BlakeAtwood.com

[Adapted and expanded from this post: The Primal Scream]

In the wake of the death of my marriage, I began a search for answers to questions that I knew had no answers, but the desire to know, unequivocally, what had gone so horribly wrong was too great. I had to know the answer to “Why?” More than just “Why did this happen to me?” I had to know “Why does this happen to anyone?” even “Why does this happen to everyone, in some form?” Which, really, boils down to the first question, plus a pointed noun, “Why, God?” Yet even in asking that question, in thinking long enough about it, one might even question the necessity of the comma, the necessity of the God, and simply, honestly, ask “Why God?”

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you wonder if your life will ever change
or if you’re doomed to always be the same
the world swirls in chaos
your world swirls in chaos
but you attack your problems
just like always
by not

you’re so numb
you’re not even sure if you can make that judgment call on yourself
nothing touches you
even if it did you wouldn’t notice
or care

but then the weather changes
the season turns
there’s a chill in the air
that somehow shocks you into feeling
the gray skies and cold days
make you feel more alive than you have in ages

and maybe by knowing that the weather can change
you think you can too
so you try a little harder today
to do something you’d never do
to be someone you’ve only hoped to be
to pretend
in hopes that the charade becomes reality

- written in a storm, 101608

You’re probably familiar with Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, but do you know its inspiration? From the venerable Wikipedia, a quote from Munch’s own diary, written January 22, 1892:

I was walking along a path with two friends — the sun was setting — suddenly the sky turned blood red — I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence — there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city — my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety — and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

…an infinite scream passing through nature. That’s terrifying.

It was a year ago today that I wept uncontrollably for everything that was breaking around me. We call it a broken heart for a reason, and I felt as if that muscle inside my chest had been severed, with its separate halves wrenching apart, causing my entire body to split down the middle were it not for the glue of  all-encompassing pain. That may sound entirely too melodramatic, but the words I used to describe that day, on the day that it happened, included convulsive, aching, and despair. It was like nothing I knew a human could experience. In retrospect, it was the the darkest valley of this journey.

Munch’s “infinite scream” had passed through me. I fear it must pass through us all, eventually. For me, it was the sudden and brutal realization that I was not the sole creator of my own destiny and that I cannot control the actions or wills of other people. It was hopelessness borne of desperation, awash in bitter tears. It was flailing hands to an uncaring universe, selfish cries of “Why me?!” to a silent God.

But what if that’s only part of the story? What if the “infinite scream” really originated, in part, from the only infinite Being? What if the scream, that unearthly and primal sound that sputtered from my soul exactly a year ago, was God’s rage at the injustice and the pain and the chaos and the hurt and the confusion and the sorrow of the entire ordeal, for all parties involved? What if that’s His infinite scream, shouted at the dawn of time, coursing through our lives at times of utmost despair, echoing throughout creation, a wrenching pain leaving a lasting scar, like a sword to a side of flesh.

My God, my God…

What if His seeming silence… is because He’s been screaming with you?

I cannot fathom the lasting devastation in Haiti. I cannot understand the earth itself moving for a minute-and-a-half in Chile. These things, at their scale, are too vast for me to comprehend.

But I know what it means for the ground to shift beneath your feet, changing your world in a heartbeat, crumbling foundations you always thought were secure. You see, I’ve been divorced for six months. I’m not sure why I’m telling you this, here, now, but it’s something I have to write about, and I’m tired of pretending as if the thing didn’t happen, or that it hasn’t deeply affected me.

While this divorce doesn’t define me, it’s left an indelible mark on me, it’s part of me, it’s changed me, and as the walking wounded in the scarred cityscape of my life, the words I etch onto cracked walls are sometimes the only things that keep me sane. Someone walking in the wreckage of their own life might, somehow, stumble across this and see that they’re not alone, the same way many others were there (and are still there) to help me.

I’m not to the point where I know how to articulate my experiences without divulging too much personal history. I don’t want to write to blame, but I do want others to be able to learn from my failures. I’ve experienced much personal and spiritual growth over the last year, in spite of going through an ordeal that nearly suffocated my faith in God, almost snuffing Him out like so much unsettled dust obscuring the sun.

But I’m still here, sand in my teeth, digital charcoal in hand, with an enormous amount of things to be thankful for. And even though I can’t fathom what Haitians and Chileans have to go through day by day (a constant reminder that helps me put my own life in perspective), an apt metaphor erupts from this broken ground.

In the wake of major devastation, they were brought back to the very basics – food, water, shelter – and they were incredibly happy to receive those items. While I am nowhere close to their level of physical need, I was brought to the same place spiritually through my recent past, broken down to realize my desperate need of the very basics – faith, love, hope – and I’m incredibly happy to see these abstract ideas become solidified, even if their shape is amorphous at best on some days, or in the slow process of becoming fully real, if that’s even possible this side of the Great Beyond.

In this city of ruins, where the cracks run deep and hope is scarce, there is much to be done, even though I’ve covered many miles already. What I write, I hope, will chronicle that journey, digital charcoal scribblings for all of us, because we are all too acquainted with brokenness.

We are all walking wounded; some are just more aware of it than others.