I’m so used to switching off parts of my mind, dividing and compartmentalising sensory and emotional information, that I can’t turn it off. Everything is there but I find one piece and lose another. I see a bright flash and then just as suddenly it disappears to be replaced with something of equal intensity. And again, and again…
‘A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.’
This capacity both charms and alarms me. I’m terrified that my mind would implode if I put it all back together and experienced it all at once. But I’m not sure I’m capable of experiencing things any other way because inside there is always this immeasurable quantity of disparate happenings.
I’m intellectually adept at this but frozen and cold. And getting colder still. I wonder if it’s just leftovers from days that should have remained dormant?
‘But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage
can seldom see through his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.’
Don’t you know I’m terrified to take your hand? Especially when you offer it. I’m better at pretending, better at remaining where I am because the way things are almost always seem like the way they should stay no matter how much I might feel like starting from scratch or how terribly I ache for something more profoundly authentic or intimate.
I’m good at imagination but fail at staying beside people in the here and now much of the time. I try to remember and forget simultaneously - it’s as tiring as it sounds but it’s also something of a liberation. I can pretend I exist only in my nightmares, and if they are reality then I can go on as a happy ghost caught between the realms of victory and defeat.
My therapist recently asked me who the first person I trusted was. The first person I loved came to mind but now I’m not so sure that was the right answer. I have a tendency to conflate the two, as I think many of us do. But trust and love are not necessarily the same thing. Perhaps that’s how I can manage to feel such profound antipathy towards myself but all the while be a fairly arrogant and egocentric individual, though it depends on the context, I suppose. I trust myself but do not love. Yet other people I love but very rarely fully trust. There are good reasons for this disparity but nonetheless it strikes me as somewhat puzzling -
In fear of love because it might lead me to like myself, and scared to trust because it might lead me to desire too much. It isn’t that I fear the intimacy itself so much as that it might lead me to forget who I am. It has in the past, and rarely to my long-term benefit. So it’s a risk I weigh a little too carefully I think - not always but probably often enough to warrant more of my attention than it tends to get.
Because at some point trust simply has to be allowed to be:
I’m so used to switching off parts of my mind, dividing and compartmentalising sensory and emotional information, that I can’t turn it off. Everything is there but I find one piece and lose another. I see a bright flash and then just as suddenly it disappears to be replaced with something of equal intensity. And again, and again…
‘A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.’
This capacity both charms and alarms me. I’m terrified that my mind would implode if I put it all back together and experienced it all at once. But I’m not sure I’m capable of experiencing things any other way because inside there is always this immeasurable quantity of disparate happenings.
I’m intellectually adept at this but frozen and cold. And getting colder still. I wonder if it’s just leftovers from days that should have remained dormant?
‘But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage
can seldom see through his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.’
Don’t you know I’m terrified to take your hand? Especially when you offer it. I’m better at pretending, better at remaining where I am because the way things are almost always seem like the way they should stay no matter how much I might feel like starting from scratch or how terribly I ache for something more profoundly authentic or intimate.
I’m good at imagination but fail at staying beside people in the here and now much of the time. I try to remember and forget simultaneously - it’s as tiring as it sounds but it’s also something of a liberation. I can pretend I exist only in my nightmares, and if they are reality then I can go on as a happy ghost caught between the realms of victory and defeat.
My therapist recently asked me who the first person I trusted was. The first person I loved came to mind but now I’m not so sure that was the right answer. I have a tendency to conflate the two, as I think many of us do. But trust and love are not necessarily the same thing. Perhaps that’s how I can manage to feel such profound antipathy towards myself but all the while be a fairly arrogant and egocentric individual, though it depends on the context, I suppose. I trust myself but do not love. Yet other people I love but very rarely fully trust. There are good reasons for this disparity but nonetheless it strikes me as somewhat puzzling -
In fear of love because it might lead me to like myself, and scared to trust because it might lead me to desire too much. It isn’t that I fear the intimacy itself so much as that it might lead me to forget who I am. It has in the past, and rarely to my long-term benefit. So it’s a risk I weigh a little too carefully I think - not always but probably often enough to warrant more of my attention than it tends to get.
Because at some point trust simply has to be allowed to be:
‘I know why the caged bird sings.’