＃１２４

     They do not believe that I am violent. Some sense it—this is unavoidable—but they do not believe it. There is always some theory instead. I am competitive. I want attention. I am discovering my boundaries. This sort of thing. Always maintaining a hope that what seems to be aggression may be, firstly, channeled to some better end, and secondly, merely a symptom of some repressed condition or need of mine that, should it be properly identified and brought to surface, would prove uniquely beneficial to mankind. In this way, my counsellors rationalise that I may yet be their triumph—that the great chisel of psychological science, employed by their sturdy hands, will uncover diamond at my core and reveal it to the world.
     This constitutes the destructive component of my treatment. Carving away at me with questions . . stabbing and chopping with guesses designed purely to provoke. They are bloodthirsty in the literal sense. Not predators—they would not dare to hunt, were I to oppose them. But I do not. I give myself willingly to these cannibals. Yes, for they are cannibals. Gnawing, dripping fiends, my childhood memories umami to their tongue. They believe themselves imminently at my organs. Only I know that there are none to find.
     The constructive therapies are quite different, though directed to the same aim. Cannibal turns spider, weaves its web . . I am cocooned in infuriatingly rigid cloud. Validated for any matter I was not as a child. Listened to with the most insipid eye contact, and responded to with verbatim repetition—as though my behaviour were but an expression of solipsistic uncertainty that anyone could hear my words. They hope to harden a therapeutic chrysalis  around me that lasts until my next session, and then the next, and next, so that it may constantly be built upon further, and after months or years of protection from all butchery but their own I shall metamorphose into something beautiful and pure.
     Isn’t this darling of them? I often think so. This skulk of psychiatrists all slicing and healing, wounding and patching up, ever certain both that my glorious transmogrification awaits and that none is required—pure as I already am at heart.
      I have pointed out these contradictions to them. They say: interesting. Tell me more. And the spotlight is deftly spun back around, blinding me strongly and casting long shadows of the chunks of my soul scattered cross their abattoir floor, shadows that extrude up onto the venetian behind me and form one of their association blot tests. To these people, nothing is itself, an observation that I have put to use all my life. The surest way to fool an educated man is to speak the simple truth—for this renders it entirely unbelievable to him.
     For some time, I harboured a fantasy of dispelling their illusions. That I might demonstrate that violence is most often precisely what it seems—no trick to it, nor agenda, but inexplicable and cathartic violence entirely for its own sake. The easiest way would be to summon them all to a room at once and kill one. To the former aim, I would claim a breakthrough . . an epiphany that could use—no, that requires their collective guidance and witness. To the latter aim, I would tear the closest one’s throat out with my teeth. I have no doubt whatsoever that I would succeed in both matters.
     But—and this is another failure of theirs in understanding—my darling is violence, not death. I have no desire for any particular person to die. Certainly I do not wish to immediately overwhelm my counsellors’ pitiful defenses (which would last no longer than a second, I assure you), leaving me only the ceremonial tedium of a foregone killing that persists until the guards arrive and pry me off my prey. One does not think of it as violent to crush an ant idly between thumb and forefinger. It is over all too quick.
     No, my love is for violence magnificently expressed. For a good fight and a natural one. To crush a man’s forehead into a nightclub urinal and read the blooded map across his nose. To have an osprey drop its prey at my feet so I might obsess the gouges through its scales. To fight my father. To fight my son. To hurt and be hurt and to scar and be scarred and to arrive one day in combat at death and know that I have been beaten by one—a champion, my champion—who will continue to be violent in my stead. No . . I will offer no prayer to God. Not even in my final hour. For mine is the chapel of Hurt.

This post was originally written as part of a tripartite rumination on violence. I decided to space out its publication so as not to bombard readers with three disturbing posts in a row (nor make anyone think I’m constantly dwelling on violence), but some may wish to read #111, #117, and #124 together.