5.56am
Sunday
30 January 2005
belonephobia fear of needles
gerascophobia fear of growing old
scotophobia fear of the dark
A few sketches from my figure drawing class I decided to hang up:
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Here's something that I've been thinking about a little bit. I feel like I am much much closer to people to whom I can be mean, to some significant degree. My thing with beckham really made me contemplate what it is that is so enjoyable about feeling free to be mean to another person, and I think I've finally come up with two reasons that appear valid and do not imply that I'm just a bitch with snottiness I have to get out on the world.
I had a boyfriend back in high school that I was feeling a little bit smothered by, but I still thought he was a good guy and one that I enjoyed hanging out with and wanted to get to know better, just perhaps at a slower pace and less constantly than he did. But the more I hung out with other people and "forgot" to let him know where I was or what I was up to—my first teenaged attempts at creating space for myself—the more he would send me mopey letters full of his hurt and insecurity about whether or not I liked him. Of course they just encouraged me to take more distance from his overflow of negativity. If there is one thing I refuse to do, it is get into an argument about whether not I like this boy who can't see it himself. When I am falling for a boy, it is a pretty thorough affair, in my head at the very least, and I just haven't the patience for someone who can't see that. I can sometimes understand jealousy, because I do know myself well enough to know that even when I have a worshipful kind of appreciation for a certain person, I cannot give up the constant urges for bonds with other people. I can reassure a person who is infected with jealousy, because I know I have that constant desire to know more about people—they are too interesting to resist—and the only rationale for resisting intimacy with other people is that you don't have enough faith in your own bond to be incredibly valuable for exactly what it is. It comes down to this: I cannot handle that sort of lack of faith.
The second motivation is a little more complex, and a little more messy. But it is significantly more important; in a way, it is an explication on a pretty deep-set aspect of the way I deal with my feelings.
Part of my nightmare is that one day, through routine and convenience and an extreme aversion to negativity, I will grow into the kind of person that continually lives life at an even keel. Of course, I have little worry that I'll lose my excitement over some things, like getting fresh flowers, riding roller coasters, or creating things I'm satisfied with. What I constantly risk is the ability to let myself steep in sadness and pain in any meaningful way. I already find happiness out of most things, when I go about actively seeking a life that is primarily full of fun for me, I run out of space in my head for moments of seriousness about anything that carries the stigma of tragedy. Two separate things today brought me to the brink of tears, and though they hurt, it is a satisfying pain that gracefully gave my day something like depth.
My late night hypothesis is that relationships also need that kind of depth, if they are to really mean anything important. Not at all am I meaning to imply that all this justifies being mean in a manner that is seasoned to cause real pain, intentionally or even accidentally; what I mean to say is that once you know a person well enough, you can see what parts of the brain are tender to the touch, and if you're careful, you can touch them in a way that makes it better, even though any other person doing the exact same thing would carry none of the same sense of intimacy behind it, and would even perhaps leave a stain of real and unforgivable meanness. Sometimes, if someone trusts you enough, you can poke them with a stick and they can laugh about it even though they are simultaneously making a face of displeasure, and then you realize: the strength of my love for this person is so strong that they understand that the stick means nothing in comparison. The stick hurts me, and my head is simply throbbing with the fact that someone knows me well enough to know that it doesn't matter.
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I hope that didn't come off as much like a BDSM distribe toward the end as it seems like in sleepy retrospect, but it is true that putting all that into words and sentences reminds me that bondage does not deserve the disdain that I sometimes lump upon it wholesale.
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The sun is fully up, and my throat is slowly closing with swollen pain. Suppose I may as well take my catnap now.
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