My body hurts. That’s the trouble with making yourself vulnerable: it leaves you vulnerable. Who knew?
I suppose grief is like exercise, in that way. It leaves you sore and exhausted, and too much will destroy you. But if you can push through the pain without injury, if you can embrace it and let it flow through you instead of flinching away, you’ll come out stronger in the end.
I think the muscle grief exercises is the heart.
Longer post tomorrow. Can’t promise it will be good. Dear readers, I apologize, but you may have to indulge me a little. Thank you for your patience. I love you (all three of you) very much.
I had a different post scheduled for today, a more optimistic one I’d written last week about moving on and letting go, but my heart really isn’t in it right now so we’re taking a bit of a detour.
Even though it’s one of my favorites, I don’t often find solace in the silliest, queerest, kindest, most earnest webcomic on the internet, El Goonish Shive. But last night I did.
I was struggling to work through some very dark emotions, feeling frustrated and angry at the unfairness of a misunderstanding that had badly hurt everyone involved and couldn’t be fixed, but which I couldn’t honestly fault anyone for either. At first I tried to tell myself “well, life isn’t fair, suck it up,” but honestly I’ve always hated that sentiment. Yes, it’s true, but saying it isn’t helpful or kind; if it were a comment on one of my posts I would delete it.
Then I suddenly remembered this:
Life isn’t fair. Life can’t be fair; it doesn’t have the brains. It’s up to us to choose to be fair to each other, even when circumstances haven’t been fair to us. The circumstances don’t care, you see. But we can.
Fairness isn’t found or given, it’s made. It’s good to remember that you can always choose to make more.
Added: there’s one important thing I couldn’t figure out how to say when I first wrote this post. Turns out I didn’t need to figure it out, it was already in the next panel of the comic: “You don’t make things ‘fair’ by hurting yourself.” That’s an important caveat. Sometimes, when another person has been unfair to you, the fairest thing you can do is call them out or walk away. Be fair to yourself, too!
We’ve been cleaning out our old storage unit lately, which means I’ve been rediscovering a lot of memorabilia and souvenirs (and baby clothes, and broken toys, and expired toiletries, and homework assignments from 20 years ago, and literal garbage…)
As you can imagine, there have been a few nostalgia bombs.
One of the treasures I uncovered is from high school, when I had a positively brobdingnagian crush that I was too much of a weenie to do anything about. For some reason, it was very important to me that no one ever find out who my SECRET CRUSH was–or, indeed, that I had a SECRET CRUSH at all. I wouldn’t even write their name down!
Well, except for one time. You see, I had this idea that since I couldn’t talk to them (I mean literally: I had trouble saying a single word to them even though we had all the same friends), I would confess my feelings in a letter.
Now, if you’re thinking that I wrote my SECRET CRUSH a mash note with the intent of doing something normal like, I don’t know, giving it to them–well, you better buckle up, ’cause the weenie train hasn’t even leftthe station.
Actually giving my crush the letter? Way too scary. I just thought it would be nice to have it written out, so I would know what I would write if I was brave enough. So I wrote the letter and then just kept it in my journal…right?
Ha!
You see, the thought of actually writing the letter I would hypothetically give to my crush if I was brave enough…was still too scary. So instead, I drew a sketch of the letter.
That’s right, folks: I drew a picture of a hypothetical love letter. It’s now hypothetical twice.
(Hold your applause, please: we’re just coming to the best part!)
What did the letter say, you ask? BEHOLD:
(It’s a deadname. Get it???)
I…I can’t, you guys. I’m dying. This is so sad it’s hilarious. I drew a sketch of the hypothetical love letter I would write if I was brave enough to write the letter I would hypothetically give to my crush if I was brave enough to give it to them, and in that sketch…the letter’s blank. I couldn’t even imagine imagining what I would imagine saying to them!
Well, okay, it wasn’t entirely blank: I did put their name on it. I was brave enough to do that much, at least!
…I just had to then immediately tear the page out of my journal, fold it up, put it in a SECRET box, and stash the SECRET box in a SECRET hiding place in my room, so that no one would ever, ever find out about my SUPER SECRET CRUSH.
Especially my crush.
(We ended up married, by the way. I did get there eventually!)
It’s the voice of the child who calls the emperor naked, Of course.
But it’s the voice of the child who calls clouds pretty, And dead birds sad, As well.
It’s the patron of the woman catching a trickle of water in her open mouth As she dies of thirst, And of the woman who swipes right.
