Trying to gather thoughts... it's been a long weekend and Sunday hasn't really started yet.
At an event LA Weekly was hosting. Henry Rollins and Keith Morris were DJing. Art was on display, alcohol was free, and Wil Wheaton was reading exerpts from his latest book.
I was overly excited about seeing Rollins. The man behind the books, those wonderful books that hooked and reeled me in. It was something that sent adrenaline rushing through me, heart racing, breathing almost shallow.
I spoke with him briefly, about a song he was playing. I loved it, I wanted to go get the CD.
He was just a man, but a man who might actually understand me.
That's something that means more than anything I can imagine to me.
Understanding.
Looking at each other and knowing that we're both these wrecked and isolated beings. That we both thrive on pain, on hardship, that that's what we're good at. We can take it.
When one of my exes told me that it was if I was designed to take pain, I was blown away. But he was right, dead on to me and my life.
Other people... they don't get that. It's as though I'm in this world where people are going in one direction, and I've taken a left turn somewhere down the line and who can I relate to now?
Months later, I pick up a Rollins book, and he echos that. He writes of how the only thing he is good at is taking the pain. Someone understood. Someone actually understood.
At the event, our eyes met and held. We stared at each other, then he looked away.
And then I thought, "Did that just happen? Did we just connect?" Skeptical and trying to supress the thrill, the thought that maybe I could actually speak with someone and have them understand. To talk to another person and have them get "it".
But no, no we didn't. He had no memory of it, was just spacing out and his eyes happened to rest on me. I should be flattered, I suppose, that his eyes focused on me when they could have rested elsewhere.
Understanding.
It has become so important to me. It's not love I'm looking for, it's not the emotional thrill. I'm not looking to be romanced or swept off my feet. I'm just looking for understanding, for a person to talk to, a person that isn't mentally separated from me by a large gap of inexperience or different experiences.
We make choices in our lives that send us down flow charts, each incident separating us from our neighbors, each box we stop at a launching point to send us further down the line.
Problem is, I started going the hard way early on.
And that leaves me distant. While others are shooting down the plastic pipes at life's waterpark, I'm crawling through obstacle courses of mind and body, of social and emotional. How am I supposed to talk to these people?
Friday night, I found that I could blend. I found that I could weave myself in by slightly altering my behaviors, by controlling the positioning of the people around me. I could go into a "normal" place, with "normal" people, and take control.
I'm going to be testing this out more soon.
But it doesn't solve this problem. Well, really, if something is to be called a problem, then that means there's a solution. I'm not so sure this is a problem. I think it is just the way things are, the way things are going to be.
I know it is more than likely that I will be alone. I know I need to accept this and, usually, I do.
Sometimes, though, it's harder. Sometimes I look at someone, read a book, hear a speech, catch a blog, and I'm struck with this longing that if only I could connect with this person, then it would fill that isolating hole in me.
But I need to fill it for myself.
All I have, on this level, is me. It's a matter of what I'm going to do with it, how I'm going to experience this life, what I will take from those experiences, and how I will make myself stronger and better. It's all I can do.
I am stronger than this longing, I just forget sometimes.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
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It's snowing again here. Jeez, we've already had record-setting snow. Isn't that enough? (Someone jokingly said that the Olympic games should be held in Washington, D.C. where there's more snow.)
ReplyDeleteI still have to get into the office, snow and Presidents' Day holiday or not. I promised my boss that I'd get him a report before he flies to Florida. I suppose there's irony in that, but because he's my boss, it's a silent irony.
*****
I don't like all your posts on the April page here. Let me be more specific. I don't like the posts that speak about your attraction to pain.
A mind as great as yours shouldn't be distracted with pain. It should be protected from it. Like you protected your sister. Like you protected your mother.
There isn't much I can do about it, I know.
There's a legal concept called "standing." It's needed before a plaintiff can bring a lawsuit. It means there has to be some injury to the plaintiff before he or she can sue. No injury, then no standing and no lawsuit.
I write about that because I'm having a little trouble finding standing to raise the "pain" issue. I didn't give up easily, however.
A long time ago, I read a book, "Damian," by Herman Hesse. There was this mystical part of it where gifted and superior humans recognized each other by the Mark of Cain on their foreheads. They bonded together and became a beneficent brotherhood.
I wanted so badly to believe that story was true. I wanted so badly for it to explain the aloneness I felt. But the weight of the evidence started to tell, and eventually I recognized the book for the fairytale it was.
Still, the book left its mark on me. (Pun intended.) I resolved that, when I recognized a human being who was extraordinarily gifted and good, I would do what I could do to protect him or her. It was, in my mind, something I was required to do.
*****
I took this Hesse diversion because I thought it might help make a case for my having standing to challenge the "pain" issue. But I just can't make the case. And, even if I could, I'm not needed.
You already know that the issue is how you will make yourself "stronger and better." You already know that you are "stronger than [your] longing, [and it's just that you] forget sometimes."
I respect that.
There's one exception. When you shed tears, like you said you did last night, all bets are off.