Rage and Sorrow: When Catharsis Becomes Escapism

 

One of my favorite films of the 1990's was Falling Down with Michael Douglas. The movie follows a laid-off defense worker who was also estranged to his wife and daughter. He was living with his mother, but kept up the appearances of going to work. One day, while he was stuck in L.A. traffic on his way to his non-existent job, he snapped. He left his running car in the middle of a traffic jam and just walked off. There's plenty more to the story, but suffice it to say that I have had plenty of those near panic moments or times when I just wanted to uproot and run. Life's pressures can sometimes seem overwhelming. Stress is, after all, a real killer.

Last night, as I was working, I came to the realization that I have been having a Falling Down sense of rage and sorrow brewing beneath the surface. I have been in a lamenting and contemplative mood lately. In fact, I posted the following introspective post of Facebook just the other day: 

It is in my Celtic soul, the deep call toward lament. No, it isn't a debilitating depression, but a sorrowful unrest. It is the depth of prayer in the core of my being that draws me to the deepest seats of introspection, humility (really humiliation, for I have yet to master true humility), and pain regarding what is not right in both the world at large and my own world of experience. I am the dying Gaul, but my defeat is not in physical warfare, but a defeat of my own hubris and personal desires. Too often I seek to win because of self-righteousness and a desire for order in my world. More often than that, I yield to failure. My only recourse is to embrace my dark night of the soul and pray. This is one of those moments. Lord have mercy.

In this post, I noted that I wasn't depressed so much as I was living with a sorrowful unrest. Only last night, I realized another word for this is rage. Now, this doesn't mean that I'm going to go coo coo for Cocoa Puffs. It's not a violent or homicidal rage. It's rather such a deeply profound angst that my whole body -- my whole being -- wants to respond. It's the pull that says I simply must do something, because things in my life are just not right. 

When we face stressful or deep-seated emotional moments, we all need a break to recollect our thoughts and re-balance our psycho-physical dispositions and demeanor. We call these necessary retreats catharsis, from the Greek kathairein, meaning "to cleanse or to purge." We need to have moments whereby we shed off our funk. And we all have those places or activities that give us a sense of resolve. Sometimes this is introspective, and sometimes it's tactile or physical. People need different outlets. Sadly, some outlets can be destructive, which may give momentary relief, but does personal damage and can actually hurt those around us, such as alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. In my case, my destructive outlet is food. Regardless, an outlet is necessary, but even a healthy outlet can become destructive.

When a catharsis becomes less of a tool to cope, it becomes an escape and an excuse not to find resolve, and this hurts the individual and those around them. In the summer of 2000, I found myself in one of these spirals. First, I was dealing with immense guilt. In the Fall of 1998, while at college, studying to become a pastor, I sparked a relationship with a classmate...

[WARNING: Confession Ahead] 

I had been very interested in developing a relationship with my pastor's daughter, but while we were hanging out one day, she made the mention that she could never marry a minister. I was studying to become a pastor and I thought our friendship was starting to lean more toward a romantic one, so to hear this was soul-crushing. I felt hopeless, until I met this classmate who showed me tenderness and interest. We became an item (a rebound for me of sorts). In the Spring semester (1999), we went too far and she became pregnant. She miscarried a month later, so I am told.

The miscarriage was odd for me. I didn't feel sad about it. Between the sexual misstep and my lack of sorrow for the miscarriage (I saw it as a godsend that meant I could repent and return to my pursuit of the ministry -- a proverbial get out of jail free card), my guilt was quite burdensome. Then, by the summer of 2000, I developed a relationship with my grandma's hospice nurse, who in response to my inquiry for a relationship, revealed that she was pregnant from a one-night stand. She was a purported Christian and stated she was trying to repent. I graciously accepted this and began to date her anyway, making the odd assumption that I would become the step-father figure for this coming child. Later, it would seem that this person's pregnancy may have been a lie, which was conveniently covered-up by a convenient miscarriage story, but I don't have proof. Regardless, I took on a mantle of responsibility.

Then, whilst experiencing my double-barreled shot of guilt, feeling the pressure of a relationship with the potential to be a father, I was also a full-time student, a part-time college bookstore employee, a part-time Campus Public Safety Officer, and a part-time volunteer youth and young adults pastor. In the summer, I traded my campus jobs for a seasonal security guard job, which I began in May of 2000. By July, I closed down the youth group for the summer, quit my security job, and began a three month long escape into fishing -- my catharsis. I barely even attended church on weekends. 

My fishing addiction began as a catharsis -- a way of finding alone time to collect my thoughts concerning my guilt and shame, addressing my taking on more than I could chew vocationally, and reviewing my getting involved with a very unstable relationship. I needed to figure things out. But what ought to have become temporary became -- instead -- an escape from responsibility and caring... An escape from people and a distraction from pain. I was not learning how to cope, which demands introspection, prayer, and strategy in addition to purging the weighty things. Instead, my escape just allowed me to ignore the real things... I essentially gave up and gave in.

When school resumed for me in the Fall of 2000, I traded my fishing addiction for a relationship one. I continued to date my grandmother's nurse. Not giving a rip, my grades suffered some, as did my ministry, and employment. I resumed my summer employment in the fall, as departmental changes had been made at my campus gigs. Yet, my romantic interests and escape affected my attendance at my security guard job, so that by the late spring of 2001, when I was truly sick one day, I lacked the sick time and without a doctor's note, I was fired. 

Prior to my dismissal from my job, I once again fell into sexual sin, but this time with the nurse. I began to give in to temptation because of a defeatist perspective. I wasn't dealing with my guilt, I was taking it on as a mantle of inevitability. Like the adage says, "If you can't beat them, join them." I wasn't finding solace or accountability in my girlfriend, I was finding an escape from responsibility through the tactile pleasure of sex and emotional stroking. 

Now, I don't write all these confessional elements unnecessarily. The truth is that this is very common with people. Sex, food, drugs, smoking, and so many things seem to be releases, but in the end become self-harm, and often such harm affects others. The need for a catharsis should never become an excuse to give up, give in, and escape. There is no resolve in such behavior.

This brings me to my last blog post, where I described myself as living liminally in Christianity -- in an in-between state, trapped between two competing theologies and two competing vocational leanings. I realized last night that I am raging within for resolve. I need a real repentance and catharsis or I risk self-destruction. I noticed that I was eating emotionally last week and my appetite was insatiable. I was eating to escape, to give in, to give up. It was much like when someone starts a diet on a Monday, screws up by eating a Reese's peanut butter cup (I did and it was delicious), so instead of getting back on the horse immediately, they say "screw it," and dive deeper into their gluttony as an escape, not a catharsis. A catharsis would be a planned cheat day, not the despair of failure.     

Right now, I struggle with very selfish inclinations in my unresolved in-between state. This is has become guilt for me. I am wanting to escape and flee once again to the lakes and streams. And, I want to lash out in anger and self-adulation to fix my external strife. In running away or releasing too much of my internal unrest on those in my world, I risk alienating myself further into myself, never resolving anything. So instead, I write... It is my true catharsis. Hopefully, it's a real release... an organization of my deepest thoughts and pains, so that I might deal with them, before they take me over.