Originally written on the 13th of May at 5am
"Our thoughts drive round upon themselves, eddying into depression and anger against the world, a dark deep swirling mass of contradictory feelings arise..." |
Closeness to someone drives me to retreat, to seek individual isolation. I love her, but her touch pains me this morning. So I sit in another room and feel awful instead. And when I hear her sigh I feel doubly so. That my upset might upset her also, makes me feel much worse. My pain, my failure to connect, my fear to connect, is not something I can easily master or control. It is the black dog that is beyond my current powers.
This is death. It destroys me and through me, all I touch. It is the part of me that knows death. It desires it. The strong dark part of my soul. It fights for control, seeks to make this feeling my only feeling. To drive me mad and kill me. Not so very long ago it was winning, but not any longer, although the residue remains and burns in its contact. Like a poisonous film of black sludge it has stained the air, got into my lungs and my blood, darkened my eyes and filled my ears and throat. It coats me like an oiled seabird.
It is a feeling of choking. I feel a painful desire to run, to scream, to rend flesh from my bones, to not be. In this spirit being close or intimate or restrained feels like agony. What do I want to do? To walk away, to keep walking, to curl up somewhere cold and dark on my own, to have nothing to do with the world of people, with the world of pain and potential failure and of dying.
To be totally free.
However, I know this desire to be madness, it is an animal reaction of one driven mad by pain and fear. No, it is not animal, worse than that. It is the illusion of reason, the lies of the mystic, "transcend the world of pain for peace in the holy realm of pure reason." All the lies of reason that will free us from what? The fear of loss.
The fear of being alone drives one to be alone. The fear of death drives one to embrace death. To want it. Our thoughts drive round upon themselves, eddying into depression and anger against the world, a dark deep swirling mass of contradictory feelings arise around this convoluted system of thought. Pure thought seems to offer clarity, to make the situation understandable and remove it, to distance the pain, but these thoughts have arisen from fear and cannot be made pure by more of the same. All this will eventually do is block the system, causing an overload that manifests in a variety of ways. I am currently suffering from one of these.
The slate can be wiped clean by some isolated activity, something world denying, at least, this has always been my method, but what if there is another way?
I love her. I trust her.
And yet fear this. Fear the loss of it.
I must stop trying to run away. Learn to trust myself. Embrace her.
But what if she ultimately rejects me? Wouldn't all this have been for nothing?
If this is your fear and you run from it, if you push her away, then it will come to pass. You fear death so much you had begun to embrace it. Don't do the same thing again. This time something is different. You have someone who cares for you as you care for them. Reason can't help this fear, only love can.
Go back and hold her.