The Sinner

from The Great Divorce

I shrank from the faces and forms by which I was surrounded. They were all fixed faces, full not of possibilities but impossibilities, some gaunt, some bloated, some glaring with idiotic ferocity, some drowned beyond recovery in dreams; but all, in one way or another, distorted and faded. (Lewis 17)

The premise of this short novella is that a man awakes in Hell and boards the bus to Heaven. This scene, in the very beginning, describes the faces of the others on the bus--others who were making the trip by choice (the transition) from Hell to Heaven.

I don't pick out this passage because I believe we'll all be boarding a bus to Heaven someday (that's just a variation on the River Styx theme anyway) but because I was struck by the sinners' descriptions. I briefly wondered: which am I? Which will I be?

At the moment I believe I would be a gaunt face or maybe--and more frightening--drowned beyond recovery in dreams. Gaunt because I believe I let my personal baggage bleed me dry--strip all the joy from me. I believe I have let myself go--so used to suffering that I continue to suffer even when it is unnecessary. Imposed Purgatory, almost--that's what life feels like at times. And I know this is my doing and my choice, and it is something I would like to change.

Drowned beyond recovery in dreams because, and sadly, I feel I have been living in dreams so long that I am not sure how to function in reality. If I could have my greatest dream come true--the one I feel I want as deeply and passionately (almost) as I feel my faith--I would grow old with Joe. I sometimes look forward to eternity because I think that maybe that will be the chance or the opportunity for us to try again, to finally work. But I know it doesn't work that way, no matter how much I want it to. And here I am, a lost soul in desperate love with someone I can't have, and I get so hung up on that anymore that it's paralyzing. I need to work through it--I want to work through it--not because I want to forget him or lose that love, but because I want to be a complete human being again with or without him.