I believe in hell. . .on earth, that is

Hell is preferable to this. At least there you know it's over and done with. You burn once and it's not everlasting, like people would have you believe. Not like this life. It just keeps going and going. Without end. Miserable. Without hope. Hell on earth is not such a misnomer after all.

Life is getting difficult. I told someone not too long ago, "Life just gets harder the older you get, so enjoy it now while you can." At the ripe old age of 40, I know what I'm talking about. Of course, living in a third-world pretentious country adds to my resume of expertise.

I landed in the outskirts of Beirut nearly four and a half years ago with Great Expectations. I was coming to relive my teenage dream, to put the broken pieces back together into the Perfect Picture of what my past had not been. I was coming to recapture joy, happiness, and hope. Or so I thought.

Fast forward 2 years and I had acclimatized and adapted along with the best of them. With my limited broken Arabic, I was jetting around the country on public dirty-white buses or taxis driven by chain smokers who wanted to marry me for papers and the price of a Happy Meal. I went to diminutive art galleries, soaked up classical concerts from the balconies or unyielding wooden pews of stone cathedrals, hiked goat paths through orchards bursting with ripe carob and apples, and devoured falafel sandwiches with florescent pink pickled turnips and spicy pickled chili peppers. My local friends were astounded at my comfort and knowledge and I became the unofficial tour guide for out-of-countriers. I was happy. Or so I thought.

Fast forward another year and a half and I was walking down a very short church aisle on my uncle's arm, then two weeks later down a grassy aisle on my brother's arm as my now-husband and I enjoyed the last of three international weddings (the first being the court one). Now came the new adjustments, to life, liberty, and happiness, as I learned to maneuver compromise and the ever-capable tears in dire situations. We set up our first home and discovered we both loved Poirot movies and adventure. I was lost in the happiness of newly-wedded bliss. Or so I thought.

Then the economic crisis blew up, quickly followed by the coronavirus pandemic. I watched my monthly salary lose its value until it was worth less than $200 on the black market, before taxes. I watched prices skyrocket in the supermarket, as we hunted each week for staple items that would keep, and watched our list of favourite food items grow smaller and smaller. Sunflower seeds, a treat to eat while watching a movie, doubled in price and my husband insisted we didn't need to buy them anymore. I'd stocked up a month ago but the bags were quickly disappearing and when they were gone, well, we wouldn't have those to enjoy. A bag of potato chips, half full of air, tripled in price and I learned how to make potato chips from scratch using a frying pan. The only problem was, it took an hour to make.

The fear reflected in everyone's faces started to sink into my psyche and the happiness I'd felt before was gone. There were no more art galleries, concerts, or restaurants to visit. It wasn't safe, health-wise, or affordable. Our entertainment was reduced to movies; our treats to whichever fruit was on sale that week. We were experiencing what it felt to live like in a third-world country and I was not having it. I'd spent my childhood living in primitive conditions and I didn't work hard to find myself back in the same place I'd left so many years before. I was not happy.

I didn't need luxury. I didn't need two cars and a white picket fence. All I asked for was to be able to save a few dollars every month, to take a trip once a year, to be able to buy food and clothes without worrying about the cost, and to have a fun outing every now and then. Simple things. And yet, now impossible.

It's kind of ironic, when you think about it. The Christian is called to live through hell on earth so he won't end up dying in hell at the end of his life on earth. While he has hope of a life afterwards, the reality is that it requires at least 70 years of enduring misery to reach the end. Yes, if the Christian has hope, this can help them to endure. But if they don't. Well, then. It just becomes a never-ending nightmare of struggling to exist, waiting for it to all end. Because the good Christian always accepts life as coming from God's hand, so therefore any and all misery is dictated to us for our own good. Or so they say.

I used to wonder why people didn't believe in God. I didn't realize there is also the opposite side of that. There are those who don't believe in hell. They think this life is all there is to it and when they die, they float away into oblivion. I guess they are the lucky ones, then. They haven't experienced hell on earth. I have. . .