Joyously, joyously
Let me tell you a story.
Within me are two mutually exclusive forces. One is a whimsical, deep romantic essence that anhedonia and anxiety tamp down but cannot annihilate. It emerges in times of reflection. Like this present two months to end the year. This does not necessarily mean interest in the symbols of romance embedded in hegemonic American culture, though that impulse is not totally absent either. A close friend was bewildered, trying to understand, when I talked about meeting an established friend experiencing the blood rush and the heart go loud. I do not talk like that, and yet
I did.
The other force is how deeply I can be wounded. Not only by people intentionally seeking to hurt. Not only by people who speak the truth a bit harsher than I expect. Being wounded from actions of nothing . . . no indication of intent.
Staring at a cement wall and seeing malevolence.
The romantic impulse doesn't come from trying to meet social expectations. It's not even really about what other people might want, though I always try to accommodate - sometimes I cry for mercy and beg someone to please pick what museum they would like to go to.
The impulse is deeper, not really something I understand. I thought for so long I was a slightly more evolved version of a 00s atheist guy, all about chemical signatures and neurons firing. What I have had to realize over many difficult years is that like my attempts to understand the world on a social structure level, humans have finite time and the brain can only process so much.
The end results are occluded mysteries about our personality and motives, perhaps not inherent ones, but ones we lack the raw power to understand. The heart thuds, the hairs on my arm stand ram-rod straight. I become deeply scared, I see betrayal around every corner.
Joyously joyously, I love every part of it. It's a reminder I'm still alive, that maybe I can fill my vessel just a little bit. The pain that might come I can work out in therapy. I know what being scared feels like, constantly and in the marrow. But I want more in this life, and that requires being painfully, achingly vulnerable to borderline strangers.
After so long being scared, maybe I can have something else in my heart.
Artemis