My destabilizing desire to understand everything is my original sin. I can’t accept the Not Knowing. I might put The Void out of my mind for periods of time in order to survive, but I never feel truly alive without it.
The question of what exactly is going on here (on this Earth, in this universe, in my body) is the center of my obsessive thinking. It is my illumination. I should have been a scientist or a philosopher, perhaps, but instead I am just a person, thinking and thinking and thinking.
When I try to imagine The Answer, I see a bright orb surrounded by darkness; then, in an instant, everything disappears and a blank, white space appears in its place. I’m afraid of the dark, but in those moments I feel more afraid of the light.
I won’t bring up the stained glass window again, or the vision I had, or me crying alone in bed at night as an 8 year old defeated by the truth of existence. But I will speak again of my overwhelming need to pick at every detail. I will speak of that original sin that sits inside of me, that greedy desire that makes me feel like a plague upon this universe.
I can feel it all inside of me, waiting to burst out and then be sucked back in. I glow like a burning star on its death bed.
When I get close to an answer, I feel euphoric. Then I lose it, and I wilt. Maybe God revoked my ability to understand science to balance the scales. If I could explain my vision through mathematical equations, the implosion might begin.
But maybe my medium of choice is more dangerous in the grand scheme of things. If I can secrete this knowledge through words…well what if the light shines through?Â
It took me a long time to realize that writing was my science, my method for understanding. With so many thoughts bouncing around in my head, they are difficult to latch onto or make sense of. But if I write them down, make them stationary, I can track them like data points. I can begin the work of separating Truth from Untruth.
My sentences are a test of the whole. I push back against each one, interrogating its validity. Does this fit with everything I know about existence? Do I know anything about existence? The results are not usually clear, but I keep writing.Â
Every thought I’ve ever had has been written out endlessly, in different formulations. Like a shattered mirror, I am left surrounded by broken reflections of a single image.
But I continue observing. Sometimes, I begin to see something more complete appearing before me on the page. I get so close to answers while scribbling words on paper. Aha! My midnight revelations leave me in a state of euphoria.
But then I step back, return in the morning, and suddenly my sentences look like nothing more than a jumble of numbers and esoteric symbols. In my heightened state of obsession, I have created broken equations devoid of meaning. A sobering reminder that Truth and what-feels-like-truth are not the same thing.Â
I sit down to create a new sentence, a fresh combination of letters and symbols. I continue testing my hypothesis: that there is something within me that needs to be brought to light.Â
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