Stream of consciousness
I haven’t written for myself in a long time. And recently, I’ve found that the only time I am compelled to write is when I am frustrated, or tortured, or angry, and I need to get it out onto a page in order to avoid taking it out on something else. Very, very few times in my life have I written at a moment when I am profoundly happy. I can’t think of the last time. And when I write, I simultaneously edit. I change a word here and a phrase there. I write for an audience, even when I’m writing in a notebook nobody will ever see. So lately I’ve been trying to just let myself go. To just think and put it down on the page. It’s like when people are high, everything makes perfect sense no matter who says what or how they say it; that’s how I want to write for myself. Right now, for some reason, a few hours of searching tumblr in an effort to put off the paper I have due in a few days (international political economy in east asia! what fun!) has put me in an uncharacteristically poetic mood. I suppose I shouldn’t use the word uncharacteristically; because, in truth, it is very characteristic of me to be poetic. I get carried away on poetry, on notions and suggestions, on things I saw in a film or read in a book and a shadow of which I observe in my own life. I laugh at myself almost every day when I feel goosebumps on my skin, a reaction to the littlest, most fleeting things. The hauntingly beautiful note in a song’s crescendo, the poignant end of a chapter, the way the sunset spreads across the sky; these things touch me to the point of tears. Every little thing gives me chills. A friend once told me that “I feel more” than most people. Rage, grief, ecstasy, anxiety. Emotions reach their extremes in me. Also, I wonder why I’m constantly trying to find a little proverbial box to place myself into, a neat and clean definition of who I am and why I feel the way I do. I am this kind of person. I suppose those definitions are comforting, a user’s guide to what to do next in a similar situation. “I am the kind of person who would…” It’s a nice thing to have in your back pocket, I guess. But preemptive self-analysis is not my strong point. I’m more the “Fuck it up and then realize in retrospect how stupid you were” type. I wonder if I learn from my mistakes. I think the more I grow up, the more I do. Today I realized I have always wondered what love would feel like. I’ve been with the same person for the last two years and nine months. Holy shit that sounds so long. Insert panicked feeling of being so young and yet feeling so old. But the point is that I’ve been saying “I love you” for the last two-and-some-change years. And yet I’ve never really felt like I knew what that meant. Which really made me question my relationship with this person on a fundamental level. What about that poetry, the one that tells you that the minute you are in love you will know? Doesn’t that mean I’m doing something wrong? Where is the user’s guide to this? I am a notorious destroyer of things in my life that are good because I didn’t have the foresight and the perspective to realize how good they were when I had them. I live in constant terror of this outcome. And so not knowing what love was or if I was feeling it, not having a neat-and-clean box to put my feelings into has panicked me immensely for the last two and something years. And I really don’t know if I know what it is still. But I do know that the past few months have shifted something in me on many levels. Not just love, but self, and family, and friendship, and all emotions. Everything has been redefined for me and I don’t know quite how to explain it except to say that it’s very different, and everything means more. I also know that the other day was a totally ordinary day, and I was in sweatpants and reading about early medieval Britain and I had just submitted the last of my applications to law school. And there was a moment, about a half a bottle of wine and some other interesting substances later, where I felt so profoundly happy that it brought me to tears. Some soulful song was playing on my computer, and the candles in my room were flickering a certain way, and there was laughter and dancing with two of the most important people in my life. And I was so drunk on wine and happiness and life that I actually cried from joy. Of course, those two assholes will never let me live that down. But mockery aside, this really struck me. I don’t think I’ve ever, in my life, cried tears of joy. And that day wasn’t perfect… I had been stressed and upset. The circumstances were not as such that I should feel that my life was perfect, and I didn’t. But those few moments of careless dancing to some overplayed song and some two dollar wine in my college apartment made me so damn happy. I was never someone who loved imperfections; I abhorred them. In those moments, and in other moments that have happened over the past few months, I loved everything even in its imperfection. Maybe it’s the knowledge that people, especially this particular person, love me so wholeheartedly despite my imperfections. I don’t think I could feel that way if I were not truly in love. Whether that be love with this person I’m with, or love with being alive, or love with the poetry that my life embodied in that moment, I don’t know.
