I’m so used to switching off parts of my mind, dividing and compartmentalising sensory and emotional information, that I can’t turn it off. Everything is there but I find one piece and lose another. I see a bright flash and then just as suddenly it disappears to be replaced with something of equal intensity. And again, and again…
‘A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.’
This capacity both charms and alarms me. I’m terrified that my mind would implode if I put it all back together and experienced it all at once. But I’m not sure I’m capable of experiencing things any other way because inside there is always this immeasurable quantity of disparate happenings.
I’m intellectually adept at this but frozen and cold. And getting colder still. I wonder if it’s just leftovers from days that should have remained dormant?
‘But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage
can seldom see through his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.’
Don’t you know I’m terrified to take your hand? Especially when you offer it. I’m better at pretending, better at remaining where I am because the way things are almost always seem like the way they should stay no matter how much I might feel like starting from scratch or how terribly I ache for something more profoundly authentic or intimate.
I’m good at imagination but fail at staying beside people in the here and now much of the time. I try to remember and forget simultaneously – it’s as tiring as it sounds but it’s also something of a liberation. I can pretend I exist only in my nightmares, and if they are reality then I can go on as a happy ghost caught between the realms of victory and defeat.
My therapist recently asked me who the first person I trusted was. The first person I loved came to mind but now I’m not so sure that was the right answer. I have a tendency to conflate the two, as I think many of us do. But trust and love are not necessarily the same thing. Perhaps that’s how I can manage to feel such profound antipathy towards myself but all the while be a fairly arrogant and egocentric individual, though it depends on the context, I suppose. I trust myself but do not love. Yet other people I love but very rarely fully trust. There are good reasons for this disparity but nonetheless it strikes me as somewhat puzzling -
In fear of love because it might lead me to like myself, and scared to trust because it might lead me to desire too much. It isn’t that I fear the intimacy itself so much as that it might lead me to forget who I am. It has in the past, and rarely to my long-term benefit. So it’s a risk I weigh a little too carefully I think – not always but probably often enough to warrant more of my attention than it tends to get.
Because at some point trust simply has to be allowed to be:
‘I know why the caged bird sings.’
I don’t fully trust anyone.
I’ve learned to love without trust. It’s the only possibility for me.
In fear of love because it might lead me to like myself, and scared to trust because it might lead me to desire too much. It isn’t that I fear the intimacy itself so much as that it might lead me to forget who I am.
Striking. I definitely have some thoughts on this as well as minutes to get ready for work so I’ll have to get back to you. For now I’ll note the self does not disappear when merging with another: the Self always is. You follow?
More later or offline. Your choice.
*Always* enjoy reading here.
I so get what you’re talking about here CK…
Trust… I want to so much. Its kind of like trying to bungee jump off the tallest building in the world though. Let go, just let go, you’re safe…
Yeah, sure! Its a long way down if the other person fails you.
But I suppose that’s the only way we get to find out.
I too stopped at that passage quoted by the psycho therapist. You have a world of ideas in there and throughout this post. I know someone who just now is going through this same fear – sharing himself has frightened him into believing he will be lost and become a person he doesn’t want to be. The boundary is often tested, but he has retreated from it. However, as he scouts the terrain in his own realm, he seems lost there as well. What a test you describe for love and trust. I need to work through this some more. As always your writing is resplendent – and so honest. All my best to you – John
I’ve always lost myself in relationships, in fact I suspect that was my driving motive for being involved in the first place–hiding behind someone.
Ten years ago (already? wow!) I quit getting involved. Dropped it like a bad habit. Things go better for me when I don’t have another’s perspective and opinions thrust upon me. I’m too easily influenced by the love of my life. It’s all or nothing for me, I guess. Either I erase myself to be with one special person, or I tuck my heart away and avoid all involvements.
I suppose that losing myself in another is one more form of tucking my heart away. You can’t give your heart to someone you’ve had to erase yourself to be with.
There must be a middle ground but I seem to have bypassed it somewhere along the line. I live alone, I open up totally to no one. We’re all stumble-bums, we are none of us to be entirely trusted. That doesn’t mean we are insincere or only capable of looking out for #1. We’re all broken in some way, that’s the thing.
I dole my trust out in tiny portions, like the biggest mean-fisted miser in the world. What else can I do? It’s the only way I can be sure there is something left for me.