Psalm 142:4
“I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.”
-- KJV
A contemplation by David, when he was in the cave. A Prayer.
When I wrote the first draft of my memoir and opened the Bible, my eye fell directly on Verse 4. At the time, that single verse was the only flotation device I could grasp. Now, returning to the text six months clean to seek the deeper marrow, I started from the beginning. Psalm 142 is the most powerful confirmation yet that this work is worthy of every grueling hour poured into it.
In this single section of Scripture, David—my intended namesake—communicates my entire lived life with divine precision.
There was a brief period in childhood when I listened to the Sunday school teachers. I remember praying to God for help. Silence. So I stopped asking. Years passed, and I tried once more. I laid myself bare. I begged for the understanding that would make sense of the torment: Why did I like looking at men in underwear? Why did everyone hate me for it? Why was I condemned to suffer for something I didn't even understand? What did they know that I didn't?
Only the correct lens brings with it perfect clarity...
PSALM 142:1-7
WEB
1
I cry with my voice to Yahweh. With my voice, I ask Yahweh for mercy.
2
I pour out my complaint before him. I tell him my troubles.
3
When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, you knew my route. On the path in which I walk, they have hidden a snare for me.
4
Look on my right, and see; for there is no one who is concerned for me. Refuge has fled from me. No one cares for my soul.
5
I cried to you, Yahweh. I said, “You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.”
6
Listen to my cry, for I am in desperate need. Deliver me from my persecutors, for they are too strong for me.
7
Bring my soul out of prison, that I may give thanks to your name. The righteous will surround me, for you will be good to me.
No answer came—only condemnation. So I chose a dark path, reflecting the rage and malice of those who refused to guide me.
Eventually, I realized no one was going to pull me through the smoke. Refuge failed me. No man cared for my soul. I issued ultimatums and threats to God, and when the silence held, I tried to carry them out against myself. Then I embraced the dark completely, because in the dark I found a perverse unity. There I could hide. There I could run with fellow ghosts. But when I finally tried to leave, the trap had sprung. The cave had become a prison, and it wouldn't let me out. I cried my way through thirty years of self-destruction and collateral damage.
Then, after decades of surrender, the dark finally claimed ownership. I wasn't just hiding in the shadows anymore; I had become the shadow. The tears stopped. I accepted my fate as a foregone conclusion.
My rage was stoked, but not yet honed—raw, acting out with blunt irreverence. Just as the callouses were setting into permanent stone, the lock broke. A door cracked open, and I saw a glimmer of light. Not the blinding, cinematic blaze people preach about from pulpits, but the faint, trembling flicker of a candle far off in the distance.
I started running toward that flame. I am still running. And God has handed me a pair of running shoes that I can never return. They fit too damn well.
Version Study & Takeaway
The Linguistic Trap:
The Hebrew for "overwhelmed" ('ataph) literally means to be faint, wrapped in darkness, or enveloped. In addiction, escape begins because the internal static, shame, and agony become too loud to bear. The mind folds in on itself. You aren't just hiding from external pursuers; you are hiding from the chaos inside your own head. I wasn't merely overwhelmed in the sense of having too much to do; I was enveloped to the point where I couldn't find solid ground to begin.
To look to the right hand and see no one is the defining isolation of addiction. You feel simultaneously invisible and hyper-exposed. "Refuge failed me" (manos abad mimmenni—literally, "a place of flight has perished from me"). The very thing you used to run to for shelter no longer works. The escape hatch is welded shut. It wasn't that there was a hole in the roof; the roof was gone.
"No man cared for my soul" (ein doresh l’naphshi—literally, "no one inquires after, seeks out, or demands an account of my breath/life"). They don't care if you live or die, only if the bag is open and the access remains. When you cut the supply, the ghost town appears overnight. To experience that abandonment isn't just grief; it is the violent shattering of a four-decade illusion. None of those who "loved" me, neither those who loved from beyond, or from within, call to check in. On one side there are those whose offers to feed me were rejected, on the other, are those who were only looking to be fed. I am not crying here, I am seeing.
The Takeaway:
The 58 years of my past that formed the microscope through which I found the parasite that has eating away at my soul. I cannot hate those years now, because, without them, I never would have built the microscope in the first place.