Thank God it wasn’t me!

I’m glad it happened to

someone else, not me

tragedy is almost pleasurable

if it happens to your neighbor

makes you realize how lucky you are

newspaper articles highlight misfortune

car crashes, murder, domestic violence

Thank God it wasn’t me!

My friend lost his job or

Got downsized or was fired

Thank God it wasn’t me!

She slipped on an icy sidewalk

Broke her collarbone

Couldn’t work for a month

Thank God it wasn’t me

Her husband left her for

Someone else who had more allure

Thank God it wasn’t me

Tragedy would be much less pleasurable

If it was me. Thank God, it’s not.

She is always in crisis

Some terrible thing is always

Happening to her.

Even when it's not her crisis,

She'll make it hers.

"Do you know how this hurts me?"

Her words when she found out

About my pending divorce.

She appears to be on death's door.

She pretends to be sick,

And in pain.

That's to get drugs from doctors

And keep my dad off her back.

Everything is exaggerated with her.

Overly dramatic 24/7.

A recent tragedy for her -

My brother won't drive her to the salon.

Broken-hearted tears followed

All afternoon.

Until my father comforts her.

Scolds little brother for

Making her cry.

Little brother apologizes.

Just to make her shut up.

My mother loves tragedy,

She seeks out new tragedies,

She will plan and create tragedy,

She will steal your tragedy.

She has nothing else to talk about.

She thinks no one will pay attention

Unless she is in the midst of tragedy.

News flash, Mom -

No one is paying attention to you

Anyway.

I think people create tragedies

It gives them something

To look forward to

A landmark in the ever-repeating and boring landscape

Of their lives

It's selfish

So, so selfish

But sometimes

People create tragedies

For themselves

It gets the attention

Loving care

From someone

Anyone

Who will listen

It sounds horrible

I know

But when you're so starved of affection

And you feel the empty void

Of loneliness inside you

You'll do anything

To fill it in

With someone

You're blinded

By the need to feel whole again

But no one ever taught you

That you're not missing pieces and that

You are whole all by yourself

Maybe that missing someone,

The one to fill the void,

Is you.

"FUCK YOU!", she screams at me from our darkened bedroom.

Heart pounding, blood boiling, my face heats with unspoken flame. 

Stomping with heavy, tired feet she closes upon me like prey. Stepping through the threshold, snake-like hiss and venom from fanged teeth escape her mouth agape. The walls surrounding me shake, or are my limbs quaking with emotional strain? Her eyes, wide with hate, absorb her surroundings. I lie unscathed it seems in our bed with my back to her the covers draped upon me exposing a structured brick and mortar wall to block the vibrations of her ever persistent rattling tail.

She retreats to the spare room, slithering away from her failure to demolish my exterior proven impenetrable. I slumber peacefully after my heart has steadied its pace and my lungs fill easily. 

When she wakes me the following morning she settles herself down on the foot of the bed. Words flow thick and sweet gently from her lips like honey pouring from a spoon. She hurts for her transgressions. Her love has again permeated her thickly scaled skin. Apprehensively she creeps toward me on this twin bed, her eyes prodding and pleading for forgiveness and reassurance. Climbing into my open arms she embraces me and I spread my love and energy into her very being. Nestling my head into the warmth of her neck and hair I breathe her. The sweet smell of honeysuckle and vanilla, the candy coated apologies from her tongue an ever raging river, and I smile.

Such abuse from my lover in the wee hours of the morning have again transformed into a golden promise of everlasting love. I have won again, and will continue to win, when she returns from work and in a fury throws her plastic plate of carefully constructed cuisine against a wall. (I have learnt to refrain from purchasing breakable table settings.) My heart will ache and I will ignore my misunderstandings as my slithering serpentess is again molded before my eyes into a high-demand candy crafter. 

[Some] People are equipped better to handle the adversities and the travesties of the world than others.

They, believe it or not  function on a higher level when faced with challenges.

Their minds calculate probable outcomes, and their problems? Solved.

This is where the phase, "Survival of the fittest" come into play.

Maybe they don't know how to digest the good in life. They've become so accustomed to the other side of beautiful.

It could be a mental thing, maybe they feel they don't deserve the fruits of their labor.

And just as quickly they were to receive it, they fear it could taken away just as abruptly.

That, to some, is the worst kind of tragedy.

Then there are those who welcome it,

Only because, the gain at the end?

It's the gold at the end of the rainbow.

It's the reason they get up and try, to fight.

It makes the battle; post smoke, post kill, with the moments where faith was tested.

The moment where questions went unanswered.

It makes it all worth it.

Pretty much, with this world, to each its own. 

Mine eye of mind, beauty is not,

without the pain that is brought.

Brings no cheer, nothing held dear,

if not seen, life's peril and rot.

Can one see beauty, no pain dealt?

No pain in mind? No grief felt?

Or is a loss, life's set cost?

Shows worth of good that has dwelt.

A lover lost. A sunset's end.

Your dreams crushed. Loss of a friend.

Making things bright, what's taken from sight.

Beauty sans pain, cannot lend.

So give me pain, proving beauty.

Offer heart broke, existing in me.

Pain not ploy, robbing joy.

Only a truth, just not free.

Pain is proof, that a thing was more,

than simple mundaneness, knocking at door.

Something was right. Someone brought light.

An experience touched. Shook you to core.

-Angel Fatale-

Tragedy is pleasurable because, at the end of one's rope, when one is utterly out of control and realizes that nothing, truly, is "under control," one finally begins to become comfortable (he/she has no choice!) with and resigned to the basic uncertainty, the basic ambiguity and fundamental groundlessness of being. To be human is to be constantly in flux. Nothing is fixed. Fixed ideas and our egos make us suffer tragedy more intensely than if we accepted our human condition and predilection to change. And when tragedy snaps us out of our comfortable bubbles, our comfort zones, we finally see that our dogmatic beliefs and rigid assumptions, in fact, cause us to suffer more than chaos and the realization that all of life is, indeed, messy and chaotic.

When the bottom falls out, I see with new eyes. The paradox is that when the illusion of being "in control" of things falls away, I realize that there is a weight on my shoulders, a burden, that gets removed.

Not as much of "eat, drink and be merry" as it is the dire urgency to help people, help oneself. If nothing and no one is in control, which is a thought many have when suffering tragedy, then all the more reason to help others as if one's life depended on it. Do what you love. Be who you are. Do what makes you happy (but never at the expense of hurting others), and help others accept and celebrate the human condition.

Even Ram Dass says "we are all just walking each other home."

I lost my faith, in the narrowest sense of the word, and now life feels, or is beginning to feel, that much more meaningful, even if I am the only one who creates that meaning, utterly and completely.

I was scared at first. I am still working things out. But life feels so much more rich and complex and beautiful than it ever did before, when I did good out of obligation, with an agenda to "please God" to get brownie points and "get blessed."

It is more noble to do good with no expectation of anything in return, even from a deity, than it is to do good with ulterior motives.

I am ashamed that it took me so long to realize this. To truly see it in myself.

I woke up one day not believing in God anymore.

I shouldn't say I don't believe in God anymore...I just don't believe in an organized religion's view (Christianity's, at this point) view of God. I believe in a higher consciousness, an energy, a God that, if He is Jesus Christ, is love. And if He is judgment at all, it is a judgment for the things we do that hurt each other and ourselves, NOT because we didn't "believe things the right way" or "respond correctly" to Jesus.

I am a believer, but in REM's way of putting things, have lost my religion.

And I finally feel free. Freer, at least. I am still learning.

We are all, really, just students of life. Perpetual learners.

Student: maybe I will write that on the palm of my hand every morning to remind me.