Here we are, alone together, in this nowhere place. Here, I will tell my story to you, for I have no one else to tell. I cannot keep it inside myself anymore. A memoir carved into the magnetic storage of wherever this information happens to exist. What you see here may seem incredible or mundane, calming or disturbing, sane or insane, but I assure you; everything you read here is a true story, as real as this existence can be. Do try to remember this as we continue, for the story goes quite awry in parts. Even if your belief in this text should waver, I promise it is the truth.
Where are my manners, I should introduce myself, at least as much as I intend to. Anonymity is the only way I could do this. I am a thirty-something man living in the Puget Sound area of Washington. I have a wife of about a decade who is a comparable age to myself. I’m going back to college to build a career in music production. I have an ordinary job on the side. I have few friends but the ones I keep are precious companions I hope to keep lifelong. We have two cats and no children. From the outside looking in, we are quite ordinary.
On the inside it is another thing entirely. I am a peculiar entity, and I have never completely fit in anywhere, ever. Even my small circle of friends isn’t close enough to the real me to open up to. My life has been a series of rejections and abuses, indescribable pain, loneliness, hopelessness, anguish, and even madness. I have had an undiagnosed mental illness for almost 20 years that I am convinced is unresolvable. I have suffered from depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember. I take medications for those but they just turn the volume down, it never goes away, it waits, it builds, it breaks through. The pain of existing is ever-present; it reminds me I am still alive, and sometimes I wish it would all just stop.
My “wife” isn’t any better off, if anything she has it worse. She is bipolar. Medicated, but that almost doesn’t matter, she periodically falls apart anyway. Fits of screaming and hitting herself, episodes of uncontrollable sobbing that can last for hours, often without a reason. Hyper sensitivity to anything and everything. This is just the tip of the iceberg. She has PTSD from all the physical, emotional, and sexual abuses of her past. She has an eating disorder: food addiction. Binging without the purging. She is overweight, diabetic, and lives in chronic pain. She gets disability benefits, she couldn’t hold a job if she wanted to. I seem to attract and be attracted to damaged people, and she is arguably the most damaged of them all. And yet we love each other. Curious, that.
I traded an entire life to be with her, but that wasn’t much of a life to begin with. I’ve never had a real family resembling anything normal. As for the people I happen to be related to, I don’t want anything to do with them. My mother is a know-it-all narcissist with whom I am not currently speaking. My father is incapable of communicating like a normal person, showing emotion or interest, and I couldn’t even begin to interface with that. My brother is autistic and doesn’t get on very well in the world, he and I don’t speak either. My extended family consists of people who operate like a business, real conservative-like, and other people who have never wanted anything to do with me. Despite any appearances to the contrary, I am an island onto myself.
I have always felt the loneliness that brings, and have always been a very sensitive person. Which only compounds all the rejection I suffered whilst growing up. I am the product of many painful and traumatic events, which often were too much to bear. Another person may have come through such things unscathed, but that person isn’t me, you really can’t compare one person’s experience to another. I have loved deeply and hated bitterly, many times, even sometimes at the same time for the same person. My love has been unrequited, becoming a heavy burden, my hate has seethed and festered inside. Any time I think I’m climbing up into the light, I slip and fall again, sliding down the spiral into the dark.
So what is the Riddle of the Spiral? I know you must be curious. What is at the bottom? When the heart screams and the wounds bleed and burn, you know you are almost there. You can almost see it and wonder if you’ll survive when you get there. And then you do. It shatters beneath you like a thin layer of ice, revealing an infinite abyss beyond. That is the answer that few can know: there is no bottom, no limit to the darkness, the anguish and suffering can go on forever. The one who gets that far has only two choices: complete the cycle of self-destruction through death; choose to survive and climb out a different being than you were before.
Somewhere in this memoir I will tell you about when I was there, and what happened next. I haven’t been back down there, I have struggled hard to tread water in this life, to keep from sinking, falling that far ever again. It only gets harder every passing year. I hurt inside still, I slip a little now and then. I’m not that far gone yet…but I can almost see the bottom from here.
The Riddle of the Spiral 