Letter to a fellow tortured heart

Dear J,

So, I’m in a writing mood, so I thought I’d write what’s on my mind.

As I mentioned to you earlier on the phone, our problems, and struggles with women can be directly tied to our selfish mothers. Because they were on their own planets, they were disconnected from reality, and thus disconnected from people. We never had the sublime experience of being loved by a mother, and thus could never transmute that love into being worthy of the desire for it in the first place. Somehow we felt small, unworthy, and pathetic for even wanting that love in the first place. Love was not something to be desired. It was to be questioned, analyzed, probed, and scrutinized to determine if it was authentic. We never really knew what that authentic love looked like and we felt ridiculous for even desiring it in the first place.

The word desire is an interesting one. It comes from old French — and French is a combination of Latin, Greek, and Gaelic — and its form is as follows:

de sidere, literally “from the stars”

The implication is quite a powerful one. What we desire naturally comes out of the reality that what satisfies us comes from outside ourselves, in that murky realm where the celestial heavens rotate around us from our view on the ground. We see these heavenly bodies gently float through time, across the night sky, where our dreams are born and mature in our hearts, the womb of our soul — in darkness and in secret.

It is thus natural to desire. We were taught that desire is not only unnatural but something to be purged, for who wants to be a selfish motherfucker? This is one reason why we never snagged the women we were truly worthy of. After all, if desire is a bad thing, and we’ve seen what happens when selfish people indulge desire the wrong way, what use is it?

I remember telling you that in a way you were like Arthur before he pulled the sword from the stone. He had a divine destiny, but he wasn’t aware of it until the powers of Excalibur infused his mind with a realm of possibility. His hand gripped the hilt and thus a new future was born. What was his desire? At the time, well, just get a damn sword! Something magical happens when we grab onto the hilt of destiny, and no one knows when their own sword in the stone appears before them.

And thus Christ pierces us our heart with a sword, just as Mary’s was pierced. Nepenthe in Big Sur was named after the term penthos, which in Greek translates to mourning, but its literal translation means “to pierce.” The piercing makes a wound where the Holy Spirit can get in there and do the surgery we cannot do on ourselves. Are we heart surgeons? Nope! Will we ever be? Nope. And thus Christ makes a connection with us through our pain, suffering, disappointment, sorrow, betrayals, hurt — all things He knows quite well. He is the supreme empathetic soul that understands our pain and suffering better than we do and is better equipped to heal it.

Human love cannot accomplish this healing in any way. No woman on the planet or that ever existed — no matter how gorgeous, refined, beautiful — can heal this pain. We may think we see glimpses of the Divine at work through these women, but all they point to is what God has created. We may get mesmerized by their beauty, but their beauty cannot heal us. For our pain is not knowing what it means to be truly vulnerable and loved in that state of vulnerability.

And so we’ll never allow a single woman on the planet into those dark places where there’s a version of us crying in the darkness. Only Christ can get to us there because He is already there. The trick is acknowledging His presence within us, that He is there suffering with us as we endure this pain. That wound where the Holy Spirit can get in and infuse us is waiting to be used by Christ, as He is the Supreme Healer. The Holy Spirit is His tool, for it is the bond of communion love — each living in the other and being co-constituted in the other. Our bonds with our mothers were supposed to give us this foundation as children, but we never got it.

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The compassion of the Healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart

Instead, we learned fear, anger, rage, and defensiveness. We used mental and at times physical violence to intimidate souls into submission. My Dad calls it my Lord Vader side. I imagine it in me as the Hulk wearing Darth Vader’s helmet. I have a statue of the Hulk right by my computer to remind me my dark side is extremely scary and full of rage. I’ve rendered my father, mother, and ex-wife to tears just through words alone. The psychological carnage I’ve inflicted is far worse than any physical wound. God forgive me…

I don’t want to be that guy, you see. It’s why I never became a lawyer. I would have destroyed and smashed all. I’ve won all my legal battles with motherfuckers. You should see me in action. It’s glorious. But that’s my narcissistic glory being fueled and it’s dangerous as all hell. I am convicted by my own rage and pride…

Is it any surprise we have chosen women who remind us of our mother in the attempt to solve the enigma of love? They’re like puzzles, bits of broken clay, waiting to be rearranged and shaped in our image of what a mother should be. Is it any surprise we have failed in this regard?

However, my dear friend — take solace and joy you have shaped a human being, your daughter, in your image. You have created something I have never been able to create. Have some joy that the investment of your heart and soul created a being such as her. Her husband is a supremely lucky man and is worthy of her.

If life were to end tomorrow, the only regret I have is that I did not have children.

And so, I will close with the last stanza of T.S. Elliot’s Four Quartets:

All will be well
And all manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one

Hope, Faith, and Love, my friend.

M