The bell jar looms too close
How fragile, life. How easily the threads at the seams of ourselves come apart. Positively frightening. Dull suffering is what we're good at, as a species. And friends, the ones each worth, not five, but six endangered tigers, are the anecdote for most things.
Around mid-May, things fell apart.
On an ordinary Monday night, I spent a few hours with a man I know, sitting in a coffee shop stirring my tea wordlessly, for hours. I felt like crying but couldn't, my eyes burned and my head felt heavy. S. didn't want to see me that night but I really wanted to see him; I wasn't feeling well but refrained from telling him so (telling him things, even simple things, was always so damn hard, harder than it ever was with anyone else ...probably because I could never trust that he loved me. Did he? ...How could the feelings of one who professes to love you - and who claimed to have cared for you since the very beginning of your acquaintanceship - seem to be so flimsy, so subject to whims, so... untrue?). Afterwards, while walking me to the train station, my friend told me that my smile radiates great joy and deep sadness. Then he kissed my forehead. And in that moment, I knew. I knew that S. and I could not work, that maybe- that maybe it had never worked. But I, wanting this thing very badly, had somehow fooled myself into thinking that it could work, that it would work, that all he needed was time: time to grow up, emotionally and otherwise; time to understand that I loved him very much; time to appreciate how rare that is -- loving and being loved by someone with whom one is compatible, one whom one desires, and one whom one can respect; and time to love me back, truly love me back.
...All of these were lies, I think, that I told myself. Somethings - fundamental things such as one's take on love and loving - don't change even as we change and grow, not without great catalysts anyway; and a white, middle-class, heterosexual young male ensconced comfortably in his comfortable, mundane, middle-class life does not come across life-changing catalysts that often, if ever. He was happier simply pining for me from afar, it required little work or thought of him and was completely one-sided, requiring no input from me, the real, flesh and blood, gestalt me. I was simply a point of fetish, something 2-dimensional and therefore, easy to interact with. ...I realized that maybe- maybe he had never even wanted a relationship.
I cried and cried, sitting at the edge of the island that is my city, it was dark and breezy. I felt utterly, irrevocably alone.
"Our lives are too big, too weird, too full of subtleties and contradictions to fit any easy conception of successful living."
...But that is not what I meant, that is not it, not at all.
Around mid-May, things fell apart.
On an ordinary Monday night, I spent a few hours with a man I know, sitting in a coffee shop stirring my tea wordlessly, for hours. I felt like crying but couldn't, my eyes burned and my head felt heavy. S. didn't want to see me that night but I really wanted to see him; I wasn't feeling well but refrained from telling him so (telling him things, even simple things, was always so damn hard, harder than it ever was with anyone else ...probably because I could never trust that he loved me. Did he? ...How could the feelings of one who professes to love you - and who claimed to have cared for you since the very beginning of your acquaintanceship - seem to be so flimsy, so subject to whims, so... untrue?). Afterwards, while walking me to the train station, my friend told me that my smile radiates great joy and deep sadness. Then he kissed my forehead. And in that moment, I knew. I knew that S. and I could not work, that maybe- that maybe it had never worked. But I, wanting this thing very badly, had somehow fooled myself into thinking that it could work, that it would work, that all he needed was time: time to grow up, emotionally and otherwise; time to understand that I loved him very much; time to appreciate how rare that is -- loving and being loved by someone with whom one is compatible, one whom one desires, and one whom one can respect; and time to love me back, truly love me back.
...All of these were lies, I think, that I told myself. Somethings - fundamental things such as one's take on love and loving - don't change even as we change and grow, not without great catalysts anyway; and a white, middle-class, heterosexual young male ensconced comfortably in his comfortable, mundane, middle-class life does not come across life-changing catalysts that often, if ever. He was happier simply pining for me from afar, it required little work or thought of him and was completely one-sided, requiring no input from me, the real, flesh and blood, gestalt me. I was simply a point of fetish, something 2-dimensional and therefore, easy to interact with. ...I realized that maybe- maybe he had never even wanted a relationship.
I cried and cried, sitting at the edge of the island that is my city, it was dark and breezy. I felt utterly, irrevocably alone.
"Our lives are too big, too weird, too full of subtleties and contradictions to fit any easy conception of successful living."
...But that is not what I meant, that is not it, not at all.