Illumination comes so hard
Makes me see but it leaves its scars
And at times I wish I didn't know what I know now
I've thought and thought until I lost my mind
Looked and looked until I went near blind
The path is fair but so unkind
Illumination
Illumination, Rollins Band
Who or what am I?
The first memory I have is one of agony. I can no longer recall exactly what it meant to be whole. I was brought to the very bottom of existence, where only the faintest sliver of light that is life could be found. I rose from those depths by clutching to the only thing that could bear my weight – hate.
It came to the point where hate was the only thing I could feel. My fury seemed so righteous, a very simple equation. There was I who had been wronged and those who had done this to me. To balance the equation, I had only to deliver upon them what they had unto me. It was so simple and so wrong.
At first, it felt good to strike out at them. It was such a wonderful feeling to not be the weak one, to not be overpowered. The release of such fury is such a thrill! Until, that is, you see the look on the other guy's face. You see the pain and you see the confusion. You see the terror of someone who knows that something has just ended and there's nothing that can be done about it. You see your own face looking back at you and that's when you know that you didn't win this fight, but neither did the other guy. Despair won.
At that point I would have liked to have stopped, but there was nothing else for me. If rage is the only thing keeping you alive, how can you cast it aside? It would have been easier for me to rip my own heart out, but the irony of the situation was that I no longer seemed to have one.
So I just kept going. There was nothing else for me to do with myself. That evil voice in my head prodded me onward, kept me on the path that only it could benefit from. I didn't trust it, but I could see that it made a kind of sense. Everyone that I came across had or could hurt me in some way. The only way I could defend myself against them would be to get them before they got to me.
The flaw in this way of thinking became apparent, however. It became very clear the moment I reached the end of the path I was following. I stood there in front of the last person who could affect me – the one person who posed the greatest threat. The battle of wills was rough, but I knew it just as well as he did.
To me, he was nothing more that a soulless vampire bent on conquest. Everything to him was so black or white. You were with him or against him, no compromise. Anyone that disagreed with him threatened him. Anyone who threatened him, he eliminated. The reason I hated him so much was because I knew that I was so capable of becoming just like him.
And so I had.
What do you do when you realize that you have become the thing you hate? Especially when hate itself is the only thing you gain strength from? To continue to exist in such a fashion is a paradox of belief. I had been physically destroyed by others, but my will to survive carried on. Yet when my will becomes destroyed by my own hand, what then?
Before I could sink further into the mired existence of despair, I found a new strength. Hate was such an easy crutch to lean against, but I began to see that hope can allow you to stand on your own. I did not have much of it, but even a little was enough to allow me to walk another path.
Can the past be changed? Perhaps, but if the soul is timeless, maybe in changing who we are now we can affect the pain of the past. I clutched onto this idea with such ferocity that it became my new strength. My hate drained away as I continued down this path, seeking a goal that I had no way of knowing if it was truly achievable.
I found myself with an ideal. I had a vision of a greater person, someone with honor and virtue. He was someone who had something to live for, someone who looked with kind eyes upon a world that he loved. He would be strong enough to defend his beliefs but open enough to accept other possibilities. I wanted to see this vision in others just as much as I wanted to see it in myself.
I came so close to attaining this dream when my past came back to harm me. Was it karma, I wonder? Was it the harm I had done to others coming back upon me? I don't know. All I know is that my hate returned like a flame that had so long been deprived of fuel that it exploded back into furious life.
I was so blinded by anger that I cared not what I did. If I had to tear down everything good in my life to kill what I despised, so be it. History repeated itself, chaining me to the sword I carried in my hand. Revenge lured me, but hate entrapped me. A victim of my own cyclic demise, I had lost everything and now my very life had reached the breaking point. Irony once again visited me as I was saved by the only friend I had – the one I had hated for so long.
When the hate was gone and my mind returned, I realized the mess that I had made of everything. If I had not been so blind, I could have prevented the past events. If I had not been so simple minded, I could have worked everything out and I would not have been thrown back down to the zero point. Yet, there I was.
There was only one thing for me to do. I had to try to find that vision again. Gratefully, I had that to live for. Unfortunately, it was not an easy path. I knew what I needed and if anyone stood in my way, they would suffer. One stood in my path and I could not listen to reason. I committed a crime against my friend and found my treasure to be flawed. I did find my vision, but I realized that it was no longer an ideal, but a dream of the past and carried no weight.
It was then that I made the change. I realized what it meant to live in fear, for that was what I had been doing. The whole time I thought I was being strong, leaning on whatever I could to survive, I was actually running from myself. I was so afraid to look backward that I unflinchingly stared ever forward, all the while denying where I was or what I was doing.
That's when I realized that if you are going to have anything to live for in life, you have to accept that you may one day lose it. Happiness is a gift, one to be cherished when you have it and remembered when it is gone. To love, you have to give of yourself freely without clutching so tightly that you kill the object of your affection. To live free, you must not bind yourself.
Finally, I felt whole. I had lost everything and in doing so, I gained everything. But the greatest irony was that to truly realize my freedom, I had to become a slave. However, in learning my freedom, the bonds of slavery disappeared and I knew what I had to do. My solitary path had reached its conclusion. I could not change my past, nor would I want to, for my past led me to this point.
I had realized my dream and had become my vision. But there was one more thing that I could do. It was not for me, but for another. I could share my vision and be the strength for one who is so like me.
No, I can not change the past. But I can hope for the future.