Beyond a Sickness Unto Death: A Wahnbriefe

A Short Meditation on Exhaustion, Recurrence & the Final Yes

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

“My soul is sorrowful even unto death. Stay here and keep watch with Me.”
— Jesus the Christ, Gethsemane (Matthew 26:38)

There are hours in the soul not of temptation, but of return.
Old fears rise, not from hell, but from the hell of memory —
tired, shapeshifted, more ancient than we thought — seemingly more ancient than ourselves.

Even Christ, who silenced Satan in the wilderness,
is fore-pierced in the Garden — not by spear, but by unwelcome return.
In the desert, the Adversary tempted His will.
But in Gethsemane, He tempts His love.

“Let this cup pass from Me...”
It is not doubt — it is exhaustion.
Not rebellion — but the final cost of obedience:
To choose, again, what has already been chosen.
To carry the Yes, when the breath that spoke it is gone.

Nietzsche was right:
Fatigue is an open door —
where even defeated thoughts — like the Ancient Serpent — sneak back through the garden gate.

But Christ shows us something deeper:

He sweats blood not because He doubts —
but because He remembers what He already chose,
and must choose it again without consolation.

Gethsemane is the place where even God must wrestle His own Yes.
Where the Word prays in silence. Where foreknowledge of His rejection by many fore-pierces too.
Where an infinitude of conquered demons return not to tempt — but to test the strength of Love.

“Yet not My will, but Yours be done.”

This is not a failure. It is infinitely beyond the opposite of failure.
This is the moment of perfect recollection.
When Love chooses again, not because it forgot —
but because it remembers everything,
and still says Yes.