The daily breakup
Aug. 18th, 2021 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormTonight I'm thinking about the end of my relationship with Michael.
We had written to each other, back and forth. We had spiral-bound notebooks and I'd write in one and give it to him, then he'd write and give it to me. I don't remember how many notebooks it was. Over time he wrote less and less.
When it was over I wrote so much. What I wrote then feels so resonant now, eleven years later, that I don't have anything left to add to it. I'm hurt tonight but my past self wrote this to me more than a decade ago, wrote this to my self, and it sets up some sort of harmonic ringing that is vibrating my bones. Time collapses. Space collapses and I can't feel my body. I just read what before I wrote:
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 seen 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.
PS I do maintain a few connections without sacrifice, but he was not one of them.
https://greenstorm.dreamwidth.org/716405.html
A short while later I wrote:
You want me to be spending more time with you. You know how I deal with you? By destroying your expectations.
I am not reliable. I cannot serve in anyone's life as their sole source of comfort, of love, of snuggles, of venting, of conversation, of anything at all. If you need something so badly that you will collapse into a sucking black hole of misery if you don't get it, do not look to get it from me. Even if I would ordinarily give it to you gladly, even if I would ordinarily be completely unburdened through this transaction, if I suspect you are leaning wholeheartedly on me in some regard I will drop your heart.
This is because I can't stand your disappointed expectations. When it becomes clear that, more often than not, you are disappointed rather than happy with our interactions, those interactions will cease.
It happens to everyone. God knows, it's happened to my own damn self, but I've spent long enough at this that I know what to ask for from myself.
You see, the breaking is an alchemical process. I stop trying to give you what you want, you fall, you break. The world ends for a little bit, then it resumes. If there was something between us that meant more than the leaning, you will learn to trust me to do the things I do for people: I love people, like crazy. I am there to hold you through the midnight crazy voices. I make a good tea partner, and I'm good to talk with. We can take walks through the back doors of your mind or of mine. I see beauty in you, and I take joy in your flight across the world.
You will have learned, through bitter experience, not to trust me where I cannot be trusted: I am not consistent. I do not emotionally distance well. I do not reliably see the dark or the light side of something as you need. And I am never a replacement for your own sense of self-worth, for your ability to find love in other people in the world, for parents or siblings, for financial support or your right hand in bed or your right and need to comfort yourself and walk yourself through your own difficulties and griefs.
Michael never loved me in the first place. There was no freighting of expectations on our time together; he obviously didn't need me. Can you imagine how much I needed that? Can you imagine how much I need to feel people close sometimes without knowing that they'll think I failed them, if not right that second, then within a day or two? Can you believe I could write about him without that act disappointing him because of the way it was phrased, because it did or didn't include the right topics, because there was or wasn't enough of a tone or a particular subject or connection?
Maybe you and I can make something together out of what happens after I break your expectations or maybe we can't, but it'll be all that's left. It's what you get.
https://greenstorm.dreamwidth.org/719714.html
Over and over I've posted this quote I received from Ryan, which he attributes to Hitherby Dragons:
“So what is Hell?”
“A place where there’s something you can’t let go of,” I said.
Now I try to climb back into my body, finish dinner, brush my teeth, set things out so I remember them for tomorrow at work. I want to sit here like a stone monument to myself all night, staring into space, reading old journal entries, reading old poetry. It's eleven years later, though. Somewhere in that time I've picked up the strength to shut the lid of the laptop just a little bit sooner.
We had written to each other, back and forth. We had spiral-bound notebooks and I'd write in one and give it to him, then he'd write and give it to me. I don't remember how many notebooks it was. Over time he wrote less and less.
When it was over I wrote so much. What I wrote then feels so resonant now, eleven years later, that I don't have anything left to add to it. I'm hurt tonight but my past self wrote this to me more than a decade ago, wrote this to my self, and it sets up some sort of harmonic ringing that is vibrating my bones. Time collapses. Space collapses and I can't feel my body. I just read what before I wrote:
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 seen 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.
PS I do maintain a few connections without sacrifice, but he was not one of them.
https://greenstorm.dreamwidth.org/716405.html
A short while later I wrote:
You want me to be spending more time with you. You know how I deal with you? By destroying your expectations.
I am not reliable. I cannot serve in anyone's life as their sole source of comfort, of love, of snuggles, of venting, of conversation, of anything at all. If you need something so badly that you will collapse into a sucking black hole of misery if you don't get it, do not look to get it from me. Even if I would ordinarily give it to you gladly, even if I would ordinarily be completely unburdened through this transaction, if I suspect you are leaning wholeheartedly on me in some regard I will drop your heart.
This is because I can't stand your disappointed expectations. When it becomes clear that, more often than not, you are disappointed rather than happy with our interactions, those interactions will cease.
It happens to everyone. God knows, it's happened to my own damn self, but I've spent long enough at this that I know what to ask for from myself.
You see, the breaking is an alchemical process. I stop trying to give you what you want, you fall, you break. The world ends for a little bit, then it resumes. If there was something between us that meant more than the leaning, you will learn to trust me to do the things I do for people: I love people, like crazy. I am there to hold you through the midnight crazy voices. I make a good tea partner, and I'm good to talk with. We can take walks through the back doors of your mind or of mine. I see beauty in you, and I take joy in your flight across the world.
You will have learned, through bitter experience, not to trust me where I cannot be trusted: I am not consistent. I do not emotionally distance well. I do not reliably see the dark or the light side of something as you need. And I am never a replacement for your own sense of self-worth, for your ability to find love in other people in the world, for parents or siblings, for financial support or your right hand in bed or your right and need to comfort yourself and walk yourself through your own difficulties and griefs.
Michael never loved me in the first place. There was no freighting of expectations on our time together; he obviously didn't need me. Can you imagine how much I needed that? Can you imagine how much I need to feel people close sometimes without knowing that they'll think I failed them, if not right that second, then within a day or two? Can you believe I could write about him without that act disappointing him because of the way it was phrased, because it did or didn't include the right topics, because there was or wasn't enough of a tone or a particular subject or connection?
Maybe you and I can make something together out of what happens after I break your expectations or maybe we can't, but it'll be all that's left. It's what you get.
https://greenstorm.dreamwidth.org/719714.html
Over and over I've posted this quote I received from Ryan, which he attributes to Hitherby Dragons:
“So what is Hell?”
“A place where there’s something you can’t let go of,” I said.
Now I try to climb back into my body, finish dinner, brush my teeth, set things out so I remember them for tomorrow at work. I want to sit here like a stone monument to myself all night, staring into space, reading old journal entries, reading old poetry. It's eleven years later, though. Somewhere in that time I've picked up the strength to shut the lid of the laptop just a little bit sooner.
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Date: 2021-08-19 04:22 am (UTC)https://open.spotify.com/track/5VMM8HACPK9RPnzQgcoVKh?si=J8Q4dF01SSW1szKkoADSLQ&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1