Chuck Palahniuk is Saving My Life

The past few months have been an exercise not in scraping myself off the bottom of the pool, but instead, letting myself be sucked down the drain.

Sometimes I don’t notice how far down I’ve sunk after diving into the deep end. It’s not until my toes start dragging along the bottom that I become aware of just how deep I’ve gone. I get distracted admiring all the pretty bubbles rising up to the surface and my vision is blurred by the rush of water.

At first I hardly notice that the feeling of my toes dragging has more to do with the fact that one of the wee piggy’s is caught in the drain. That is, until the depth and the pressure becomes concentrated and the tickle on my toe starts to hurt.

The relaxed and languid heartbeat in my ears is replaced with feverish intensity and I start to thrash about. Except it’s a lot harder to thrash about because my damn toe is caught and I keep scraping my knee. Holding my breath is only going to last so long – those pretty bubbles have stopped rising.

I’m not free-floating anymore, I’m fucking stuck.

What do I do? Tug so hard I lose my toe? My struggle has weakened me and I’m starting to see spots from the lack of air. Then in dives Chuck Palahniuk and he swims down and whispers in my ear that in order to discover myself, I first need to destroy myself.

Yes, I know the plausibility of the part of the statement that suggests that Chuck Palahniuk dives in and swims down to me is greatly flawed. For one, where the fuck did he come from? Two, how the hell can he whisper audibly in my ear, whilst under water? And three…well, just go with it – suspend all doubt and instead join me in crossing that line between reality and certain coils of my brain. It’s not like I am literally stuck at the bottom of the pool anyway.

My eyes grow wide in terrified wonder at the thought that I’m supposed to drown. Being the personification of the all-seeing, all-knowing pulse of universal energy in my brain, Chuck looks at me knowingly and shakes his head. Then he gestures towards the drain and points downwards.

I should backtrack here for a minute. Over the past two months, I’ve adopted a new philosophy on my approach to living, thanks to Chuck. The premise being that my real discoveries will come from going to the places that look wrong and stupid and foolish. These discoveries will be born out of chaos. (It makes a lot more sense now why Chuck’s diving into the pool with me and I’m finding myself at the perceived bottom of the tank.)

By diving in, something that feels terribly wrong to me (due to my overwhelming belief that a gnawed and stumpy beast will rise up, grab me and pull me under), I’m finding myself in places I never thought I’d be – mentally, emotionally and even physically.

I’ve been trying to reconstitute what makes sense in a backward, upside-down way, because nothing makes sense right now, yet so many pieces are falling into place. I guess it touches upon the principles of going to that place that seems void of any reason or meaning – that practical guidance towards a greater lesson have no place here and I should give up on attempting to understand the lesson and instead just roll with whatever presents itself.

So when Chuck motions towards the drain, it hits me – I have to go to that place that feels wrong, because it’s exactly where I should be going. In order to do that, something needs to be destroyed. My baby toe was sort of ugly anyway.

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