The Labyrinth
12:04
It was his childhood home, left bare, skeletal almost - a distant memory of when it was once filled, first by his brothers and sisters, then by his children and wife, until it wasn't and couldn't be any longer.
The last ride he took before he laid on a bed at the Urology ward of the public hospital in which he died, was one he took alone, aided and comforted by none, other than my mothers' voice in a telephone call, promising she would find a way to reach him as soon as she could.
For as much as I could tell, this was always his life, isolated, stripped back and one of turmoil.
He was on one hand, an intelligent man, well read, contemplating on a multitude of philosophies simultaneously. He believed in God, a vicious and terrible being of kindness, forgiveness and mercy. He was a talented artist, his books filled with haphazard sketches. In his youth, he sought knowledge, tracing overgrown grave stones through the history books.
There was hardly a thing you could mention that he was not well read on.
On the other hand, he seemed to resent this in himself.
He fought against compliments with true conviction, as if it were irrelevant, or irreconcilable that he was a person full of potential, bursting, but never manifest.
Perhaps there was a greater deal of self loathing we knew nothing about.
He often spoke of addiction and deliverance, grand epiphanies that lead to salvation, and then redemption.
But where did the root start to grow?
Was reality so harsh a sensory nightmare, that it drove within him a chasm of despair, so deep that nothing, no matter how large, how solid, how real, could begin to fill it?
Did he hate himself?
And how do you, with such potential, end up losing so much in the end?
Is simply having it not enough? Does God simply choose who to punish and who to spare?
Is my blood not enough? Was his?
Which is why at 2.a.m. I lie awake, my body is exhausted but my mind weaponised against me.
I grieve then for myself, for I am without some part of myself and live in constant, constant, constant, fear that I too will one day be trapped on a conveyor belt, bound and unable to escape.
Simon Bolivar of his suffering wrote, “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth." They were in fact his last words.
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