My last relationship ended in early June of this year. There's a lot I could say about why it ended, but I want to focus now not on the causes but on one of the effects. When we broke up, I endeavored to take a careful look at myself and at every relationship I'd ever entered. Why? Because I'd really wanted that relationship to work. I'd really wanted her to be The One. In fact, I remember telling her in our last couple of weeks together that I'd thought she was the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with. But the truth was that sentiment was not new to me; at some point in all of my significant romantic relationships, I'd wanted Her to be The One. It didn't make sense to me to become part of a monogamous relationship if I didn't fully believe in my investment. In any case, with this last breakup, I had to wonder why I'd failed once again. I began a serious investigation and eventually faced a truth I hadn't been willing to acknowledge before: any of the women I'd been with could have been "The One," but I had rejected all of them because I was not One with myself.
That sounds really hokey. It sounds like that Eric Fromm bit about how you can't love others until you love yourself, just dressed up in Buddhistic wording. And I suppose it is.
What I mean is I thought I loved myself, that if I met myself in a bar, I'd pick myself up and get married, no problem. But the truth is, I would have been miserable with me! Why? Because I didn't trust myself. I have discovered that in a relationship, lack of self-trust leads to lack of trust for the other, too.
I didn't trust any of them. It wasn't just that I read my girlfriends' diaries. I also scrolled through their text messages and browser histories. I scrutinized their mail. I dug through their underwear drawers and closets. In most cases, I wasn't looking for any one thing in particular. I wanted to know all of their secrets. You'd think that the less dirt I found in my searches, the more I'd feel I could trust them. At least, that's how I figured I should feel. But that was not so. The less I found, the more convinced I was that I just hadn't found the truth yet. I searched harder. I'd invent stories around the things I did find. If I found, for instance, that my significant other had been looking at porn, I'd figure she was secretly repulsed by me or wanted to punish me but just wasn't saying anything. If I found that she once had a crush on one of her friends, I'd assume she was settling for me, that given the choice, she'd rather be with someone else.
Do you see a pattern here? I was convinced the person I'd chosen to be with did not actually want to be with me. How could I think this? The truth was I didn't like the scared parts of myself, my insecurities and fears, and I was convinced that these women could see my demons and were as repelled by them as I was. I did not think I was loveable, despite all the good things about me because I wasn't perfect. As much as I wanted to be perfect, I wasn't, and the shame I carried around this fact prevented me from being able to fully accept love from another person. It prevented me from loving myself. Fromm was right.
So in the past few months, I've been turning towards my broken places. I've been sharing with you all the stuff I always kept under wraps for fear of being "found out." The truth is, our secrets are only as dangerous as we perceive them to be. The truth is none of us have anything to be ashamed about.
In the spirit of relinquishing my fears, I've turned a bright light on myself. I have chosen to believe that nothing I have done is so wrong that I can't love myself anyway. And it's been liberating to share my demons with you. But frightening, too. The secrets under the secrets are the ones that really make me tremble. It's one thing to tell you, for instance, that I would, on occasion, drop my cat over our balcony when I was 14 years old and frustrated--and blame it on being 14, and another to tell you that I knew what I was doing was wrong at the time and that doing it always made me feel like a horrible person but that I did it anyway while condemning people who were cruel to animals. It is hard to share these things, these haunting moments that I created and cannot undo. Because I worry that like I have done, you will look at this collection of dark fragments and judge me as being evil or fucked up, a horrible person, crazy, selfish. Because in those moments, I was. I was mean. I was selfish. I was horrible. What I did was fucked up. And it's clear that nearly every fucked up thing I have done has hurt someone or something else, but probably not as much as it hurt me. That's how this world is, that's the law. What you put out comes back to you threefold, they say.
Imagine dropping your terrified cat off a balcony, the tension in his muscles, the limbs rigid, paws expanded, pupils wide. Imagine his heart racing under your palm, the sick swell of a shadow in your own chest. How you already felt horrible just holding him over all that open air, how in your mind, it was too late, you'd already done the deed, so you let go. And when he landed and ran off, seemingly unscathed, you felt the weight of his mistrust heavy in your veins, and you hated yourself. But that didn't stop you from doing it again.
I used to be proud of my arms, the skin of my wrists smooth and white. I knew girls who cut themselves, who threw up their lunches or starved themselves, who took laxatives to relieve their self-loathing. I used to think I was better than they were, better than the kids who were drinking themselves into a stupor, who were addicted. But here I was throwing my pet from the second story of my house, literally projecting my self-hatred. Perhaps I thought if I could throw my cat far enough away from myself, I could get free.
I share too much now. This is not my belief, but my observation of how others perceive me. I have friends who cannot read what I write or hear what I say because it makes them uncomfortable. I wonder if I am touching their fears. I wonder what makes something inappropriate to say.
The other day I read a discussion on a friend's Facebook wall about the legality and morality of public nudity. Some people argued that they themselves didn't care whether people ran around naked but that they disapproved because of children. And I thought, angrily, "Take responsibility for your discomfort. Don't hide behind children, who are innocent and in some ways wise, who don't give a shit what we look like under our clothes--they know, and they don't give a good Goddamn. WE are the ones who decide to be scared of our bodies. WE are the ones who ascribe meaning to a nipple or a penis. We are the ones who judge."
If I make you uncomfortable, I am glad. You have some work to do. You might wonder what it is about my words that brings you to close your ears or eyes. Do not pretend that I am ignorant, that I don't realize what I'm saying, that I'm simply not aware I'm "over-sharing." Do not be "embarrassed" for me. Own your discomfort. You might realize that I am not the issue, that it is in fact your own demons that have built a wall between us. You might realize that we can only be as close as your willingness to recognize and take responsibility for our own fears and secrets. When you can sit in a room with me and listen to me talk about the times I told my mother I hated her, when you can sit beside me and hear me say that I was relieved when my father disappeared, that I'd wished it, when you can sit with me and think about your own dark spaces and not leave the room, we will move through our discomfort together, and all our walls will come crumbling down.
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