The benefits of violence

Violence narrows the boundaries between life and death and makes them seem more permeable.

When I came to Australia at 15  I had a different culture in me.   I found it very, very stressful to understand here.  People assumed I wanted to fit in, or promote my ego or something like that, but I hadn't even made the most preliminary steps in that direction, nor did it seem logical to do so.   I really found, aesthetically, the situation here was too plastic and pretend.  I still find modernity to be extremely jarring and repulsive in the sense of suddenly dropping a trap door under you.   I can't imagine how people could like that or even get along with it as if it were normal. 

I had a bubble in me that was extreme rage and sadness, but primarily rage.   My father felt he had been defeated in battle, which is why we were migrating, and he hated anyone that reminded him of his defeat.  I reminded him, because I seemed, myself, defeated.  Also he didn't like women and I was turning into one, it seemed.   Not that I was behaving in any particularly different way, but my body was starting to change slightly and this filled my father with a violent rage.  I really don't know why he hated the female gender so much, but it also probably had something to do with the war and perhaps being told that if the men had not been pussies they would not have lost the war, and lost the country.  Who knows?   His aggression was extreme.  In response, I became very emotionally repressed and did not really experience any negative emotions. 

But I had this bubble in me and it made me extremely weak and fatigued.   I developed chronic fatigue syndrome.  I got multiple allergies to foods and pollen, which only justified my father's rage.  

I eventually got to reading Nietzsche, during a crisis, and understood that somehow I had to express my negativity more fully.   It was an experimental path to health for me.  I was being bullied heavily in the workplace at this time, which had a lot to do with being out of my depth socially, politically and emotionally.

I was becoming more distressed due to my own experiences, and I finally understood the depth of my rage which had been making me sick.   It was white hot and I thought I could actually kill people.  

But the bubble has eventually gone, over ten or fifteen years.  I was extremely hostile during this time, but for the purpose of digging through to what was in me and expressing it.  

And now I've gone through all that process and I'm thriving pretty much physically, although mentally I am a little fraught from all the battles I have had with myself in terms of trying to adapt to modernity, when I cannot.  You see, I still don't like it, although I am starting to understand what it is and why I don't like the kind of behavior people now consider normal.  It seems lacking in sentiment and proper care and depth.  So I understand this and I cope with it through the shamanic principle of "not doing", not responding, just letting everything fall where it does.   My nerves are a little bit ragged but they are improving as I start to understand that I will not adapt to some things and have chosen not to make the effort, come what may.   It's not that there is something wrong with me, but my mentality is different from those who expect a highly regulated environment and want nothing more than that.  I actually want and need the opposite.  To have developed the capability of living in the moment but not to use it seems a waste.