It’s the mountain climber’s, too– At least, until falling– And the man who dreams of flying begs its favor.
But the first man to fly knows It is deaf to prayer, And blind to need.
The preacher at the pulpit calls it her teacher, But the sole pupil hearing its lesson is the old man in the back, Doubting his faith.
The carpenter, when they build, is its employer Though it never earns a dime.
The gambler has looked in its eyes a thousand times, Courted it, Cursed it, Worshipped it, Yet doesn’t recognize its face.
The greedy may scorn and disown it, And the demagogue mask it, Contort it, Flay it and stuff straw into the empty skin (Then bow and scrape to the puppet while condemning its bloody remains for a monster), Yet all the wealth and power they covet is granted Solely at its pleasure.
How do you know it?
You say, perhaps: Like a lover knows their mate Or Like your secrets know your friend Or even Like a captive knows her jailor
No, that’s wrong:
You know it like a mill knows the river, Like a kite knows the wind, Like roots know soil.
I’m still not very good at poetry, but I feel like I’ve been improving a lot recently!
Or at least I did, before I started reading Andrea Gibson. Now I feel like everything I’ve ever written, poetry or otherwise, is literal garbage. The garbage-est kind of garbage. Like, toilet paper.
Gently used toilet paper.
But…I’m still proud of the progress I’m making? If anything, I’m more motivated than ever to improve. Somehow, seeing a creator that far above my level is discouraging and inspiring at the same time.
It’s like looking across a massive canyon, a chasm that separates my ability from theirs. Surveying it, I can’t pretend perfectionism any more; every word I put onto the page is another reminder of my failure. But the flip side of seeing that gap–remembering it’s there–is that I also know it can be crossed. Andrea themself was on this side, once; they stood where I stand. If they made the journey, maybe I can too.
When I was little, my best friend was a boy named Jack. We were thick as thieves from 1st grade all the way through 5th, when he transferred to a different school. I haven’t seen or spoken with him since then–almost 30 years–but if I ran into him in the grocery store tomorrow my first impulse would be to give him a big, warm hug.
It recently occured to me that this probably isn’t normal.
I get very attached to the people I like. If I really like someone, I don’t stop feeling close just because we’ve gone a measly little decade or three without speaking–if we get in touch again, I go right back to treating them like a best friend.
Understandably, this can be off-putting to people who no longer feel the same way!
It’s incredible how many background variablesour mindstake for granted. If it had ever consciously occured to me to question this assumption, I would have discarded it immediately. But because I never noticed the assumption, I continued to take it as given that people I was still attached to would have some attachment to me.
It also helps explain why I struggle with casual relationships with people like coworkers, neighbors, and acquaintances: it’s hard for me to remain engaged and friendly without a strong emotional connection, but building that connection takes a lot of work and can only be done with certain people. I used to be better at this–probably because I had more energy to devote to maintaining the appearance of an emotional connection, even when I didn’t really feel one.* Or perhaps I was better at building small, temporary connections that weren’t as big an investment. Or maybe both! After all, when it comes to certain mental traits (like confidence or friendliness), sometimes “fake it till you make it” is really just another way of saying “practice makes perfect” or “exercise makes you stronger.”
I guess one takeaway for me is that I’m out of practice at being friendly. Better start exercising!
*Not that I didn’t care about the people I was talking to! I care a lot about everybody! In a way, that’s kind of the problem!
Please don’t use “lonely” to mock and insult people. No, not even N*zis. Companionship is a fundamental human need, right along with food, water, shelter, and safety. When people steryotype “loneliness” as a defining feature of disgusting incels, they alienate potential allies and push vulnerable people who are genuinely suffering into the arms of a toxic culture that exploits their suffering to perpetuate misogyny, classism, and white supremacy.
“Lonely” is not a character flaw and shouldn’t be used as an insult. If you wouldn’t use “autistic” or “triggered” or “sexless” or “depressed” as an insult, don’t use “lonely” as one either. None of those things make a person good or bad!
“N*zi,” on the other hand, is a character flaw. That one’s a great insult! “Incel” is pretty good, too! Just stick with those, please!
Me: “Ugh, [trope X] is so [gross/overdone/boring] in [genre Y]. They just fit together so perfectly to make a bad story–like soul mates, but for awfulness instead of love. It’s probably impossible to put them together and have something good come out.”
In Search of Secrets 