William Blake:
To annihilate the Self-hood of Deceit & false Forgiveness
(1804-08)
"The usual answer will be, "No, there wasn't," but only because there never is."

After any significant loss comes a period of SelfRecrimination, I suspect that the healthiest might engage in the deepest reconsideration of their former positions, for a loss should properly bring some of anyone's basis into question. What of what then seemed so right was so wrong? Could I have credibly owned any alternative position? Would I have agreed to pursue any other end with anything resembling a similar passion? Were my convictions wrong enough to warrant a reconfiguration of my perspective? Each of these questions should rightly feel unsettling, for these challenge the very basis upon which any thinking person holds any position.

Contrary to popular opinion, the best team does not always win. History overflows with examples of villains taking the crown. The designated losers always question what they might have done instead, which might have led to a different outcome. All losers initially feel like the losers they were, but that designation needn't follow one forever after. Over the following days, what was formerly merely competition disappears into something else. The striving ends and a different story begins, perhaps one of redemption, but only after some nasty, if necessary, period of SelfRecrimination.

Most of the questions one asks oneself then will remain fundamentally unanswerable forever because we only ever have history upon which to replay our game. Alternates never happened and cannot be used to verify or validate any alternative outcome from the one experienced. Still, asking those questions and even conjuring a few answers seems perfectly normal. Whatever it might take to retake that lost sense of balance and perspective. One of the phases everyone seems to need to pass through is the Damned To Hell one, where every possible future appears simply grim. Few, if any, silver linings appear at first, and every horizon should thereby seem dark and foreboding. This sense must be more than mere projection; it must accurately represent the future we sense at first following a significant loss. We might only feel confident that the future we'd so recently sensed to be so real that we'd essentially already inhabited it had just disappeared and would never return. Regardless of what anyone might insist, we inhabit our futures, and when they disappear on us, we feel much more than unsettled. We feel hollowed out, utterly unlike ourselves. This might be the most devastating loss humans can experience.

I remember the remorse I felt with both of my divorces. I grieved as I had never known to grieve before. After considerable reflection, I came to understand that I was grieving for the future I had been so confidently inhabiting without question until it disappeared on me. I had never before considered the extent to which I lived in the active projection of a future until the entire theater I'd apparently constructed for that purpose evaporated before me. I did not understand then what might arise to replace that tacit certainty that had quietly sustained me until then. When I lost those futures, I forfeited most of my foundation. It's no wonder now how I felt so adrift. That feeling was a stunningly accurate representation of what I had been experiencing. Feelings seem most glaringly real in their sudden absence.

Whatever the future might hold, it will certainly also contain a hefty ration of the past. That will serve as the foundation of my presence, along with any standard future projections. I cannot completely divorce myself from my past. It will follow me and perhaps occasionally even overwhelm me. I have little say in that. I can and will, though, construct some story that might reframe this most recent devastating loss into something more closely resembling a traveling companion, if only because continuing to travel will demand at least this much of me. It will be my story, born of no small volumes of SelfRecrimination. Regardless of how cleverly I reframe my experience to render it more tolerable going forward, I will first most certainly be found guilty and judged a loser. I will reframe, for that might be the sole purpose and justification of any otherwise self-punishing period of SelfRecrimination. It's one thing to be judged a loser by others and quite another to accept a truth and then reframe the former meaning of the designation. This process feels like shit-making because it mostly is. It's not only that, however, and the percentage of the work that seems like shit should slowly—usually far too slowly— reduce until the effort starts becoming tolerable again. It should rightly feel absolutely intolerable at first.

I suppose the usual stages of acceptance apply as the rough outline of this effort, too. Denial, traditionally the first stage of acceptance, should yield to anger, then to bargaining, then depression, before acceptance takes seed. Acceptance might molder for a considerable period before the experience finally reduces to something reasonably tolerable, if ever. Until that acceptance kicks in, internal life might feel roller-coaster-like, with little respite. This process rightfully feels exhausting. The exhaustion easily fuels fresh bouts of SelfRecrimination. Accepting the messy nature of this re-engagement process might prove to be the most challenging acceptance of the whole damned process. It will seem damned until it doesn't. It might eventually be remembered as blessed only after crawling through absolute Hell for a spell.

I feel a little reassured to note that nobody so far in the history of this world ever knew what transforming revelation would finally lead to some acceptable resolution when wallowing through SelfRecrimination. I usually feel guilty about even engaging in mud wallowing. I imagine myself somehow above and beyond such animalistic responses. I am experienced, I keep telling myself. But not a single person on this planet has even a minute of experience in this minute until this minute's past. Then, we're each left to wonder what the fuck just happened and to question whether there might not have been something we could have done to avoid splatting so resoundingly into that suddenly prominent wall. The usual answer will be, "No, there wasn't, but only because there never is." This, too, might eventually seem to pass, however impossible that outcome might seem from SelfRecrimination's depths.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz