All the Dark Places
Why coping becomes a form of cruelty - and what it means to truly face yourself
“Shiv - you’ve mentioned in the past that you don’t seem to have a problem with negative emotions. Me on the other hand, it’s a different story. I’ve been battling with my negative emotions for years trying to find ways of managing them or coping. I’m scared if I act them out it will hurt people because it’s happened in the past. I don’t see how just being ok with them would work. I’m afraid that will just open up pandora’s box and I will lose control of myself.
Is it possible that your negative emotions are more manageable to begin with, so you don’t have to suppress them? Or is it something I am missing? I resonate with your approach but am not sure if it can be applied in my own experience.”
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To repair a gaping hole in your drywall, Home Depot sells these adhesive metallic meshes that you stick over the hole and then apply drywall putty on the mesh. You then use a light sanding sheet - start with 120 - 150 grit until the surface is flush with the rest of the wall - and then you finish it off with 180 - 220 grit to get the surface ready to paint.
I know this because I have gone through this process numerous times. In fact, I have lost count of how many gaping holes I made in the drywall with my fist when I was younger. I have punched holes in doors too - I have even smashed through a patio window once. That was not a pleasant experience. And these flourish of fists were not merely reserved for the indoors. I once repeatedly punched the driver’s side window of a taxicab that had cut me off in traffic and would have certainly broken through if the terrified cabbie hadn’t peeled through the red light to get away from me.
And that’s just the rage issues. What my fists did to drywall, my mind did to my sense of self-worth for well over two decades, driven by an intensity of shame I can only call toxic. And the depression and anxiety this created in my system were so acute that the only real alternatives I could see for my life were to lie in bed for the remainder of my lifetime or to muster the strength to kill myself. I would fantasize for hours on how I might end it - yet I failed to execute. And this ironically just solidified my identity as someone who “doesn’t follow through”.
I say all this to illustrate that I would hardly categorize these negative emotions as ‘manageable’. In fact, they were deeply destructive. My rage terrified people. It damaged relationships. My shame sabotaged every moment of true happiness that was made available to me. It told me I was more worthless than dirt and my ego responded with more rage and arrogance. And I did everything I could to suppress it. I meditated for years. I attempted to curb my expression, discipline my behaviour, curate my speech - but the inner hatred just amplified. Every attempt to tame that inner beast was met with a more bestial response.
In fact, I wrote an auto-biographical poem reflecting on this very phenomenon when in the midst of a particularly toxic episode in my twenties:
Beast-man
His ghastly face is pale and white
His calloused crooked claw-like hands
Blindly groping thro’ the black night
Journeys on to forsaken lands
“ ‘Tis not a man! but Beast!!” they say
With wild contempt they flee his path
Few men so bold would dare to stay
To face the monster’s morbid wrath
He bares his teeth in lupine leer
This growling, howling animal
A Hound of Hell instilling fear
In trembling hearts of one and all
“What evil hath befallen us?!”
In frenzied fear the townsfolk pray
Calling forth their divine nimbus
That He may come the Beast to slay
They hurtle flaming projectiles
That crack and burn his rotting bone
And hound the hellish hound for miles
To leave them all in peace alone
Alas! That they have failed to see
This creature that they would to slew
A Noble Heart yet cursed to be
Not just One soul, but soul of Two
And so once more as ‘twas before
He journeys through the night again
The Man and Beast within at war
His ravaged soul – their battle-plain-Shiv Sengupta
As allegorical as the poem is, it felt true to my experience of living in this body. A battleground it was between the reasoning mind and this molten core of raw unprocessed emotion that seared my nerves and burned holes through my fragile mental state on a minute-by-minute basis. Attempting to suppress it was the equivalent of putting a lid on a volcano. It was futile and only caused further aggravation.
The awakening I experienced at twenty-two was the first real experience of respite I had from it. For four months that energy went dormant as the sense of separate self collapsed and the radiance of beingness came to the fore and saturated my every moment with bliss and peace. And yet, when that kensho faded and the mind returned to business-as-usual so did all that toxic energy return. So, my strategy then moved from one of suppression to dissociation. My awakening had revealed to me a deeper more absolute dimension of who I was. Then why not just find a way to stay there?
