This one.
Sorry. I have a few blogs coming up about current events. Please bear with me: existential crises are best served blog.
I have never liked things that I can't control - I found the idea of Santa disturbing from day one. A bearded stranger bearing unmarked packages? When did I approve this? But my mother (the ultimate control junkie) sympathized with me, as I was constantly encountering something that I felt was unfair. I've learned to cope, finding small comforts in knitting, an acerbic tongue, and VH1 series. I still feel like someone missed a few lines in theHTML code of life. I encounter more error messages than I'd like- I'm still pushing Santa back up the chimney everyday. I find pockets of patience, little ways to feel like I have some say in my own destiny.
But sometimes I run out of patience and I find the human condition completely offensive and nonsensical. It can make a girl feel a whole lot like this:
Leaving out all the terrible things that people have to deal with: hunger, poverty, oppression, prejudice, sickness, just being a normal old person is pretty much the hardest thing I can imagine. What is more out of your control than being alive. It's easy to feel trapped, but who would ever want to leave it?
So we're here. Now what?
It's kind of a lonely business being a person. So we find people to help us forget that we are lonely. We care about them. We end up caring about a sizable number of people over a lifetime. And very few of those people stay with us, for whatever reason. Falling in love is particularly tricky. You are flooded with this incredible feeling - a body high that makes us entirely sure that we could never be alone now. And we enter into this mutual gushyness with a mutual understanding that it probably won't last. One or both will be hurt and someday you will just be an entry in the other's journal- an anecdote to tell, another name to remember. Again, when did I approve of this? It doesn't seem fair at all that we end up loving way more people than can ever love us back?
Here's my big problem: I want to love everyone all the time. I don't like this business of people passing through. I want to have my first grade crush, my next door neighbor, my roommate, the band,the rabbi, my family, and everyone around me so nothing changes. No one is lost or forgotten. I get attached to people and places -probably more than makes sense and I don't know how to manage holding onto everyone.
That's scary. Every once in awhile a little bit of light reaches my black,communist soul and I think " Fuck. I have a lot to lose. And chances are I'll lose most of it eventually. One day I will definitely lose all of it." If there is one terribly morbid thing I know - no matter what you believe - we all have to face death by ourselves. Someone much nicer than me said, " Well doesn't that make you appreciate things/people/feelings more?" Frankly, not most days. It makes me want to move to Moscow and hide. Maybe start making my own vodka. Becoming a social recluse sometimes seems easier than the constant inevitably drifting. At least I could maybe get a historical site out of the deal " the hermit of helinski" I like it.
These ideas don't have a big resolution because it still makes me sad almost everyday. My mom assured me, " I was alone for a long time. Yes, it is easier, but it is definitely not better." I try to make sure I tell and show people that I love them - I love all of whoever you are and I always will. No matter how much you hurt me or forget me, I will still love to hear how you are doing years from now. Other people's lives are important to me, so I don't really have a choice to withdraw. If I am clingy, its because I know you're going to leave me. If I'm distant, I'm scared about how hard that will be. Yes, sometimes I feel stuck in this weird wheel that crunches together loving and leaving. But maybe that's part of loving someone - realizing that we're all on our lonely way to somewhere or someone else. The company in the meantime is just about the best you could ask for.
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