Pale Fragments

best thing i will ever do

Xadrin's suicide note continued from Anders' compilation:

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"I have been told so many times in my life that pain is a good thing: a teacher, a guide, proof of your self-control and total focus. But we only say those things because we think there isn't an alternative; pain has been a necessity, an unavoidability; and so we develop myths around why pain is actually a good thing. We have to create meaning in our pain, or the pain would be unbearable. Perhaps some of the things they say about pain are actually true; perhaps they've become that way. But what if we could remove pain? Talking to the missionaries was the best thing I will ever do in my life."

This is a testimonial from a pamphlet given out by a popular sect of the Church of the River. Most of the people I've talked to from that sect would just regurgitate their lines from the pamphlet. And then they would always shamelessly give it to me at the beginning of our discussion! As if saying that I was too stupid to know how to follow a conversation.

But not all of them were like this. As with any religion, there are those who have pamphlets for brains; and there are others who teach you something true through the belief in their story and prophet. And though they might not have seen it, it was the conduit of the stories which really taught them something about life.

I would listen to these missionaries as they came to my door in the first few years of the explosion of their popularity. I would humor them, and to tell you the truth I did it to convince myself that I believed in being alive. These weren't smart people; they were desperate people and looking for a justification for the end of their pain. I could see that desperation in them, and I took them in to try and show them that life was okay, life was okay and so was pain. We all cling desperately to the power over our lives; to feel like we know what's going on, to feel safe. And this is what I told myself in justification for their idolatry. Then after that first wave of popularity, a different kind of missionary came to me. I was scared of them at first. They spoke words which felt like truth to me, a truth I didn't want to hear.

They came during the summer of last year in the middle of the big heatwave. The AC in my apartment was broken. The AC in my car was broken. Then the coolant tank was leaking everywhere; I bought a twenty-dollar keg of it and poured all but a fifth of it into my car. "She's thirsty," I said to Jesse (who loves cars and him helping me fix mine is one of three ways we bond). "It's all going straight to the engine. Hardly even filling the tank."

Then I heard the dripping. I looked under the car and I felt as if a boyhood dog was looking me in the eye as he pisses all over a pile of clean clothes.

So my car was broken and it physically felt as though I was living, immortal, trapped in Hellfire. I could hardly sleep. It wasn't like Meshack and those other two with the hard names from the Old Testament; there were no angels to shield me from the heat.

Not until these two missionaries knocked on my door.