[361] Nailed It

“How do you practice an innate wanting attachment to things when you are infinitely prepared to let them go?”

Thank your god for me that I've previously written lines that speak so heavily to what's been on my mind for what feels like months. I think there's something to be said about your previous experience being “too informative.” In the way that the old misogynistic white guy can't keep his hands off the secretary's ass kind of way. (A problem we all wish we had amIrite?) Or your upbringing drilling you with moral imperatives that follow you all the way to the therapist's office and pharmacy counter.

I remember vividly a time where I had no clue. That is to say, all I had were my instincts, and my instincts were complete and utter shit. I didn't know whether I was “supposed” to fight or break down crying. I didn't know whether something I was doing was really right or wrong, I just knew I might get away with it or figured I could handle the fall out. All I could do was react. It's what drives the first time you ever punch a wall. You don't punch walls? Well, whatever the girly equivalent is.

Everything carried the potential to become an emotional tail spin. To some extent, given the physical nature of memory, things still do. It's the hope that the reasoning gets better and the under-developed self-control parts of the brain kick in. Before you can consider yourself in terms not resembling a big ball of emotions, your “thinking” is reduced/raised to the level of those feelings. The mission is to provoke or allay whatever your gut says about what becomes an increasingly zero sum game.

At least for me.

I became bad at “love” language and thoughts because of the Tilt-a-Hurl place they put me in. It's amazingly easy to find as many stories as you want to resemble yours. The case against peoples' claims of love, for me, is practically incontrovertible.

I'm not the only one with a “mom” whose claimed to love me the days before and after chasing me around the house with a spatula or after gutting a stuffed animal. As in, that's my specific case, but plenty of parents skipped over the part in the manual that explains the depths of emotional trauma. I've watched my grandma love and care for her family until her stroke. When things go bad, or said like I say it, when it counts, I get to watch for years how her example was thrown in her face in ways that compel me towards absurd religious language like sin. And I know the train came from an equally disastrous station and will chug along into someone else's experience at the next stop.

The “purest” heights of what people call love seem to come explicitly from naivety, adopted or circumstantial. Children simply aren't aware of the problems we'll insist upon them we have, so throwing different colored ones on a playground isn't going to spark race related issues. The opposite extreme is the bleeding heart. Whether they're aware or merely think they are, at least one thing has to be sure. Either their effort matters, or the world is just, or something tantamount to" God will save us" allows them quite the privileged place.

I am not reassured.

I am lucky to be able to read the dramatically unreasonable places I've been. It's reading history you don't have to interpret. I can take the conflict of the truth I absolutely felt and plant it alongside the truth I'm constantly working on.

I habitually seek to downplay feelings. They rarely seem to be that helpful. If they're too compelling, they arrest the moment. If they're not compelling enough, they might very likely undermine what you're after. I'm writing because I need more specific language or better analogies. I'm confused, not emotional. I'm addressing things I've touch many times, but not quite like this. (My dick looks on enviously.) I don't want to get it wrong.

I don't want to lose “the moment.” I don't want a promise. Not unless that promise is carried by each moment. I don't want to be loved unconditionally. I want to be tested when I tell you to take something about me for granted. It should be as real to you as it is to me. I don't want to dictate how to understand me or our relationship. I want to give you good reasons to suspect that what you believe about me is correct. I can say anything, in fact I feel like I say everything, but I'm rarely given chances to mostly act like I mostly want to be. How is the coldest and meanest amongst you the only one on the phone trying to save your life? Let's keep telling that story, but maybe less dramatically.

I think this helps underline my distrust for authority. A good leader compels what's already there. They set the example in a better light, not arbitrarily new one. Lists of rules inevitably get dismantled once enough holes have been shot through them. I'm to believe someone died for my sins? I certainly don't feel like dying for anyone's...what'd you call them? SINS? Right, sins sooo...message not received. You command me something? Well I command you to follow your own damn rules. Wait, who the hell am I even talking to!?

A “loving” example seems like a spinning plate on a stick. It's a show. Look at this feat of focus, patience, and practice. How long can you keep the plate spinning? It's going to fall, but how long can you go? Why are you even trying? And when it does fall, what do you do with the pieces?

I hate ending things on a question.