What Rough Beast, Its Hour Come At Last, Slouches Towards Bethlehem To Be Born?

I know I’m in mentally troubled waters when quotes from Nietzsche come to mind. Still given my current turmoil, it was sort of inevitable that old Friedrich would show up. What’s been running through my mind lately is a quote from the beginning of Thus spoke Zarathustra,
“Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss..”

For all that I reject one of Nietzsche’s basic premises, that God is dead, I can’t help but admire him. His attempts to define morality in a context separate from the divine, while flawed, are useful nonetheless. If I were to come up with a similar thought on my own, I would probably say something about man being stretched between the diabolic and the angelic. I believe that we all have an angel and a demon within us, in potentia. The angel shines forth when we practice love, the demon comes out in fear and hate.

My personal demon has been stirring of late, feeding on my fear and fueling certain hungers. Given my history, when I was actively practicing my addiction, I know that I have the capacity to be a predator in the worst sense of the word. I was Nietzsche’s beast, totally uncaring for anything other than myself, totally unable to feel empathy for another being. In short, I was something of a monster, and I am glad beyond measure that I have left that part of my life behind. One of the greatest horrors in life is to see the capacity for evil, for chaos, in yourself. I’m not talking about the everyday, garden variety, make-no-plans fly by the seat of your pants chaos; I’m talking about the raw, unbridled, Neolithic chaos. KAOS

Still, my life has bumped up against another quotation (this time from Goethe,) “Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.” My personal punishment has been an unhealthy dose of uncertainty and fear. In that vacuum I can feel the beast stirring. I have never been comfortable around someone else’s blood, my own is fine, but seeing someone else bleeding has always revolted me. Lately, to my great disgust, there has been an element of sick fascination in it. Not that I want to cause bleeding (were that the case I’d check myself in to the local psych ward immediately,) but a fascination that this is the stuff of life itself. I am disgusted and sickened by the thought in my rational mind, but (as I said) the beast is stirring.

Two other quotes seem relevant, the first from one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman:

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

Also, to wind out, Good old Friedrich again: “Love is the state in which man sees things Most widely different from what they are.”