A Madness
A madness threatens me today. You must understand some things about me before you can understand the madness.
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
- Proverbs 22:6
I was trained as a child to be a weapon. My first memories are of violence. I watched a man shot and bleed to death on the street a few feet away from me before I was 4 years old. At 3 years old, a rival gang put a hit out on me to teach my father a lesson and the attack upon my mother and I was brutal. My father viciously beat my mother in our home. My mother's father worked for organized crime, and confessed his violent sins as he died of Alzheimer's many years later.
My mother took me and my infant sister away from the place where those horrors happened, but never stopped training me. I was denied comfort at every turn. Locked in the bathroom to weep alone at 5 years old. Given chores to do when staying home from school because I was sick with the flue. Emotional abuse heaped upon me during every moment of weakness; called worthless and weak and useless. And this before I was 10 years old.
The message was clear - I am not a human deserving of compassion or love or respect. I exist to carve out from a vicious and violent world a safe space so that others may live as they please. I must be harshly, constantly trained to perform that function well, because it requires that I be as ruthless as the world I am working against.
I defied that purpose when I refused to support my narcissistic, abusive mother as she remarried when I was 21. She activated every emotional timebomb within me that she had planted through years of abuse. She destroyed my psyche and my rationality. Those of you who knew me at that time understand the psychological devastation. I had refused to serve my purpose to her, so she followed through with the threat of existential annihilation.
So began my internal jihad. When I chose at that time not to kill myself, I accepted a long and painful path of constant war within myself. That tension has caused me to achieve extraordinary things, and has at times brought me again to the precipice of ending my life.
In many ways, I have constantly sought out situations where I would be abused emotionally just like I was when I was a child. I have sought out partners who gave me no compassion, who tolerated no weakness, and who treated me as if I were disposable. These partners deserve the scorn they have earned, but I chose them. I am not stupid or blind, and I wanted that in my life.
Violence has never been far from me. I have denied others the compassion and humanity that I was denied, and I have broken bones, beaten others unconscious, and permanently harmed them. I was baptized in blood and trained for this purpose, and it comes as natural to me as breathing. Violence is the life that my whole family and whole world has trained me for. To serve thinking nothing of my own needs, and to think nothing of the needs of the enemy.
I have fought and fought this madness. The tension within has manifested in acute PTSD, at times crippling me because I would not give in to it. It has manifested in chronic pain as the stress from my constant internal struggle ravages my body.
Philosophy. Therapy. Art. International travel. Have these things given me greater leverage in the fight against the instincts that were literally beaten into me, or have they provided the monster within me with even more powerful tools for completing its terrible purpose? How much more effective an enemy would I be with the intellectual training I've received?
Today I am very close to creating an ally of the beast within me. Is this not my purpose? How fulfilling would it be to walk the path prepared for me - the path I was trained to walk?! How satisfying to bathe in blood and fire - to live the life I was prepared for. Parents take heed: your children will eventually seek to walk the path you have prepared them to walk.
For today I wrestle this Herculean beast within me. I do battle within so the violence does not engulf many others. I am writing this so that you know my struggle, and so that I may be understood. Even in this moment of pain and internal violence I am still seeking compassion, and I hate myself for it.
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
- Proverbs 22:6
I was trained as a child to be a weapon. My first memories are of violence. I watched a man shot and bleed to death on the street a few feet away from me before I was 4 years old. At 3 years old, a rival gang put a hit out on me to teach my father a lesson and the attack upon my mother and I was brutal. My father viciously beat my mother in our home. My mother's father worked for organized crime, and confessed his violent sins as he died of Alzheimer's many years later.
My mother took me and my infant sister away from the place where those horrors happened, but never stopped training me. I was denied comfort at every turn. Locked in the bathroom to weep alone at 5 years old. Given chores to do when staying home from school because I was sick with the flue. Emotional abuse heaped upon me during every moment of weakness; called worthless and weak and useless. And this before I was 10 years old.
The message was clear - I am not a human deserving of compassion or love or respect. I exist to carve out from a vicious and violent world a safe space so that others may live as they please. I must be harshly, constantly trained to perform that function well, because it requires that I be as ruthless as the world I am working against.
I defied that purpose when I refused to support my narcissistic, abusive mother as she remarried when I was 21. She activated every emotional timebomb within me that she had planted through years of abuse. She destroyed my psyche and my rationality. Those of you who knew me at that time understand the psychological devastation. I had refused to serve my purpose to her, so she followed through with the threat of existential annihilation.
So began my internal jihad. When I chose at that time not to kill myself, I accepted a long and painful path of constant war within myself. That tension has caused me to achieve extraordinary things, and has at times brought me again to the precipice of ending my life.
In many ways, I have constantly sought out situations where I would be abused emotionally just like I was when I was a child. I have sought out partners who gave me no compassion, who tolerated no weakness, and who treated me as if I were disposable. These partners deserve the scorn they have earned, but I chose them. I am not stupid or blind, and I wanted that in my life.
Violence has never been far from me. I have denied others the compassion and humanity that I was denied, and I have broken bones, beaten others unconscious, and permanently harmed them. I was baptized in blood and trained for this purpose, and it comes as natural to me as breathing. Violence is the life that my whole family and whole world has trained me for. To serve thinking nothing of my own needs, and to think nothing of the needs of the enemy.
I have fought and fought this madness. The tension within has manifested in acute PTSD, at times crippling me because I would not give in to it. It has manifested in chronic pain as the stress from my constant internal struggle ravages my body.
Philosophy. Therapy. Art. International travel. Have these things given me greater leverage in the fight against the instincts that were literally beaten into me, or have they provided the monster within me with even more powerful tools for completing its terrible purpose? How much more effective an enemy would I be with the intellectual training I've received?
Today I am very close to creating an ally of the beast within me. Is this not my purpose? How fulfilling would it be to walk the path prepared for me - the path I was trained to walk?! How satisfying to bathe in blood and fire - to live the life I was prepared for. Parents take heed: your children will eventually seek to walk the path you have prepared them to walk.
For today I wrestle this Herculean beast within me. I do battle within so the violence does not engulf many others. I am writing this so that you know my struggle, and so that I may be understood. Even in this moment of pain and internal violence I am still seeking compassion, and I hate myself for it.