Death and Rebirth

In The Ending

I have gone through many revisions.

Looking back on my life, I can see distinct chapters. Episodes.

Periods of time where I exist in a certain way.

Versions of me.

I know each one of them. I know them well, and I love them. They were me, then.

Then a cataclysm occurs.

A fire.

Each one of those versions of me has died.

Today, you see who I am, and you cannot understand who I was, because most of you have only known me for one chapter (maybe up to three if you have known me for a while and stayed close). Interestingly, before you met me, you didn't have a concept of Curtis. Once you do meet me, you must either assume nothing about my past, or—until you have gotten to know me very well—you must extrapolate who I am today into who I was yesterday, and the year before, and the rest of my life.

I'm not saying I'm not who you think I am, but I'm probably not exactly who you think I am. That stretching of who I am into the past of who I was, wouldn't tell you a lot of my story. I'm mostly speaking of an internal me, one that most people don't know very well, but I should think it's obvious that I hold the internal me as the most true me there is. I don't know if the external concept of Curtis you have today would be much different 3, 5, 10, and 20 years ago. But if you knew me well, knew the deep-seated me that lives in Curtis, you would see great differences, I think. And I am about to change again.

The Metaphor

I am engulfed in fire, and I am dying. And to a certain extent, I am—not literally—intentionally killing me.

You see, I am a Phoenix.

This person you know has risen from the ashes many times. Each time, altered.

I miss the old me. Each one of them.

I know them.

Each has his flaws, but they all have a common, good core that unites them.

When I travel to the locations of my previous chapters, I see my ghost. I know where to haunt the ghost of me.

Each time: I weathered a storm I thought I could not weather. It was only by putting myself to death that I was able to come through, for there was no other way I knew. Pain too great—I had to kill the feeling part of me.

Moving. Divorce. Unrequited love. Broken dreams. Loss of agency.

Minor things in the grand scheme of life.

I still have a healthy body. When I am hungry, I can feed myself.

I live with a roof over my head, and a sense of security about me.

This is no hell I inhabit.

All the same, I live most of my life inside of me. To my admitted detriment, I experience the world second hand; first I receive the raw input, then I process it. Sometimes obsessively, if I can't puzzle it out. Sometimes I get stuck in a loop. Sometimes I solve the problem. If that's the case, you'll see me enact the solution. Applying it to the world I live in.

Admission

I'm not saying I'm special—I don't think that's much different than most people. I think I live so much in my own world, sensing the outside world bulging and pressing against my internal world, that I sometimes try to resist reality. I am already backlogged, unable to process some things that happened years or decades ago. I just can't take any more input sometimes. And especially when I perceive I won't be able to make sense of it.

That's where I am now. And that's where the dying comes in.

The old me has got to go.

He couldn't make it work. He's a failure, and I need to restart again.

It's painful. I cry at the loss.

For, when you kill yourself, the old you, you don't get to choose what to keep and what to lose.

Some good will remain—that core—and some bad will remain, too.

There is less and less each time, though, I can say that truthfully.

Eventually, I am afraid of becoming an empty vessel. The former carrier of Curtis, but no longer inhabited by him.

I know this seems theatrically dramatic. But it is dramatic.

These feelings are as real to me as the toothbrush in your mouth this morning, with its bristles and the flavor of your toothpaste, the hard, smooth plastic pushing your cheek out. You know that feeling. I know this feeling just as well. Dying.

Depressing as the topic is, a hidden truth about me is that I am eternally hopeful. If I weren't, I would be dead—for real dead—but, here I am.

I've lost a lover of me, and a friend. One who resonated with me—a Harmonic Coexistent that when I was beside her I felt more of myself than I ever did.

With her loss came the loss of a possible future which was rich with potential. Such is the loss that it shakes me down to my core, and I am left face down, prostrate and mourning. She was my family, she was my sister and my companion. Losing her as I have was literally unfathomable. Impossible to fathom. Impossible to understand. For that reason, that Curtis must die, because he cannot go on living. His life has become a paradox. Contradiction. Impossible. Unreality.

A new Curtis must be born from the ashes, one that can accept paradoxes, one that—though he still cannot understand—lives with that paradox. This is growing older.

A Never-Ending Process

I know this is part of life. I know it's a never-ending process, and that these things happen from time to time, especially as I experience novel situations.

What I lament most, however, is that not all of these situations are necessary. Indeed, many of them can be avoided, such as this one.

But at what cost? I ask myself.

Many times it means feeling less. A conscious choice.

I have been there before. It's a numb, dreary, sad place to be. Not without happiness or joy, for indeed, it's mostly an internal condition—one that most would not notice from an outsider's perspective.

So I burn.

I burn, and it hurts and I am reduced to nothingness.

I have choices. I can choose how to rebuild. I will do my best, but there are catch-22s. 'Rebuild with the same feeling and vulnerability that led you here, and you are likely to wind up here again (and soon),' I tell myself.

So I ask myself: Is it worth the risk? Do I rebuild with feeling?

I don't know.

I do know that this not being the first time I have been here for the same reason, I am less likely to repeat what is beginning to manifest as a mistake.

There are only so many times you will try to do something that injures you before you give it up.

I will try to be a better version of me. In some ways, I already am.

I lament the loss of me, and of who I have been.

I also know that many parts of me that are good were only made possible by the destruction of those parts of me that were bad.

Building From The Ashes

Each time, I am humbled. Each time, I rebuild my pride and my ego and my self-esteem, and then I am humbled again.

I seek an enlightenment that short circuits the cycle. I seek humility. Humility allows me to see my faults. No ego; no blindness. I don't know, it's just a theory.

If I can see my faults, I can fix them.

I also need patience. It takes time to asses one's self. It takes time to ascertain the information, the raw data, and to analyze the trends. So I strive for humility and patience.

But those things may be worthless without kindness. That's essential, too, because kindness fosters relationships. Kindness fosters good will. Kindness to myself, and kindness to others. Without kindness, I may be humble and patient but I will not be good to myself, I will not forgive myself, and the same to others. And without those gifts, bitterness will grow and I will build a wall that separates me from myself and others. A lonely place.

Finally, I seek honesty. And here, I think, is something that comes from the core of me. I think. I don't know. Sometimes I doubt what I think I know. How do you know anything? Say, if I'm dishonest at my core, could I not say I am honest and believe that, because I am lying to myself? Really. I wonder. But I do think I am honest, and I hope I am not lying to myself.

I seek genuine communication, but because of that, I am overwhelmed by large groups of people because I'm not able to genuinely connect and communicate with large groups of people simultaneously. My life story has a short list of supporting actors, simply because I don't have the bandwidth to be who I want to be with everyone I know.

So at this end of me—as I burn—I also look toward the future. Now is the time to decide who I will become.

Life has a way of tripping me but I would say the mechanism isn't so obvious. If someone trips you, you might stumble but you will try to catch yourself, and you probably will. The way life gets me, it seems like I never know I've been tripped until I'm already face down, prostrate and mourning. My legs seem numb, so I don't know that my feet have erred, and by the time I'm aware of my fall, I've already fallen.

So I burn.

I burn and I look through the fire, the bright cleansing fire. I look to the future. I look to my rebirth.