vertical limit

actually i have seen this movie, i think i still have the stub from watching it in the theaters all those years ago. not a great movie, but been collecting ticket stubs ever since so i guess it has a sentimental value. anyway onto the entry...

i've been reading a book called into the wild by jon krakauer. i saw the movie, which was based off the book, with the same name. the movie really spoke a message to me and my spirit. a message that got across to me saying that no matter how successful we are by the world's standards of money, power, and sex we are still dissatisfied and look for more. we look for something greater than what we see around us and something that is greater than us. needless to say, i loved the movie and the book as well and i'm not even done with the book yet. i am in the final 50 pages of the book and i was reading about the author's relation to the inner depths of chris mccandless (the young man of which the book is about) and a few passages caught me and how i've been feeling lately. the passage is taken from the author describing his obsession with climbing a summit called the Devil's Thumb in Alaska and about how he kept failing, but eventually found a way to climb the summit successfully.

"...At dusk I watched, transfixed, as the lights of Petersburg blinked on in the west. The closest thing I'd had to human contact since the airdrop, the distant lights triggered a flood of emotion that caught me off guard. I imagined people watching baseball on television, eating fried chicken in brightly lit kitchens, drinking beer, making love. When I lay down to sleep, I was overcome by a wrenching loneliness. I'd never felt so alone, ever."

"...When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devils Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale."

"At that stage of my youth, death remained as abstract a concept non-Euclidean geometry or marriage. I didn't yet appreciate its terrible finality or the havoc it could wreak on those who'd entrusted the deceased with their hearts. I was stirred by the dark mystery of mortality. I couldn't resist stealing up to the edge of doom and peering over the brink. The hint of what was concealed in those shadows terrified me, but I caught sight of something in the glimpse, some forbidden and elemental riddle that was no less compelling than the sweet, hidden petals of a woman's sex.
In my case-- and, I believe, in the case of Chris McCandless--that was a very different thing from wanting to die."

i started feeling this loneliness the author spoke about and when i felt that, i stopped my habitual sin for a week or so. i saw things clearly. i see how futile this world is. then i delved back into sin and i got muddled, saw myself return to my old self. i couldn't take it, so i cried out to God saying i didn't want to go back. and i feel that same loneliness coming back. this void. this need to have everything wrong in my life to be fixed, to be perfect. realizing that everything this world offers is a distraction from reality. the reality being that we're imperfect souls incapable of anything truly good. i want to see the edge of doom, but i know all that i'll find is truth that i already know. the truth being that this world is not it, that eternity lies in the wake. eternity in darkness or eternity in light is our choice. so this is me wanting to come clean. this is me giving up. not to the world. but to God saying i don't know what else to do. and i hope that everyone will experience this. and make it through. i don't know if i'm making it through or not. God, save us because of your great love.