"The War Within"
by Benjamin Bartee
"I fantasized in elaborate detail about killing myself today, an occurrence far more common than I would prefer. This obsessive-compulsive demon has a hold of me, whether literal or figurative. I don’t mean OCD in the colloquial sense that people use it to describe an anal-retentive need for paintings to be straight on the wall or tax records neatly filed.
I mean OCD in the sense of a demon, literal or figurative, hijacking my mind and running it into a wall with nonstop, invasive, recurring, unwanted obsessive thoughts from dawn until dusk, with never anything close to a resolution, followed by soul-crushing, ritualistic compulsions in a vain attempt to exorcise the demon. Since I was ten years old, every waking moment has been spent with this monster. Sometimes it’s quieter than other times, but there are no vacations. I am a prisoner in an invisible prison.
No volume or variety of self-medication - and I’ve tried them all, short of renouncing the world and relocating to a monastery on a Himalayan mountaintop - have thus far yielded any lasting relief. To this demon I attribute years of substance abuse - including a hellish alcohol and Xanax addiction that took years of effort to overcome - and various other coping mechanisms in a desperate attempt at escape, but which have only extended and enhanced the misery.
I remember vividly - the most vivid memory I have, perhaps - like it was yesterday the moment it got ahold of me. The most striking aspect of its onset is that it came apparently apropos of nothing. At ten years old, circa 1997, I sat watching "2001: A Space Odyssey" on the television in the living room. The day was overcast; a drizzle fell outside all around the Georgia pine trees right outside the window. Then it came over me in a flash: existential dread; something was very wrong. I felt sure that tragedy was imminent. But the damnedest thing was that there was no environmental stimulus to cause it.
This was my first panic attack, but I lacked the knowledge or vernacular to understand what was happening. It was far from the last. Maybe if someone had been there with me to nip it in the bud, I might have foregone a lot of pain. But they weren’t, and it festered.
Does writing this down make me weak? Am I supposed to figure this shit out on my own in a closet like old times? It certainly gives ammunition to my enemies. C’est la vie. I want nothing more than to vanquish it, but at times, like today, I come to the end of my rope. A poet or a philosopher or someone once observed that “irony is the song of the bird that has come to love its cage.” I know the tune - and if you read Armageddon Prose you’ve seen it sung - but I don’t want to sing it anymore. It’s a rotten, dead-end hymnal.
Among such many attempts in vain to fix this, I’ve talked to a Ukrainian psychoanalytic therapist located in Lviv for a while now, whom I digitally met by way of a tangential connection to my wife. While I’ve gained some insights, it hasn’t helped much, which I don’t necessarily fault her for. Anyway, my wife once asked me not to talk about it with her parents - which I wouldn’t have anyway, as I would wish them to believe they’ve given their only daughter over to competent hands - because, in Slavic culture, talking to a shrink is considered a mark of shame.
A guy in her village killed himself a few years ago over some psychological/spiritual affliction, and as a consequence, he was buried in the corner of the cemetery - a tainted soul, even in death. It’s healthy to socially disincentivize self-indulgent navel-gazing and suicide to some extent, which I respect. But that no one got to him before he took the ultimate trip is a tragedy. Is there a point to all of this suffering, or at least a merciful end to it that doesn’t involve the end of everything? I hope so. What I hope to get out of sharing this intensely personal albatross with you, I surely don’t know - but not pity, a drug as poisonous as fentanyl. Perhaps it’s to feel a little less alone in this prison. Maybe someone can relate. Maybe you. Here’s hoping I summon some better answers in 2026."
“The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the
house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.”
- Khalil Gibran
"The time is eight-something a.m. The date doesn’t matter; every day is Groundhog Day, only with small, nearly imperceptible glitches in the matrix. I, naked primate with a soft underbelly and fallible spirit, stand in the shower, again, eyes fixated in low-grade terror on the shower knob at thigh level. Not an ounce of water has escaped the nozzle, yet I’ve memorized the shock of the cold and that’s transmuted by some alchemy I don’t understand into physical sensation.
I am Pavlov’s dog. If I cave in and step out - which I have done in the past and might again at some point - the rest of the day will be in my mind an uphill battle, having already surrendered once before a thousand more small surrenderings to follow. If, on the other hand, I soldier through, it’s more or less downhill from here.
There will be, for sure, other small defeats throughout the day - doomscrolling X for cheap dopamine when I swore it off for the thousandth time, for instance - but I will have already won a small victory to offset them.
So I turn the knob. The water hits my skin, and it’s instant shock. The muscles tense. Panic. The impulse to flight is almost overwhelming, only restrained by mental resistance against all natural urges. I’ve been here enough times to understand that hyperventilating doesn’t do anything to help, so I breathe long and deep.
A daily tango:
Devil: You were so comfortable in that bed. Just crawl back in and call it a day.
Angel: What kind of a man are you? Your grandfather died on some beach in Anzio fighting the blackshirts under machine gun fire!
Devil: Don’t turn that handle.
Angel: Turn the handle.
Devil: You don’t want to turn that handle.
Angel: Turn the handle, you f*cking pussy.
Devil: Get out and let’s have a cold beer. It’s getting hotter every day.
Angel: After nearly ten years without the drink? Maybe what you want in the moment and what you really want are two different things.
Devil: Now that we’re here staring at a shower knob, it’s probably as good a time as any to revisit that suicidal ideation from a while back. This - all this inner turmoil - could all be over once and for all.
Angel: There’s got to be something worthwhile here.
Devil: You want this. Every day is another battle in a lonely war that no one else ever witnesses, much less cares about - a war you’ll never win. You’re nobody’s hero, not even your own. Give up the ghost.
Angel: You are Sisyphus, and you will have the cold shock proteins if it’s the only victory you achieve all day. The summit isn’t the goal; the pushing of the rock is. And you know that."
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