The face of a demon.
“I am haunted by thoughts, strange unnamed visitors from the darker recesses of my mind's cavernous interior. At times I am not sure whose life it is that I am living. Even unsure of just whom it is that is doing this living. There is a torment, an anguish, that permeates my being. Is to live to be condemmned to suffer this way, within tall walls of existential dread? Or might I awaken to find out that all of this has been but a dream; if so, do I dare awaken? And if I do, what shall I find?”
I wrote that a couple of years ago when I first was called to bring the Worlds of Atria to light, here, in this place. I didn't recognize or understand the forces acting on me. I still don't; at least not well. I fought these forces heavily. But I am no match for them. I hadn't been ready to be awake again. But awakening doesn't seem to be by my choice.
As the veils of sleep slipt one by one and sight of the real world returned, I became overwhelmed by the discordance between my notion of what I should do and the work that I was being called to do. And from that, I suffered the taunts of the demons. But I have decided to have should conform to the call -- for the first time in my life. The demons are mostly quiet now.
I am giving up, as best as I can, ego. It gets in the way. Terribly. Perhaps most debilitating is the fact that ego can not pursue great truths. Which I do (pursue great truths). And so I have guillotined my ego, and with it beheaded, I lay my truth bare for all to see. Besides, the truth of me isn't as important as the truth of them and the words of The Worlds of Atria.
But still you want to know: “Who do I think I am?”
A tortured genius who suffers from Bipolar Disorder (Type II - the ups are hypo, not full-blown manias; the downs are miserable but not dangerous); sure, a label -- but useful. Because once labeled, acceptance seems easier. Like Ahmenar, I see my "afflication" as a gift, for it enables me to do well what I have been called to do; my eyes are open to what we otherwise deny instinctively: the pain and misery in the world, and I feel more deeply than even the word “empathy” implies in those times. Why do I disclose this? because I despise the way our society sweeps under the rug, so to speak, the truths of human existence, leaving so very many distrusting of themselves and unsure of the validity of their experience of reality. Coping with my reality is my cross to bear: I hang flapping in the ethereal winds of the Internet, nailed to a silicon cross by long spikes of spoken truth, dripping the words of my reality which accumulate in pools reflecting the bright light of the blinding sun.
As for my past, whatever is relevant to my purpose was already presented.
As for my present, I am here.
As for my future, I, like K’me K’ea, am here for you. And you. And you.
