Rainy night
I am, as per usual, struck tonight with the melancholy of things.
I miss my life in Indy. And I don't just miss it because I miss my friends, or because I mourn not being so close close close that you could predict each other's thoughts... I miss having the beauty of TIME, the ability to take nights and mornings for myself, to not feel so stressed and filled with constant self-loathing (who am I kidding? I am always filled with self-loathing).
And all of that is, of course, a myth, as I am always dissatisfied and no doubt was just as dissatisfied then as I find myself now.
And really, life is beautiful. Life is broken and warped on the edges, bent like a daguerrotype, but I suppose it's the brokenness that makes it beautiful. As Leonard says: "There's a crack in everything...that's how the light gets in..."
But I struggle daily with body hatred, with regret over lost possibilities, regret that I can't let go and allow myself to be so, so messy and make reckless decisions as others can do so easily. And they never seem to have real repercussions! The moment I make a reckless decision, reality crushes me under its heel. I have so many people I could easily hurt with reckless decisions, so I walk the tightwire of rational vs. desire, praying that I can fall off the edge but also begging to just be able to place one foot after another and not lose my hard-won balance.
No, I cannot decide to love you, to try you out. I will hurt you, I will hurt myself. I can see too far ahead and see what a bad idea this could be. I can see how brilliantly we'd shine for about a month before descending into anger, bitterness, and resentment.
No, I cannot just sleep with him and 'get it over with.' Not only do I not really wish to, but I also do not want the emotional responsibility which everyone seems to forget comes with the physical, the bill you have to pay each time you surrender your body to another.
No. You are too young. No.
And really, in the end, none of them actually know who I am, so there isn't any desire that isn't just a lie, a falsity based on superficial knowledge and lust. How much of that is because no one will reach out to know me and how much is because I cannot lower the defenses? What defenses? These walls... These walls are invisible to the one who slaved over them, they were built over years of being invisible, undesirable to anyone but the fringe and rejected, not even worth the time of being called "friend" by any man who wasn't gay. And these are just the walls built against love.
I love Tori Amos' cover of "Famous Blue Raincoat."
George Bernard Shaw said, "The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post." I've never seen a truer thing written. Not for me, at least.
If I'd been born even 90 years ago...My power, my possibility for beauty, my wit and my intelligence would have been less feared. Or, at least, there would have been circles in which I could have survived, found passion and poetry and maybe even love. I think I need to get Midnight in Paris back from Monica, because I think I need my heart broken all over again.
Ritratto
Cecilia Meireles
Non avevo questo viso che ho adesso,
così calmo, così triste, così pallido,
né questi occhi così vuoti,
né il labbro amaro.
Né avevo queste mani senza forza,
così silenziose, così fredde, così morte;
io non avevo questo cuore
che ora nessuno vede.
Non ho sentito il mutamento,
così semplice, così certo, così facile:
in quale specchio si è perduta
la mia immagine?