Damn...Just...Damn

This is a very odd post for me to write, but I don't want to bore my friends with my thoughts on the matter, so I'm posting them here.

I finished my work that absolutely had to be done ASAP yesterday, and I've been rewarding myself by screwing around and doing a whole lot of nothing today.

Well, I was sitting here playing Neopets (shut up) when my mother called. She was calling to say that my second cousin? third cousin? something? hung himself today.

I'm a little shell-shocked.

First of all, let me just say that we weren't close. So if you happen to be reading this, please don't feel any sympathy for me. Feel it for his family instead.

On the other hand, I'm a lot more shaken over it than I should be, considering I saw him maybe once or twice in my life and wouldn't know him if I'd passed him on the street.

I'm sorry that he's gone. I'm sorry for his family who's already suffered so much--his 15-year-old daughter was killed in a car accident shortly before Christmas. I'm sorry for the pain that he felt that drove him to do this. It takes some balls to hang yourself, after all. It's not a "cry for help" like slitting your wrists. If you hang yourself, you truly wanted to go. I'm sorry for all that.

But what bothers me the most--and I would never say this to anyone because I don't want to make someone else's loss about me--is seeing how the old demons affect all of us.

He was related to me on my mother's side. You know, the side where the crazy comes from. Now that he's gone, people will think he killed himself because his daughter died (spoiler: he didn't; it's never that simple), or they'll say things like they don't understand why he did it, blah, blah. Those people are all dicks.

I've stood on that same precipice that he stood on this morning (or whenever it was). I had the same demons screaming in my ear, telling me that all hope was gone, pushing me toward the edge. I've looked into the abyss and had the abyss look back at me. And literally the only difference between him and me is that when he looked into it, he didn't find anything there to hold him back. That's it. That's the only difference.

It's sad to me that so many of us, so many on the Tapley side of the family, are so sick. The demons infect all of our minds. Some of us have more of them than others. But the genetic dice just don't roll 7s for any of us. It's gone on for at least 5 generations, and even as the bloodline is diluted, it's still not enough to exorcise them. There are so many who have drunk themselves to death, so many who are strung out on drugs, so many who are in jail (which is where he hung himself, actually), so many who are too ill to function in society. And you know what? There but for the grace of God go I.

To my knowledge, I am one of the few--and perhaps the only--one of us who's medicated. But who's to say that someday, when I'm in my 40s, physically and mentally sick, poor, and all alone in the world, perhaps on one of those late autumn nights that make my demons speak so loudly and so seductively, I won't look into the abyss myself and find absolutely to nothing save me and then simply step off into eternity?

I don't mourn for myself, but for all of those who did nothing but be born into the genetic cesspool that is my family. In our cases, it's not a matter of having a couple of screwy black sheep or a few who went wrong somewhere. We're all sick, all dysfunctional, all fundamentally broken. There are too many of us who are fucked up in the exact same ways for it to be some sort of coincidence. We are ill because we were born this way. Even if I wanted children, I wouldn't have them because what kind of horrible person would knowingly pass this curse on to a child?

I look at my cousin (my only first cousin, or, more accurately, the only one I semi-claim). He was an alcoholic by the time he was 15 years old. They covered for him, of course. They're Baptists to the core, after all. Then, I think of his kid. The little girl's not even a year old yet, and even though she doesn't know it and won't know it for a long time, she's cursed. She'll carry her own demons for the rest of her life, for no other reason than because she had the misfortune of being born with genetic crazy. And when I think about that, when I think about a poor little child who didn't ask to be here, being forced to live with this curse, I have to truly ask the Universe if there really is a benevolent God. What kind of God would allow that?

Slight tangent: At my great-uncle's funeral last week, two different preachers spoke. They talked about God and Jesus and Heaven and all the things preachers say at funerals. And I sat there, stewing in absolute agony because I'm an empathic sponge who soaks up the emotions of everyone around me and internally intensifies them tenfold. Hell, I wasn't even particularly close to the man, and I probably cried more than anybody there because I feeling my own nebulous, vague feelings of sadness and then the pain of everyone else in the room, times ten. But I digress.

As I sat there, listening to those preachers and trying to distract myself by discreetly watching the other people in the chapel, I was struck by how many people seemed to sincerely believe what was being said. I envy those people. I wish I could just simply...believe. But I can't. I'm plagued with doubts and fears, and, ultimately, I don't believe it's healthy to be as narrow-minded and intolerant as those who buy into everything they're told lock, stock, and barrel tend to be. But in my darkest hours, I do wish that I could be so unshakeable in my beliefs that I could cling to them in spite of everything the way that other people do.

But it's not that easy for me. It never has been. I have too many questions.

I do believe that there is something greater than we are. There is something else out there. I'm almost certain. But what is it? I can't really go any farther than that.

I can't believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-benevolent God. I've seen too many things to think that God can be all those things. I've stood at the crossroads in the darkest hour of the night with demons whispering in my ear, the crossroads where the only choices are life and death. I've cried out to God to help me and gotten no answer. I've reached out to other people--the people I loved most in the world--and begged them to help me because I didn't want to die but I couldn't hold the demons off myself any longer. And I watched while those people turned away and left me to figure it out for myself. I've known beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I died, there was not one single solitary soul in the world who would give a shit one way or the other. And my suffering pales in comparison to others'. How anyone can look around and see all this and still believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-benevolent God is a mystery to me.

But I do know that there's something out there, some sort of higher consciousness, something that we're evolving toward. I believe in reincarnation. I believe that there are people in the world we're connected to, whether we like it or not. I've seen too much in my life *not* to believe in these things. I even believe that, ultimately, Jesus and Buddha and Krishna and others were all the same person, the same soul, appearing to different people in different times to show them what they needed to see. But can I believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-benevolent God? No. No. I just...can't. I envy those who can, but I don't have the ability.

The most satisfying explanation I've been able to find is that God is all-benevolent, but not all-powerful and not necessarily even all-knowing. That's not to say he/she/it is not a powerful being. Certainly, he/she/it is more powerful than all humans that ever were combined. He/she/it is just not powerful enough to help all of us, all the time, and that's why we're supposed to help each other and, in some cases, ourselves. But even that doesn't completely satisfy me. I think I'll be searching for the truth my whole life, which, in some ways, is better than unquestioning acceptance. Much harder, yes, but perhaps better.

If certain branches of Hinduism are believed, our souls choose our incarnations and that the choices we make influences the experience we have in each of our lives and that those experiences are what ultimately lead us to God. I've often thought that if that were true, then I must've been a moron to choose the life I live. But perhaps I chose it because it's the path of the seeker. Perhaps if I hadn't gone through all the things I've gone through, I either wouldn't believe at all or I'd just swallow whatever my preacher told me, hook, line, and sinker. Then, I would never have found the path that, maybe, will lead me toward God.

Or maybe it's all just a bunch of bullshit, and we'll be nothing more than worm food when we die. I don't know.

Rest in peace, cousin. You deserved a hell of a lot better hand than you were dealt in this life. Maybe you'll get a royal flush next go-round.