I’m sitting on a 14th floor balcony when it starts. A force, deep in my stomach, like gravity, pulling me towards the edge. I’m ten feet away from the railing, but the pull is so strong that I can almost feel the legs of my chair sliding across the concrete. I get up and walk inside with shaky knees, hoping no one notices.
I’m on a cruise ship in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. I’m standing on the outside deck leaning against the rail, looking down into the swirling water. I feel myself slowly folding over the side of the rail, dropping into the deep water below, sucked down by the movement of the ship, spit out through the screw at the back, and then slowly sinking into the deep. My hands are locked on the railing. My friend says something, and the spell is broken. I make my way along the walkway and head to the bar.
L’appel du Vide (“The call of the void”) is a phenomenon by which our brain feels suddenly compelled to rush towards danger. About half the population has experienced it, and some have theorized it to be a heightened sense of impending danger signal crossing in our brain to be interpreted as more present than it actually is. Others suggest that it’s a response to a feeling of powerlessness; that when we sense a danger that feels like it’s beyond our control, the act of engaging in self destruction creates a sense of control.
No one else can burn my house down if I burn it down first.
I think there’s more than that, though. I hear that call everywhere, see it in our culture, our barely concealed fascination with death, our hidden fear of our own mortality. Look at what we choose for entertainment. Beautifully chiseled vampires drain our blood. Waifish lovers drink poison to stay together, forever. We romanticize death and destruction because we’re secretly fascinated with it, always driven by that sphincter clenching knowledge in our own subconscious that we, too, will die someday, and perhaps poorly.
We want our deaths to be beautiful.
There’s another aspect of the call of the void, though: not a plunging from great heights, but an act of self destruction, driven by a deeply rooted insecurity. I first felt it after a successful interview for a job that was going to pay me more than I’d ever made before. On the way home, driving across a big bridge over the bay, I was struck with the certainty that I was about to have a fatal accident. Good things don’t happen to people like me. There must be a balancing out. Tragedy is coming. The wheel in my hands seemed to want to leap to the right, to fulfill the cosmic leveling.
That specter has haunted me for years; after every success, every accomplishment, a shadow hanging over my shoulder, its breath hot on my neck. You don’t deserve this. This is not yours to have. They’re going to catch on to you at some point. You will be exposed. They will see you for the short fat poor kid you actually are, all dressed up in Daddy’s oversized jacket and ill fitting tie. A little bit soft, a little bit queer, a little bit never good enough, and oh how they will laugh at you then.
It’s accompanied by a visual symphony of all those moments growing up when I was the object of ridicule. The endless disappointment of my Father, the near instantaneous assessment from my classmates determining that I was not in their social class, the first time I heard “Ew, gross” when a girl in my school heard that I liked her. The decades of self-revulsion blend together and become this monstrous being sitting in the back of my head like the sound of chattering teeth, waiting to destroy me.
I started cutting at the age of 13, and burning at 16. Self harm becomes a method of control for that call to self destruction. Just a little taste of the pain, enough to satisfy the beast, and stave it off for another day. As I got older, my methods of self destruction became more sophisticated, and even in some ways more socially acceptable. Substance abuse, abusive relationships, ways to separate myself from the choices I was making to punish myself for not being good enough. Look Ma, no hands. I’m just an innocent victim here.
As if innocent is something you could ever be, you piece of shit.
Something happened along the way where the dynamic changed. My endless running from that beast began to manifest as a driven need to prove it wrong, to win, to build, to be in control. My sense of powerlessness was slowly beaten back by my need to conquer, to know, to dominate. That dark voice in my head telling me I was going to fail unintentionally became the inspiration to win. I put a collar and leash on the wolf in my head, and aimed it outward at the world, feeding it with challenges and daring it to overcome the obstacles I faced. It was still hungry, of course, but in the turning, I became one with the void, both consumed by it, and in turn consuming others drawn in by it. The same burning desire that drives me to solve problems and understand new concepts drives me to understand people, deeply and intensely. In solving business problems, I solidify my social and financial standing. In unwrapping people, I solidify my own sense of safety and self preservation, discarding those who resist deeper analysis, encircling myself with those who don’t.
I’m never completely sure until I’ve seen them stripped down to the bone.
The wolf is wild, though; you can’t tame certain kinds of beasts. You can only have a working understanding of the relationship. The void still calls my name and nips at my legs, seductively offering me the seeds of my own destruction. There’s a darkly appealing vision of the complete freedom that comes with surrendering to the abyss that makes no sense to anyone who hasn’t heard the call. The freedom of the wino under the bridge, or the patient who’s been institutionalized, when all pretenses of status and standing have been stripped away. The liberation of madness and the ecstasy of regardless excess. When the danger is being lost and unloved and undeserving, the instinct can be to reject the entire system which makes those judgments. If I make you hate me, at least I had some control over it.
My wolf has gotten grey now, much like myself. Its collar, once little more than a clothesline, is now thick leather and steel studs. My leash hand is strong from the years of practice, and thick lines of bite scars protect from teeth dulled by age and repeated use. The all consuming vacuum of the void pulls less now as I ground myself with countless little anchors holding me in place. And when I hear those wicked whispers now, I whisper back:
Not today, motherfucker. Not. Today.