I’m feeling very dark right now, well, dark for me. I’m not depressed, it’s just that everything has slowed down. I’m taking longer to do usual things, delaying what used to be snap decisions, dithering over simple choices. That’s dark for me. Oh, I’m not putting cigarettes out on my forearms, or ritualistically cutting myself, other than when shaving. I can’t consider self harm, or even self annihilation, I’d miss me too much; besides, I might miss her even more, were I to wind up on the other side of some eternal impenetrable membrane, forever separated from her.
Who am I fooling? She won’t be seeking me out in the afterlife ether; she didn’t want me in the flesh, why do I imagine she would want me in the spirit? That’s the problem with unrequited affection, it’s based purely on a vague notion that if someone really knew who I am, they’d understand, they’d yell eureka, they’d come running. What folly, what ego-dementia drives such a false notion? In point of fact she knows all she needs to know, she knows what she needs to know, and no, it’s not me she wants or needs.
Need and want, interchangeable? Two separate pains of one huge headache, not the same, but not separable. I don’t think you can want something you don’t need, but you must desperately need something to want it so badly that you ruin any chance of ever having it. That’s what love, real love is all about for me. Eros, physical sexual sensual, that’s easy. Touching the flesh of another human can’t help but stir desire, especially if an offer to be touched is on the table. But love, unconditional love, no holds barred, total union, that’s impossible for a single unsecured self. An unsecured self is a very well-defined self, rooted somewhere out side the body, rooted in the mind, not the brain. What do I mean by that?
Consider this, so much of “real” life is rooted in repetition, in ritual, in response. You say this, I always say that, you do this, I always do that, kind of like married lovers. Therapeutically, we say “You’re in a rut,” when what we should say is you are repeating the same act in response to the same stimuli each and every time. My shirts must hang a certain way, (on wooden hangers, facing left, top button secured) my socks rolled just so, my toothbrush and paste arranged just as I found them, What? 50 years ago,? and I always sleep on the right side of the bed, and rotate through all four positions before laying next to…next to…that’s right, my bed is empty. As I was saying, repetition and ritual. And, of course response. You scratch my back, I scratch yours; quid pro quo; please, thank you, you’re welcome, don’t I always just hate people who say or write “your welcome.” What about my welcome? Isn’t it good enough? Aren’t I good enough? Why aren’t I welcome? Why don’t you love me? I digress.
Ritual, repetition and response are brain functions, pure rote developed over a period of time to allow a sense of security as it relates to everyday existence. So it goes with math, algebra, calculus, engineering, physics; all science is derivative of repetition, I still can recite the multiplication tables up to 20, and do long division, and solve the first derivative, and parse a sentence, and normally know the definition of a hundred thousand words and usually spell them correctly.
You see, a self unsecured, not insecure, but unsecured, relies on such parlor tricks to advance a career, or stay married, or generally give a damn about most things in the world, and for most people, certainly not you reading this, but for most people, a brain is enough to get by; properly conditioned, you can accomplish anything…well any thing tangible. For the insecure, which is most of you, not me of course, there is always a question about why you do what you do, or how you do it, or the question of who does what to you, or other such drivel as to defy your sense of self. You may need these things explained, you may seek help, you may be given a label, such as depressed, or obsessive compulsive, or the king of current psycho-monikers, bi-polar.
That’s what she says she is, bi-polar. Which to an undisciplined and unenlightened “mind” is a marvelous excuse for never leaving the body; just like alternating current, she switches back and forth between up and down or happy and sad, or courageous and cowardly. Vacillating over all the common things of life, even love, as common as that is. Her insecurity is just an excuse for laziness; it’s not the fear of commitment, but the work of dealing with it that the brain doesn’t want to do. Bi-polar is the slacker bon-mot of the new millennium.
Bi-polar? It’s called emotion! It’s called creativity! It called complicated! It’s called profit by drug company’s that are enriching themselves on the plasma of your mind, on that wonderful “alternate” being that we should all acknowledge; that something of us that changes yet remains the same, that something of self that shimmers even in the dark, faintly pulsing with self-approval, and then bursts like a mini-quasar out of the blackness and fills our life with light!
What is “unconditional love?” Of course, it means I’d die for you. That’s easy, simple to comprehend, but it so much more means I’d live for you; that’s right, live for you! Giving up nothing of myself; you in no way diminishing yourself, both of us together being in union with each other, in harmony.
That’s what an unsecured self can do: repetition, ritual, response, all necessary to the daily drudge, the perfection of which any mind will admit can be a delight; but beyond the ordinary, the expected, the necessary lies the realm of thought, the debate of purposefulness, the quest for knowledge, the kingdom of the philosophers, the rule of mind over matter. And unexpectedly, at least to most selves, here is found the passion of love unbounded by physical constraint, the dance of souls before the face of God, here is found “unconditional love”
The pity, at least for me, in my darkness, is it takes two self’s to achieve this perfection, although I’d be up for three!