Rather than hell, I like the image of purgatory: a purifying fire.
It's our choice, hell, or purification.
But I know what you mean.
You get up in the morning and realize the nightmare is your waking life and not your sleeping life.
Weeks, months, years seem lost.
Your life is divided into two phases: pre and post bomb.
There's seems to be no justice in the world. It's as if gravity were suspended and there's no place to get solid footing. In the words of Yeats:
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.
Sometimes, in the words of Douglas Coupland, I've felt de-narrated. As if my life has lost it's story-line. My story was that we were a happily married couple with delightful children whom we deeply loved. This was blown to bits. The sense of being a family is eroding. Though I'm closer to my children than I've ever been, I feel as if they are slipping from me.
I think perhaps, finding a deeper, richer, ancient narrative that we can be a part of means something to me. Something true and good and noble.
So is the pain meaningless suffering, or is it purposeful and redemptive?
