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[Skip to bolded text to forgo self-indulgent preface]
For the past few years, I've written a lot. But if you were to read just one piece of writing per year in order to get a sense of *me*, it'd be whatever I write for Valentine's Day. I almost feel bad about that, like I'm falling for the “holiday” even as I think of it as nothing more than another “Lie My Culture Told Me.” But the President has hir State of the Union, a teacher has hir “Semester Syllabus,” and I have my V-Day post. It is what it is.
None of them say, explicitly, anything about me. But to me, I see my past selves plain as day. In 2008 [http://beaconandmeggs.blogspot.com/2008/02/219.html], my column is ridiculous and sarcastic. My points clearly secondary to my humor, my focus poor, my “self” absent almost entirely. It is funny, though. In a way I almost envy. In a way I doubt I could replicate if I tried. In a way that, even though I know it was a deflection and a mask, I appreciated how it so aptly shielded me from the risks of the real.
In 2009 [http://beaconandmeggs.blogspot.com/2009/02/319.html], I'm intellectual. I'm more fervent, certainly, but still thoroughly inside my own head, using the tone one might in a term paper instead of an impassioned defense of my only true validation. It is an expression of my beliefs. But my self is, still, behind the curtain.
In 2010 [http://beaconandmeggs.blogspot.com/2010/02/beacon-v-day-2010.html], you can start to see me. You can start to feel me. You can feel the need, feel the emotion, feel the real. There are bits of the mask, cast out like bait to lure you in until you find that you're not reading a work of humor but instead a desperate plea for compassion, for acceptance. You're reading an ideal.
Certainly, this is cherry-picking. But to me, at least, those differences are stark. I have made, for lack of a more dramatic word, more “noticeable” changes in the past year, but even this cursory glance shows that I've been consistently changing. And this year's no different.
So let's talk about love. About a year and a half ago, my girlfriend of two and a half years (by far my longest relationship) broke up with me. It took me completely by surprise. And it came at a truly disastrous time. I was beginning a career I never should have pursued, beginning therapy for a condition I should have engaged years ago, fearing sleep each night because I'd have to wake up the next day, and barely coping with a strong depression even before the break-up. Then, one night, she told me that I “drained her.” In a matter of days, she was gone.
Because of my students, suicide was not an option (unlike in the past). No matter how much I wanted to “take arms against that sea of troubles,” I needed to survive until the end of the school year for their sakes. And it hurt like hell.
So I surveyed the wreckage. I thought I had done everything right: I had chosen an accessible career that would be fulfilling (with expected difficulties); I had denied whatever “darker urges” I had so as not to draw attention to myself or hurt/inconvenience others; I had tried to be as loving, attentive, listening and adapting in my relationship as I could. And yet I, once again, fell back to misery.
The past two and a half years of contentment were dashed. Almost as soon as she left, I felt just as I had before she loved me. And I realized that she was right: I had been draining her. I had based whatever joy I felt entirely upon her own. And when she left, she took it all with her.
I hated myself. I was trained to do it (I had great modeling and instruction). And, if certain theories hold true, I was biologically predisposed. I needed someone else to love me because I certainly couldn't. I didn't feel it, had never really felt it before. I needed her. And although I have no doubt she loved me and have no doubt she wanted me, she did not need me. Not like that.
So there was desolation. Introspection. At last, a decision to do what I needed for myself. Hope (and fear and anger and impatience). A year of transition. Learning to look at myself in the mirror. Learning to, at least on good days, like who I saw staring back. My old self, my shell, my mask fell away. And the new me stumbled forward, awkward and scared and vulnerable and angry and real. I still do not love this “Juliet.” But I often like her. Often enough to still surprise me.
I don't love myself. I don't know if I ever will. But, at the very least, liking myself has made the love of others that much richer. To believe I am wanted because I can, at last, [often] understand why someone would want me; to be touched, to be kissed, to be held and to not doubt or reject it because I [often] know my S.O. has good reasons for loving me; to finally feel another's desire as a spasm of electricity running down my spine and not as “surely a mistake” or pity; to feel these things, when you have never known them, defies words. I smile, I laugh, I am so free. I am so very free.
I feel it fleetingly, this fickle thing, and it must be incessantly reaffirmed. So too, I am not fixed, I am not healed, I am not good, I am not right. I still need that external love, in a way that is perilous if not insanity.
I do not love myself.
But I do feel it. Like never before, like I cannot explain, like you must have felt to know. I do feel it.
It's tempting to generalize from this, to draw some lesson about love (self and otherwise). It's what I would have done in the past. But part of learning who I am (and often liking her) was learning how I am not you. Any of you. And my needs and nuances are truly only apt for me alone.
Just so, in the past I may have written for you. But now, I write for us. I write for you, as I write for my past [and often present] selves, in case you too fear you are alone in whatever thoughts, feelings, places, and desires. In case you too feel they are (you are) too wrong in their wretched isolation for public words.
And I write for me. Because I have spent so much, too much time in fear and shame. And if I am to love myself, I must expose myself. Forgive myself. Be unabashed in what I feel, what I want, and what I need. In who I am. I was fake for far too long. But to feel love, I must not hide. To feel love, I must expose my self to you (to me). And then, whatever comes, is what I have.
Is what is real.
Love,
Juliet