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| La Bourrasque (The Gale) by Lucien Levy-Dhurme |
It's creeping up
crawling up inside of me
ballooning disappointment.
I am closing my eyes and clenching my fists
I am hoping
he will answer
that I've not lost him.
What have I done?
My carnivorous longing
spilling out
destroying.
Legs
shaky and heavy as I swing them over the side of the bed and make the trek to
the downstairs bathroom of my parent’s
home. My back aches, a persistent dull thrumming and there’s the ever present
invisible corset around my torso. My body is racked with pain on a daily basis.
I say that it’s the supposed
arthritis but this is not something I actually believe. What I believe is that
I have slowly been turning to stone in an effort to keep myself together.
My
hearing is so sensitive today, the first sign of a bad mood. The voices of
co-workers sound much louder than they should. I want to tell them to shush
(shut the fuck up). Here I am waiting for yet another, different man to answer
my outreach - to connect to me. The cycle to which I am fiercely addicted goes
like this: I see a glimmer or shadow, experience some ephemeral whisper of what
I want and chase it to the ends of the earth. As the feeling of rejection grows
and days go by, a fog descends upon me. I am weighted by the knowing, "He doesn't
want me. I am not loved nor appreciated. I am no one.” Like forgetting
your cast iron skillet on the open flame and your whole hand gripping tightly
before you can pull away, burning. All over someone who I don't even actually
know, someone I connected with temporarily; someone whose story I took bits and
pieces of, filled in the missing parts and am now holding tightly against my
chest.
I
was beginning to curl around the imaginary comfort of someone I spent less than 24 hours with. He
was visiting America for one week. I liked his accent and enjoyed how I could
make him giggle. My friend later told me he’s
been going through a rough break up. I am a dot on his life spectrum and yet I
want him to feel moved by our connection, to want to keep it solid and whole. I
hunger and yearn, like a toddler I am inconsolable, reckless in my desire,
throwing myself around. Even when I met him, I could not stop myself from
forcing the resolution of that tension. My little caged beast needed soothing
before it erupted.
I
want to be healed. I want to be healthy. What was a fun and friendly hook up
has resulted in the awakening of my wound. Modern dating, and dating in
general, is so fucked. Hook up culture is good for no one. You want intimacy?
Have sex. This is our mistaken equation. It ignores everything about who we
truly are. We are forced to become caricatures of ourselves. How good are you
at presenting the best side of yourself? I remember
watching an episode of Maury in my pre-teens one summer break. A man was being
introduced as wanting a woman with no baggage – I swear to God this was the
description under his name. I remember thinking he wasn’t handsome. At the
time, I wasn’t
clear on what constituted baggage and also somehow
aware that I was on the precipice of having a shit ton of it. Years later, when
the word baggage was understood, but I hadn’t yet encountered
my own - I thought he was mean in an objective way. Now, after having rolled
around in suitcase, after suitcase, after suitcase, I will randomly recall this
stranger from The Maury Show, and whisper, “Asshole” to no one at all.
My therapist tells
me that my top need is really two amalgamated into one. I need love and
connection as much as I need to feel significant. I cannot have one without the
other. Make me feel special by showing me love and connection. I will feel
loved and connected if you make me feel special. I want intimacy with every
fiber of my being and I feel surrounded by so many, so terrified of it. I have
never, not one time succeeded in ‘playing
it cool’.
I never even understood what the fuck that was. I have forever misunderstood
and resented the framework of what makes someone desirable. It always felt
like: “Don’t be yourself and
everything will work out. Act cool. Act like you don’t care.” I do care. I’m
not cool.
Things
have been pretty good lately, though, and I don't want to go down this
self-lacerating, hateful, dark and lonely road today. For years I have fought
against the current of grief and anger. Some days, like today, it is so strong
and I find myself caught up, being pulled under. I have good days though,
consecutive ones even, sometimes even weeks. I wallowed in self-pity for a long
time, “What’s wrong with me?
Why am I like this?” Not until years
later, Election night 2008, drunkenly sobbing in the passenger seat of my
brother’s Volvo as he
shouted, “WHAT HAPPENED?” did I begin to see.
Imagine
you are a big, beautiful planet. Layer upon layer, whole oceans and land
masses, volcanoes and cracked tectonic plates. You are accustomed to being
frozen, to thawing out, to raging fires. You take these things in stride, you
never stop turning or making your trip around the sun, not even when its light
burns as you get too close. And then, in a sudden but not unexpected event, the
whole of your being implodes.
Do
you see how slowly your pieces and particles float away, how long it takes to
come apart?
Can you feel yourself separating?
There
is no more center of gravity.
There
is the only the vacuum where your heart once was.
Try
and fill it.
