"Things Fall Apart..."

     The tenacity of the human spirit never ceases to amaze me. It is astounding, the number of beatings the soul can take and still remain [relatively] intact. I never thought of myself as a particularly strong person, let alone any stronger than anyone else or special by any means -- I simply have always thought, 'This is my life; this is how my particular story goes'. So, I was always a bit confused when friends or family members would express admiration or praise of my strength and perseverance when it came to dealings with my father and his deterioration. To me, I was simply 'dealing' with it and handling it day by day. It became 'business as usual,' so to speak. Being that I was always closer with my dad than my sister was growing up, he began to lean very heavily on me, emotionally and mentally -- more so than anyone else. At a young age, I ultimately became his emotional punching bag. While my sister made perhaps the smarter decision and quickly withdrew from him at the early stages of his downfall (people can only unload upon you if you let them), I for some reason allowed him to unleash his pain and agony on me. Looking back, I think I did it because I thought that if he let all his pain out on me, then eventually he'd get better. In other words, I was fully willing to take it all on as my own pain, in the hopes that it would cure my dad (that was a naive thought -- you can only help someone so much, and you definitely can't take it upon yourself to cure them). I think what happens is, after so much wreckage, the soul begins to become immune to different degrees of pain -- it all becomes relative, I think as a sort of defense mechanism. After a while, nothing felt worse or more agonizing than anything else; I was beginning to go numb. While friends and family members began to drop my dad and cut him off left and right (he simply became too much to bear for many people after a while), I continued to be his outlet for whatever darkness was rapidly developing within him. He would scream at me, rage at me, swear at me, cry to me, and start all over again. I was being drained emotionally by the minute. Sometimes, after not hearing from my dad in days and attempting dozens of unanswered phone calls, I would show up at his apartment at the time and pound ceaselessly on the door, only to find that he had been in bed for three days straight in a bout of deep depression. He would go days without eating, showering, or opening the curtains. He was literally living in a black hole, and time after time, I would go attempt to drag him out. Many of the times, I did not know whether I would find him dead or alive -- I had to prepare myself each time for both possibilities. Each day I lived in constant fear of my dad killing himself, but it was (awfully enough) a fear I became accustomed to.
     I sometimes wonder in awe how I managed to survive such a constant, grueling battle. I guess when it comes to people we love, we can endure much more than we'd ever dream possible. Therein lies the beauty of the human spirit -- things fall apart; the world crumbles around us, but I have witnessed the indestructible strength of the soul.

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

-W.B. Yeats