Confession

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

Is that how that goes? I’ve never really done this before, I’m not a religious man by nature. It’s just that I have a problem that’s been eating away at me, and I didn’t know where to go, to whom to go, with it. I need a confidant, a little comfort, somebody to talk to, otherwise it will consume me, body and soul, leaving nothing in its wake but ashes.

So I came here. Is that selfish of me? That I’d co-opt one of your holy sacraments for my own personal catharsis?

It’s not?

Thank you, I appreciate how open you’re being about all this, you don’t even know me, I’m not a part of your faith and yet, as I come to you in need, you accept me for what I am, don’t ever think I don’t appreciate it.

But I’ve gotten off track.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

It has been four hours since I ate a ghost pepper burrito.

I had it at a place here in town, it’s new there, it promised to “Terrorize My Tongue”, and I couldn’t resist it’s allure.

I’m that kind of person, the guy who wants something more, something better and bigger and brighter. The guy who puts hot sauce on everything. I thought I could handle it, so I treated myself.

Because I deserve nice things.

But now…

But now…

Oh merciful God, but now…

The burrito, even hours later, feels like it sits in the pit of my stomach, turning my entire digestive tract into an inferno. My tongue, long since destroyed, hurts even as I form the words I’m speaking to you, and I am sweating hot sauce. Absolutely sweating it. I’d offer to let you lick me and see for yourself, but you’re a priest and that would be weird, but trust me, it burns.

My sweat burns.

My actual sweat burns.

And I don’t even want to talk about my last bowel movement.

I am being punished, I know, for my hubris, that I might once have thought that I could handle this burrito, that the universe, that Yahweh or Allah or Ba’al or whoever, might punish me for thinking myself the master of its creation.

It was a very spicy burrito, is what I’m saying.

More burrito than I could handle.

I understand this, and I am sorry. So deeply, deeply sorry. I am not, as I said, a religious man, but I will prostrate myself before whatever deity might grant me salvation from what I am going through. I will, with joy in my heart and a smile on my face, embrace whatever God might give me even a little reprieve from what I’m going through. This is my darkest hour, my bleakest, most painful moment, and I will do anything, say anything and believe anything to have my suffering end.

I am not trying to bargain, I am merely asking “help me”. Help me in my hour of need.

What?

What do you mean, I’m not taking this seriously? I’m coming to you in need!

What? No, I’m not cheapening anything!

Fine.

Fine, I’ll leave. But in my hour of need you have turned me out, and I hope that you can make your peace with your conscience on that one.

Because I’ll be out there, suffering, wanting a moment of peace that you’ve denied me, and while you’re sitting here, smug in your self-satisfaction at having turned me out, I will be facing a worse fate than you could possibly imagine.

I’ll be interacting with REALLY spicy Mexican food.

And all I wanted was a little comfort.

Someone to reach out to.

Someone to ask for hope.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost Pepper…

My Truest Self

I took all my emotional pain, the suffering and the heartache, the self-loathing and the little cuts and bruises of the soul that a lifetime can inflict, and I swallowed them, pushing them down, way down, down as far as they would go, to the very bottom of me, all the way down to my feet.

And then I cut off my feet.

I did it as part of an elaborate performance art piece about the nature of human emotional suffering, as a statement about our tendency to avoid facing our troubles even when doing so was to our obvious detriment, about how we here in the twenty-first century are more willing to destroy ourselves utterly, to lose vital parts of our core being, than we are to face the fact that yes, life can be hard, and yes, it can hurt.

And it was a massive success.

 The night itself was sold out, and the reviews were uniformly excellent. “He left blood on the stage, and the crowd went wild…” read one particularly strong notice. I couldn’t have been more pleased. And, having no more emotional pain to taint my creative victories, I could finally properly enjoy my artistic success.

It was wonderful. And, for a brief period, I was happy.

Six months later, as a follow up piece, I cut my legs off at the knees. It was widely agreed that this was dull and derivative, and in hindsight it probably was. But it was all I could think to do. I’m not the artist I pretend to be, I suppose, and I couldn’t come up with anything genuinely new.

I had one meaningful moment, though. One statement worth making.

Maybe one day I’ll have another.

Or maybe I only ever had the one in me, and the rest of my life will be spent in slogging mediocrity, struggling in failed attempt after failed attempt to recapture my one long-passed moment of creative relevance.

There are moments when this notion haunts me, when it keeps me up at night, when it fills me with blind, helpless, hopeless panic that I fear will overwhelm me.

And when it does, I take that emotional pain, that suffering and heartache and self-loathing, and I swallowed it, pushing it down, way down, down as far as it can go, to the very bottom of me.

But, no longer having feet, I find I have nowhere to put it…

Challenges

Challenges are how we grow.

Oh, nobody likes to suffer, nobody likes pain, nobody likes problems, but it’s the way we face these things that define who we are, and as such suffering, pain and problems are things we need even when we don’t want them.

Into every life, after all, a little rain must fall.

And once we get to the end of our hopefully full, rich lives, it won’t be the easy times we remember. It will be the troubles, and how we overcame them…

…which is why, unlikely though it might seem, one day you’ll thank me.

Perspective(tm)

Pain.

Pain beyond imagining, every nerve in my body aflame, I was torn apart, cell by cell, and conscious of every moment.

But more than pain, there was hopelessness, the knowledge that as my every aspect disintegrated, I was powerless to prevent it.

In the end, I was nothing but suffering and lucid consciousness of that suffering.

Hands trembling, I removed the VR headset. The experience’d been the most horrible thing I’d ever known, but the salesman was right, it’d put my real-life problems in perspective.

Sounding broken and hoarse, verging on tears, I voiced my decision.

“I’ll take it.”