raping his “property” or the moral crusader cutting someone’s head off in the name of the greater good. Or the monster could be the man killing people to see them die. A serial killer trapped in Black Haven where you are their master. All these monster lies within you and me.

                I find these monster by reading books that take me down paths I wish never to go and yet; are the ones I need to read the most, (Our society should read them as well. We could learn what not to repeat), because I can see where I could go if the world became a little darker. I could find myself doing unspeakable horrors if all the prices of the puzzles fell into place. I could be the Nazi. I could be the Jew who gives over his friends. I could be the boy who is behind the barware fence. I could be the man line waiting for getting shot or the teenage under the desk as they kill so many. I could be all these people and so can you.

                I find it the most troubling to hear so many says, “Never me. I couldn’t do that,” and they are ones I fear the most. They have yet to see the monster within and do not understand it. If they do not understand then how to can they stop it? They have yet to understand Evil can touch everyone, even a man of faith.

                I guess, what I’m trying to say is I understand I can do great Evil, but that doesn’t mean I will do great Evil. In fact, I will try not to, and I have found two ways of combating this great Evil. The first is speak the truth and always do so. You speak it to the best of your ability and your knowledge. You don’t allow people with their agendas to leak into your mind and give you lies.

                And one of the great lies, maybe the greatest, is when people tell you, “There is no evil. Evil is a state of religious dogma that holds weight in our world now.” The man who murders, they would want you to believe, had something wrong with his brain and nothing more. (Nothing wrong with his soul.) The woman who set her children to blaze suffers from something else other than evil.

                But we both know that is not true. Evil is real. Evil is in our world. It walks among us hidden in this lie. Evil can even hide within the so call good, which makes it unbelievably hard to find. And yet, we all know what is it when we see it. The boys who shot up their school, they were evil. They might have only been evil at the moment carrying out their plan but unless they were evil.

Evil is real.

                I feel the people who turn away from the idea of evil have never really read a book before. I also feel the people turn away from the word evil, do so because then they would have agree there is good. Not just a good as in something nice, but an absolute moral good. 

                The second way I combat the monster within me is I turn to God. He is all good. If I can try to be even a third of what he wants me to be, then I can be moral in the world. If I can fall into His hands when the darkness becomes too much, then there is a chance I’ll carry out not great Evil but a great Good instead.

                These are the thinks that plague mind while I was sitting alone at the table tonight. I wonder if I would have found these words if someone was there with me? I guess we’ll never know nor does it matter. So, I sat my pen down, drink some of my beer, and wish you a good night. Hopefully, my words carry something in them but I don’t know. I believe they are just ink on a page to forget about the loneliness for a moment …

A writer