After the Easter '04 Event

[Barry]

The darkness that began to consume my soul on that day, when you wrapped your fingers round hers on the hilt of the knife, and together the two of you enacted my betrayal, the final, fateful stabbing in the back that would fully and completely undo me for all time – that darkness seems it will never end nor be complete.

The way you sold me down that river, when you asked me to go along with her plan because she had now decided this was right, the way to go, the right thing to do, as if all you and I had shared up to that point had been wrong, a fake, a ruse, as if all along I had been played like a fish, our marriage only a step toward victory, a mission to complete, our love never anything more than a fiction, a story being told on high, as if my loving you all those years had been some kind of mistake on my part – proof that I was only a fool.

I saw nothing but darkness, as I stood on the beach, posing for a photograph only you could take, that day we spent together soon afterward, after it all came apart, the failed attempt, after you chose to stay with me, having chosen first to go with her, asked me to sell my soul for you, which I did with a will – I saw nothing but darkness coming down, coming soon, as I stood firm and resolute in the oblique rays of the going down sun.

I asked myself how I might unmake this doom; how I might repair this damage, rectify this mistake, this misjudgment, this horrendously heinous error of inaction and ineptitude, this hateful crime of dispassionate passion.

And I received no answers in the light coming though the dark filters over my eyes, the shields covering my mind from the glare, no answers in the angle of those rays, the pounding surf behind my right shoulder, no answers in the sad, sorrowful silence that surrounded you, surrounded us, as we struggled to be a couple again.

And like that, I gave in to the darkness, let it overcome me; subsume my soul – why not? I reasoned, all resistance having ultimately been futility, all discipline having been nothing but foolishness, producing nothing ever but ruin.

I let myself go, stopped hanging on, stopped trying so hard to hang on and just let myself go, let myself fall, as far and as fast as I would, as I could, as fast as gravity would carry me – all the way to the bottom of the well, to the ground, the ground of all being.

A self-imposed death in full public view, like suicide by cop, like Jesus on the cross, like jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge – all because I had the nerve, the audacity to love you and her, too – and because neither of you ever loved me enough, not one iota enough, to simply not take up the knife.

Because it was never anything more than a mission to complete, a step toward victory, a battle in a war, a campaign – because never was it real, honest, actual true love but only the will to possess and be possessed on the part of you both, while I loved and went along and suffered, allowed my own sad doom to unfold, allowed you two to believe you were winning, while I wished desperately for some magic, some way to save you both – to save you from losing what neither of you understood, nor I while I was with you, was always within our grasp all along . . .

Redemption
The repudiation of our suffering
Love.

(written 12/2/06...I'm over it now.)

[bennie2]

at least you felt it, man.

thanks for posting.

[Barry]

Thank you so much for reading this. Means a lot to me.

Peace,
Barry

[mudshark]

Pain does its magic.
very nice.

[Barry]

Indeed, dude. Ten years of pain and magic.

Five years getting there,
One year in hell,
Four years climbing back out.

Thanks.

Peace,
Barry