I was archive diving and found this little scribble from June 18, 2008--thought I would re-post. Ironically, it's a post based on something I originally wrote in 2007, which was, itself, written during the fallout from a chance encounter from late 2006.
You would think I would not miss several years of "emotional mess", but I do. I am not a drama queen by any stretch, but I do love to FEEL, and I want to feel love, and am not content to shut it off because I'm afraid it's going to end badly. I have had my share of bad endings. Yes, they sucked. They all sucked. I'm not going to lie--it is a teeny bit depressing to read things that I wrote while "under the influence" of some gigantic emotion while I sit here feeling blank for several months in a row. It's coming around, though. Slowly. And as I climb back up to a place where I can feel those huge feelings again without worrying about my hand being slapped, I am heartened by this post.
Freaky Scene
I just found this thing I wrote back in January 2007--I couldn't edit it in a way that I liked back then, but this morning it seems to make sense.
Love gives you a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong, while simultaneously injecting you with the world's most powerful hallucinogen. It is the one thing you will need on this earth, in order to be able to experience anything else--any color, any flavor, good or bad. You can't order it ala carte--it only comes on gigantic, heaping platters, piled high with both things you desire, and things you despise. It is for nothing terribly poetic, though the very skilled can sometimes create a clever lyric around the concept. It is a requirement of being alive. Simple. Grand. Wonderful. Awful
Clearly, only someone in the thick of obsession could have written that.
I'm amazed at just how MUCH is created as a direct result of falling in love with someone--glorious things, and really, really dreadful things--all smashed together in some chaotic mix in your head. At the time I wrote this, I would sometimes wake up feeling wonderful, but awful by bed time, or vice versa. Feelings of exhilaration and joy were almost always followed by the overwhelming notion that I was completely undesirable. An all day roller coaster ride, only, like every other emotion, its not something that is actually "happening", that others can experience, and no matter how much you talk about it with friends, if you can't express it to the object of your desire, you're all alone in your freaked-out world. You can't imagine how many times in the last year I have asked my best friend "Am I crazy? I'm not crazy, right?" while we pick through the minutiae and try to interpret every nuance, in an frantic effort just to keep my head about water. Obsession becomes the only word that describes it--it makes you f*cking crazy.
What has changed since that time is the pitch of the highs and the lows. Somehow, I managed to not self-destruct, and reached a place where there really aren't any lows--or at least no lows based on what someone else might be thinking, which is always the worst possible thing to hitch your life to. I am quite calm these days, and that is a good thing because frankly, I thought my brain was going to explode.
But I still believe those things that I wrote--falling in love snaps you immediately into a perfect perspective, because they say that relationships are like mirrors, and what you love about someone else is actually a reflection of something in yourself. To say that it gives you a very strong sense of right and wrong is to say that when you fall for someone, you actually find your own values--you might say things like, "I don't even know what it is about him that I like, he just seems like a good person", while your mental Rolodex silently flips through all the qualities that you consider "good" in relation to your own goodness--you relate everything about that person to yourself, unconsciously. Maybe you didn't think too much of yourself before, but when presented with someone who seems to share your values, it validates them and, by extension, you. All of those things you have been feeling, those things inside of yourself that you cannot change because they make up the very essence of You, are always ten times more beautiful when you see them in or through someone else.
It is easily the happiest thing in the world to find a kindred spirit. You're filled with joy, but also disbelief--especially if you've been alone with your thoughts for a while, or you're deep into a "nobody will ever 'get' me" funk.
(Personally, I have a permanent residence in Nobody Really Understands Me Land--palatial estate, in fact. The neighbors are friendly, but, for obvious reasons, we all pretty much keep to ourselves.)
While your This-Is-Probably-Going-To Hurt-Really-Bad, logic tells you to approach with caution, every other cell in your body just feels like a moth drawn to the flame--every urge screams MATE WITH THIS PERSON RIGHT NOW!
And that's the "makes you crazy" part that make you write poetry and sh*t...
Love gives you a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong, while simultaneously injecting you with the world's most powerful hallucinogen. It is the one thing you will need on this earth, in order to be able to experience anything else--any color, any flavor, good or bad. You can't order it ala carte--it only comes on gigantic, heaping platters, piled high with both things you desire, and things you despise. It is for nothing terribly poetic, though the very skilled can sometimes create a clever lyric around the concept. It is a requirement of being alive. Simple. Grand. Wonderful. Awful
Clearly, only someone in the thick of obsession could have written that.
I'm amazed at just how MUCH is created as a direct result of falling in love with someone--glorious things, and really, really dreadful things--all smashed together in some chaotic mix in your head. At the time I wrote this, I would sometimes wake up feeling wonderful, but awful by bed time, or vice versa. Feelings of exhilaration and joy were almost always followed by the overwhelming notion that I was completely undesirable. An all day roller coaster ride, only, like every other emotion, its not something that is actually "happening", that others can experience, and no matter how much you talk about it with friends, if you can't express it to the object of your desire, you're all alone in your freaked-out world. You can't imagine how many times in the last year I have asked my best friend "Am I crazy? I'm not crazy, right?" while we pick through the minutiae and try to interpret every nuance, in an frantic effort just to keep my head about water. Obsession becomes the only word that describes it--it makes you f*cking crazy.
What has changed since that time is the pitch of the highs and the lows. Somehow, I managed to not self-destruct, and reached a place where there really aren't any lows--or at least no lows based on what someone else might be thinking, which is always the worst possible thing to hitch your life to. I am quite calm these days, and that is a good thing because frankly, I thought my brain was going to explode.
But I still believe those things that I wrote--falling in love snaps you immediately into a perfect perspective, because they say that relationships are like mirrors, and what you love about someone else is actually a reflection of something in yourself. To say that it gives you a very strong sense of right and wrong is to say that when you fall for someone, you actually find your own values--you might say things like, "I don't even know what it is about him that I like, he just seems like a good person", while your mental Rolodex silently flips through all the qualities that you consider "good" in relation to your own goodness--you relate everything about that person to yourself, unconsciously. Maybe you didn't think too much of yourself before, but when presented with someone who seems to share your values, it validates them and, by extension, you. All of those things you have been feeling, those things inside of yourself that you cannot change because they make up the very essence of You, are always ten times more beautiful when you see them in or through someone else.
It is easily the happiest thing in the world to find a kindred spirit. You're filled with joy, but also disbelief--especially if you've been alone with your thoughts for a while, or you're deep into a "nobody will ever 'get' me" funk.
(Personally, I have a permanent residence in Nobody Really Understands Me Land--palatial estate, in fact. The neighbors are friendly, but, for obvious reasons, we all pretty much keep to ourselves.)
While your This-Is-Probably-Going-To Hurt-Really-Bad, logic tells you to approach with caution, every other cell in your body just feels like a moth drawn to the flame--every urge screams MATE WITH THIS PERSON RIGHT NOW!
And that's the "makes you crazy" part that make you write poetry and sh*t...
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