Dear Greenstorm
Everything you know about the world is a lie. Everything you know about yourself is a lie. You tell yourself these lies (you call them stories) to make the world seem explicable.
The world is not explicable. It can be packaged, wrapped, sent, received, and exclaimed over but we are only pretending that the world at the end of the process has a connection to the world at the beginning.
You won't get at the truth of things. You know that. You don't even really try most of the time. You won't get a valid explanation. But you also won't get meaning if you don't make meaning here.
Greenie, your life is stories. You tell others stories and that's how you communicate. You tell yourself stories and that's how you think. Right now your story is that, seven days ago nearly to the hour he told you that you were too much time and energy for him to deal with, that he was quickly losing interest, and that he spit you out of his life like squeezing the soap in the shower and you went careening off and bouncing against the walls. Now you lie over the drain, eroding.
Right now your story is that he's still too goddamn walled off to deal with real help so when he asked you to go over and snuggle -- after telling you he would not do the same for you -- he was taking advantage of you and he's a bit of a jerk for that.
You've got a simultaneous story running. That story is about connection. That's the story where you are a strand in a web, and everyone else is also a strand in that web. That story is where when one person goes down the other strands take the pressure for that person, the net flexes and eventually rebounds. That story is where you are a strand that does not break.
In your third story you're hanging from fraying ropes and he's just handed you an anvil.
You've had so many stories where in the end the hero rides off into the sunset and is never sen again unless you steal a horse and frantically chase after, leaving your own life behind. You've had so many stories where distance is the last sentence. In your stories of yourself you're not interesting enough to keep people nourishing you. In your stories of yourself you demand too much and people go away and they are never close to you again. You don't trust yourself to live a story where you maintain connection without sacrifice.
You don't believe life happens without sacrifice. You believe some sacrifices are much more pleasant than others.
Your lie to yourself is that, because you like someone or find them valuable in your life, that it means something. That's where you find your meaning. Your experience, though, is that how you feel towards people maybe isn't based on anything reciprocal at all. It's not based on their innate goodness for you or their ability to compliment your strengths or teach you things from the way they move through their lives. Your experience is that people come and go and you have no control over that regardless of how much or how little of yourself you give.
You would find it morally repugnant to be emotionally closed to a friend for more than a month or two. You open around people and there's no help for that. God knows you've tried. But also, in a world where you manufacture your own meanings, there is nothing wrong with that. You think that if you call this one way or the other instead of rolling with it you'll lose it, but the liklihood is that you'll lose it anyhow. That's always been the story. You might as well lose it so that you can write meaning into the story.
I understand, though, that then we'd just be writing the same story we've written before: the story where in order to get someone to engage on some level you threaten to go away otherwise. That's the story where you're demanding, the other person is acceding because they don't want to lose you in their lives completely, where you're leveraging any power you have. That's a terrible story and it makes you feel bad. It makes us feel bad.
These are strange seas. I see you're drowning. I guess I'm not much help. I'm not much of a liar. I sat down to write you a brightly-coloured lifesaver to throw you and we've ended up with this swirl of ashy confusion. You can taste the grit between your teeth and it gets in your throat and chokes each gulp of air.
People say it gets better, and it will get better, but you so badly want to live each moment of your life. You don't want to passively wait through it. I understand that. I also understand that sometimes pain and loss is too much, it's just... too much. You've been fantasizing about cauterization lately, about just going in with focus and burning each memory our as painfully as possible until it's all gone. You want it gone. You won't want to have lost it, though.
I'm no help. I have no answers. I'm just the other side on your mental debate on this and it's clear that writing me down doesn't make anything more obvious except that we are, in fact, confused and in pain.
I guess I should stop answering you now. I don't want to, though. It's lonely with no one to talk to.
The world is not explicable. It can be packaged, wrapped, sent, received, and exclaimed over but we are only pretending that the world at the end of the process has a connection to the world at the beginning.
You won't get at the truth of things. You know that. You don't even really try most of the time. You won't get a valid explanation. But you also won't get meaning if you don't make meaning here.
Greenie, your life is stories. You tell others stories and that's how you communicate. You tell yourself stories and that's how you think. Right now your story is that, seven days ago nearly to the hour he told you that you were too much time and energy for him to deal with, that he was quickly losing interest, and that he spit you out of his life like squeezing the soap in the shower and you went careening off and bouncing against the walls. Now you lie over the drain, eroding.
Right now your story is that he's still too goddamn walled off to deal with real help so when he asked you to go over and snuggle -- after telling you he would not do the same for you -- he was taking advantage of you and he's a bit of a jerk for that.
You've got a simultaneous story running. That story is about connection. That's the story where you are a strand in a web, and everyone else is also a strand in that web. That story is where when one person goes down the other strands take the pressure for that person, the net flexes and eventually rebounds. That story is where you are a strand that does not break.
In your third story you're hanging from fraying ropes and he's just handed you an anvil.
You've had so many stories where in the end the hero rides off into the sunset and is never sen again unless you steal a horse and frantically chase after, leaving your own life behind. You've had so many stories where distance is the last sentence. In your stories of yourself you're not interesting enough to keep people nourishing you. In your stories of yourself you demand too much and people go away and they are never close to you again. You don't trust yourself to live a story where you maintain connection without sacrifice.
You don't believe life happens without sacrifice. You believe some sacrifices are much more pleasant than others.
Your lie to yourself is that, because you like someone or find them valuable in your life, that it means something. That's where you find your meaning. Your experience, though, is that how you feel towards people maybe isn't based on anything reciprocal at all. It's not based on their innate goodness for you or their ability to compliment your strengths or teach you things from the way they move through their lives. Your experience is that people come and go and you have no control over that regardless of how much or how little of yourself you give.
You would find it morally repugnant to be emotionally closed to a friend for more than a month or two. You open around people and there's no help for that. God knows you've tried. But also, in a world where you manufacture your own meanings, there is nothing wrong with that. You think that if you call this one way or the other instead of rolling with it you'll lose it, but the liklihood is that you'll lose it anyhow. That's always been the story. You might as well lose it so that you can write meaning into the story.
I understand, though, that then we'd just be writing the same story we've written before: the story where in order to get someone to engage on some level you threaten to go away otherwise. That's the story where you're demanding, the other person is acceding because they don't want to lose you in their lives completely, where you're leveraging any power you have. That's a terrible story and it makes you feel bad. It makes us feel bad.
These are strange seas. I see you're drowning. I guess I'm not much help. I'm not much of a liar. I sat down to write you a brightly-coloured lifesaver to throw you and we've ended up with this swirl of ashy confusion. You can taste the grit between your teeth and it gets in your throat and chokes each gulp of air.
People say it gets better, and it will get better, but you so badly want to live each moment of your life. You don't want to passively wait through it. I understand that. I also understand that sometimes pain and loss is too much, it's just... too much. You've been fantasizing about cauterization lately, about just going in with focus and burning each memory our as painfully as possible until it's all gone. You want it gone. You won't want to have lost it, though.
I'm no help. I have no answers. I'm just the other side on your mental debate on this and it's clear that writing me down doesn't make anything more obvious except that we are, in fact, confused and in pain.
I guess I should stop answering you now. I don't want to, though. It's lonely with no one to talk to.