This essay was originally written with pen and paper during my bedridden time recovering from a pinched sciatic nerve. In hindsight I wish I had done more handwritten essays to later transcribe, and may do more in the future just for the fun of it.

It’s likely you never noticed the lack of foul language upon this blog of late. An absence of colorful outbursts in Eh! Steve! has freed me to strip the “explicit” tag from the latest episodes like a band-aid from a healed wound. The past few episodes of RamblePak64 have also been free of “colorful language” – an amusing term considering such words are more like rusted iron bludgeoning the ear canal than chromatic concertos of poetry.

This absence has been an active effort to exorcise cursing from my daily vocabulary. One day I’d like to be able to lead youth at a Church, and while I imagine there are plenty of good leaders whose tongues occasionally slip, I’d like to be the same person no matter whose company I am in.

Months of effort were shattered to dust when an excruciating pain struck along my thigh, flooding my mouth with a torrent of filth. I cannot adequately describe the torment as over a week of time has smeared my memory into an unfocused fog. All I can say was how every fiber of muscle seemed to pull and tear apart, yanking fiercely at the tendons tethering them to bone. My fingers gripped the coat hanger of my brother’s car passenger seat, a piece of plastic I once referred to as the “oh-5#!+-bar” – I’m sure you master code crackers can decipher my meaning there.

As my brother drove us home from the doctor’s he began to discuss something regarding the anime Darling in the Franxx. The sound of his voice managed to breeze its way through my ears but the pain sent the words into a tumultuous storm chaotically clashing in my skull. His efforts to distract me were in vain. Soon all I could do as my leg fought to stretch out, foot pressing desperately to the floor of his car, was pray.

Nothing too complex fell from my lips. Just a paraphrasing of Matthew 10:28 repeated over and over: “Fear not that which can destroy the body, only that which can destroy the soul”. Even in that pain induced state I soon realized the similarities between my mantra and that of Paul Atreides as he suffered the Gom Jabbar. It is thanks to my own litany that I could suffer the ride home as I had.

My doctor believes the initial cause of pain that day is a herniated disc pressing against my sciatic nerve – a somewhat commonly troublesome nerve I discovered as I informed my co-workers of the cause to my time off. The incredible pain on the ride home, however, was caused by the pain medication administered via a needle to my glute.

Yes, I got a shot in my butt. They told me it would be the least painful place for me to receive it. My leg still burned like Greek fire flowed through the veins.

The likely culprit

This injury has given me plenty of time to lay down and ponder. Unfortunately, the more time my body is idle the more my soul dwells on darkness and doubt. Lacking proper access to my laptop to get work done and limited instead to my cellphone, I soon felt stuck beyond the guard rail of a highway. Each car zipping by was a friend on social media swiftly passing through the flow of life.

I use past tense, but that suggests the feeling no longer lingers. To suggest such a reality would be a bold lie. If anything this disconnection drives me to further feel isolated. I was an insignificant speck in the peripheral driver on the highway. Or perhaps I was David Bowie’s Major Tom sitting in “a tin can”, forced to observe Earth’s beauty from a distance as I slowly drifted away.

It does not matter if this is true or not. My mind is filled with enough amateur homegrown psychology to convince me of any truth. Even my faith waivers at the similarities between my mantra and that written by Frank Herbert. Desperate are humans to latch onto an ideology that can temper the will against any pain or onslaught. Does my God truly guide me from above or do I volunteer my soul to a lie?

Perhaps this question is one of many shames that halts me from becoming a full-fledged member of my Church. I recognize that I’ve found logic and reason in the Bible where others find foolishness. Repeatedly I am shocked by the discoveries I make, linking concepts, themes, and passages that cry out the intellect of a cosmic mastermind. Yet I can never let go of that opposing perspective. The one that understands how humans have a knack for pattern recognition even when no logical design is present. Is that a camel in the sky or is it merely a cloud? Are those shadows truly that of a beast or merely an amalgamation of common objects?

I want to choose to believe this whole ordeal is a lesson. You can call it a personally applied placebo, but in the end life has taught me that everyone is searching for God. It can be figuratively or literally, but at the end of the day every person upon this Earth is lusting for meaning to their life. So desperate is this desire that disparate perspectives constantly clash. Mankind is driven by a starving hunger for vindication and purpose. Is it any wonder I love Iconoclasts so much when my whole world view is contextualized so simply? In that game I see reality and all the half-truths people grasp onto abstracted. No recognition that every individual holds a tiny piece of a far greater puzzle called “Truth”. Unlike the common Christian archetype, I am incapable of claiming to know the “Truth” with a capital “T”.

Perhaps that is a hang-up for a Sunday Studies column. The point now is that I’ve decided to stop waiting “for a better time” and seek out a therapist. If I cannot find my truth on my own and I struggle to find it with members of my Church, then I need a second, unbiased voice to help me find my honesty.

Even if I find that personal truth, a more persistent conflict remains: writing for writing’s sake grappling with writing – and crafting video – for the love and acceptance of others. I already wrote quite a bit about that, so let’s not continue to bang on that particular drum.

I hope Google isn’t lying about that whole “licensed for non-commercial reuse” thing

I did say this experience may be some divine trial, though. Should it be such a challenge of spirit, it has proven a deep hunger to make tangible my scattered thoughts into essays. The yearning to not simply state my opinion, but to express it as water is freely expressed from a fist-gripped sponge. There may be better or more recognized weavers of words out there, but to articulate my thoughts is a fencing match with myself. A competition of precision and swift riposte, cutting away at any dull or frail concepts and phrases until only the keenest edge remains.

It hurts to receive little to no recognition. I cannot deny that simple fact. After being stuck in bed laying down unable to do more than watch anime and play Octopath Traveler, I cannot help but finally take literal pen to paper and compose my thoughts.

As the pen presses the paper, drenching the white fibers with onyx ink, the cacophony of the highway seems further and further away.