Oh Everest, My Everest

I'm still sifting through old drafts that I never fleshed out. Several were too complicated and time-consuming, so I'm skipping to this late-August one. I don't really have anything profound to add to it, and so I'll just put it up and leave it at that.

Life cannot be classified in terms of a simple neurological ladder, with human beings at the top; it is more accurate to talk of different forms of intelligence, each with its strengths and weaknesses. This point was well demonstrated in the minutes before last December's tsunami, when tourists grabbed their digital cameras and ran after the ebbing surf, and all the 'dumb' animals made for the hills.

--B.R. Myers, author (1963- )

I have so many drafts saved, and most of them are nothing more than a quotation that was deeply meaningful to me at one point or another. This is the earliest one, from July. Substitute just about any noun for "illness" (or not) and it fits my current mood rather well, I think. No need for exposition today.

Illness is in part what the world has done to a victim, but in a larger part it is what the victim has done with his world.

--Karl Menninger, psychiatrist (1893-1990)

I've tried to write about this three times since yesterday, but I just can't bring myself to leave it the way it keeps coming out. This is the distilled version minus all the dramatics I kept adding the last couple of times I tried to write this. There are so many parts to it; and yet I can hardly separate any of it into reasonable parts.

I love someone. We aren't together anymore because he doesn't love me. A few days ago, I finally stopped to think about just how I would feel and what I would do if he actually started to love me. I found out that we still wouldn't be together, even if that were to happen. The relationship would never be whole because of what already took place, and I obviously need a whole relationship or none (being a person who wants to avoid inviting a lot of trouble into my life and all). More importantly, I found out that my desire to be with somebody is entirely separate from my capacity to love them. I never knew this before. Now here I am, and I love someone, and I don't want to be with him, and I don't know what to do with myself. It's the same feeling I used to get when I played basketball in elementary school and I would call a time-out when things were moving too quickly for me, but then the time-out wouldn't help me accomplish anything but to prolong the time I stood around panicking about what to do, not actually knowing how to improve my situation. It's that same feeling, except there aren't any bullies standing a few yards away to remind me that I can't take a time-out that lasts forever - I just already know that I can't.

So I love someone, I don't want to be with him, and it is making me feel the adult equivalent of the athletic-bullies-are-going-to-beat-me-and-then-make-fun-of-me panic. This, I think, is indicative of why it took me so long to realize that it was even possible for me to not want to be with a man whom I love. How so? Because I spent over a year knowing that we would never get back together but still believing that it was a possibility (not to mention secretly hoping that, in time, it would grow to be more than just a possibility). Operation: Just Keep Playing Because a Time-Out Won't Help You lasted an entire year (and then some) because it was easier for me to want to be with someone with whom I knew I could never be - the way it's easier to pretend you just don't notice that you're terrible at basketball and careening uncontrollably into an embarrassing loss because you can't bring yourself to take ownership of that fact or even think about doing something about it.

So here I am, a grown-up, trying to do something about it. I separated out my existing feelings and desires, and I'm still stuck here in love with someone and not wanting to be with him. I feel as if I should have some kind of revised game plan now that I've stopped to figure out the problem, but it's just not coming to me and there isn't any real reason to believe that I even should have a plan. Ahead of me there is only uncertainty. Pure uncertainty like I have never experienced before. This is not uncommon among the living world but, for some reason beyond my comprehension, this is the biggest and scariest adversary I could ever imagine for myself. It's not helping to know that this is part of what it is to be human and to be alive. I fully understand that it just is - that uncertainty is what lies ahead whether I like it or not - but maybe I don't want to (or can't) believe it just yet because I don't feel prepared to face it.

Here I am: I am in love with someone, I don't want to be with him, and I am emotionally paralyzed. I am terrified of the uncertainty that I face. I am even more terrified that this is permanent emotional paralysis rather than temporary lack of direction. As I pause to reread the things I have just written, I find them quite ridiculous - but they fairly accurately represent the fears that were ravaging me before I put them into words, and those fears have become lesser adversaries now that I actually have put them into words.

I just added the outline of an idea to my blog as a draft and realized that there are seven other entries waiting to be written from the past two months. I keep having these ideas I want to explore further and then I never get around to doing it. It's pretty disappointing, but also reassuring in its own way. It means I'm actually doing the better things I have to do in life. Those of you who know me very well (okay, the one of you - but I'm sticking with plural here) know that this is a big deal and why.

Back to my regularly scheduled programming.

My days of living under a loft bed that isn't quite lofted enough are over.