The Unloving Wanting
I wonder if we fall a little too much in love with stories, especially ones we write ourselves. It’s a fallacy to call this love because this is an uncontrollable, desperate, choking stranglehold that is not loving, nurturing or caring. Love is not blind; it makes our vision clearer, if not in terms of tangible eyesight but in our understanding of life.
We are always our selves. Even in denial, our specific ways of denying our needs & other people’s, define those very needs. Perhaps there are lessons even in the stranglehold we variously term desire, commitment, co-dependency, romance, control or stability.
What is it that we truly feel? How much of it is is liberating insight, how much is fearful clinging? And what does it say to us about us? Maybe every lover, every object of desire is also a teacher, a guiding light into our selves. And some of us need to explore our dark alleyways. There are treasures in hidden corners as much as there are monsters called trauma. This un-loving wanting is our map.
I have clung to books & in that clinging, held fast to painful memories, hoarded unresolved issues, nursed grudges & frozen unhealed wounds. I’ve escaped from the agony of broken trust & rejected affection into placeholder poetry for a city. In these alleyways, there have been comfort, yes. I called the pandemic a long distance affair with my city, an enforced imprisonment with no respite. But it was withdrawal symptoms from my unloving wants.
My books are in other places. The city hasn’t moved. But maybe I have. New addictions come flooding in, most of all, an attraction to stories. I’ve avoided triggers for years, holding fear as plastic barriers to fence in my self. But the triggers feel as artificial as my defenses. I bleed a little, I moan a bit, I let myself be a little less clear. The way out is the way through. In that blurring, may be my definition.
Maybe we learn loving not by looking for love but by healing that which is not loving.
