Life After Death

Truthfully, I don’t like writing; it hurts. Conjuring the past to the present is something I am good at but hate. This habit runs my life like a puppet master, pulling the strings in every direction. The strings are only untangled through the italicized black ink stroke I developed from my father’s suggestion at a young age. Each line retains the twists and turns from the noose She has undone. They are etched into lined paper by a pen with a seemingly endless ink supply from the well in the crook of my arm, from needle to pen tip. The well dries up when I clench my fist after I’ve hit a vein, and cannot flow until I unclench my fist. In doing this, I strive for a contrived outcome. I don’t pray; I demand, and then plead as I bleed all over the seemingly blank page. Yet, I refuse the tourniquet of God; I need to figure it all out on my own. My rage takes new forms, with perfect punctuation and lackluster grammar; I hate writing.

I’m no man; I am a boy writing until he brings his parents back together. I am a boy hoping a well-written letter will change her mind. He doesn’t know he can’t do either of these things. I’m the boy who smiles and nods at the lecturer while vivid scenarios unfold in my mind. I write notes with a clenched hand, tapping into a dry well, scribbling nothing but indents into the paper that match the scars on my heart from years of chasing fulfillment in the world. I write until the blisters form, and I have nothing to show for it, until I say “enough,” and let go.

The click of a pen quiets my mind, and my fear recedes like the ocean before a tsunami. The vision becomes clear, and I wonder why I ever wondered if it would be okay. There’s no water, and I begin to build my house on the sand, writing for hours on end. A song from long ago comes on, reminding me of unanswered prayers. I admire my house, built in perfect disorder; then the sea rushes toward me. My life flashes before my eyes as I watch the wave wash away years of work oriented toward something that was never there, chasing someone who is long gone. Just as it is every time, my life is torn down before my eyes. He forces me to start anew. I look down at the rushing water, but I am standing on it. I am perplexed that He is the solid foundation I am to build upon, but my doubt sinks me into sand.

I wrote to get home; there’s nothing left here but a foundation. I cannot see the blueprints clearly, nor can I build a home, so I build with the materials at hand: debits, credits, and cash flows. I work into the wee hours of the night, hoping someday these building blocks will provide me the freedom to write. I grow weary and look at pictures of my dying father; we have never been closer than we are now. His façade is gone; the wonderful man I hoped was there was all along. He was hidden behind ramparts, trenches, and moats to keep the most vicious monsters and, accidentally, the people he loved most, at bay.

I write to find out who I am by dissecting where I have been. We praise the liberal arts for their breadth, but I am more interested in my earlier education. I have been exposed to the depths of varying addictions, and somehow made it back with a story to tell. I have been exposed to the realities of life that no one wants to talk about. I have been to more funerals for men my age than I would like to admit. Death is normalized in the Marines. Every other month, someone in your unit blows their brains out or wraps their car around a tree; you just hope it wasn’t someone you were close to. Writing about the past conjures what I wish were dead, but I already reenact it with my insecurities daily. They permeate my social interactions and beg me to isolate myself; all I need is life. I have written about what is dead for years, and these works were deader than my faith once was. These chains ensnare me like the Marley Brothers, but I am Ebeneezer Scrooge, faced with a choice: life or death.

Writing about my past has made me realize that I am a statistical anomaly; I should be dead or in prison. I don’t think I deserve the life I have. I watch countless opportunities pass me by as I sit in the brig, but it’s all an illusion: the door is open. My life has been nothing but death after death, chasing highs in hope of death; all I got was depth. Now, the Carpenter asks me if I am ready to build. I tear up the blueprints without giving Him a chance and hand Him my macaroni art abstractions for a house designed of Lincoln Logs.

I wonder how He could love a boy like me, and I think of the agony my transgressions caused Him on the cross. I put my ear to His heart and hear Him weep over my sins. As He smiles down at me, I put my ear to His heart again and hear the excitement of what His death will allow me to do: to live as the man I am meant to be. I am then in a legionary's uniform, with a spear in hand, as He says, “You did what I needed you to do.” I have to choose death. Not the death I sought, but the death I desired in all my years of self-destruction: death of self, death of fear, and death of sin. The addictions that nursed me and kept me alive in a life of self-preservation only prolonged a life I did not want to live.

I see my father ready and willing to go home to God as his cancer and kidney failure wither him; he also wants nothing more than to stay for me, just as all I wanted was to live for me. However, I fear the time of death for both of us is near; I just want to hug my dad one more time before I step onto this water. I write to see where I have come from. Yet every step I trace is merely Christ’s footprint in the sand, carrying me to the boat which He placed me in, and then guided out to sea. I wake up to raging waters, and my boat of self-reliance slowly sinks. I am ready to go down with the ship, until I look out to sea. The Son and my father are standing side by side, smiling. I look down at the water in fear; He tells me to come. They are patiently waiting for me to take my first steps into this new life. They can’t wait for me to write about life after death; neither can I.