Something that’s solid was this—our survival was met, our growth abundant, our love deepened, our Now different, our sadness confirmed. We’re sitting at the dinner table tonight.
There is some life issue operating underneath our shaky feet beneath the table. My partner’s eyes meet mine. Thinking I had grown, I had the courage to wink at her. I’m not strong. Just plant your feet on that invisible ground and choose to be held up by your struggling, I heard an inner voice tell me. We’ve made it so far.
She speaks from an Idealized self-image where she believes her intellectual professions deserve finality. Too much inside her craft to know you can never master it. She became what she and we all most fear. She understands things emotionally. Her family are as dry as sticks. They really have to defend their incorrectness. Inside of her lived a self-glorification, childlike, totally illusioned, not good at hiding except from herself. She seemed to operate from a need for validation from others, ceaseless in her needs for validation.
Sssshh. Let’s get back to the family dinner where we are happy and expert at…inspection. Since we made the grade ourselves without being courageous enough to say anything, she is revealing typos in her understanding, and we are hearing the word “relationship” as her punctuation. That “forever love” always was her main whim, and something in her at dinner in front of all of us darting our eyes made her say, “Oh finally! I waited all my life for him. I knew he was going to come, but I knew he’d show up. I’m grown! It’s gonna come. Nothing will come between us!” Glancing at wisdom and not admitting we didn’t understand her optimism, the watery queasiness in moment-only recognition, murk-seeing connection was what she yearned to repeatedly capture. With our past discovery of each other, she still had the same language gluing the two of us into hypnotic safety, relief and elusive bliss. I remember the day I walked to her as we planned to meet like this on the day. My razor voice, chiseled features, aloof downy hair, trapped tight muscles that were strong and agitated. She was losing air for words, and we were trembling in fervency. For different reasons, everything happens anyway.
Eventually, I let myself tell her what was going on in my mind. The story we were telling each other about situations had a problem. It was the way situations were “going” and how it was “unfolding” that wasn’t even the right conversation. Yet, I secretly held back my intuition that the main destination is never going to be won. Maybe a new theory on life just happened. Maybe she’s in love with the ending. Maybe, so she can get on with finding the love for herself. Maybe to tell her what she wants doesn’t exist.
I’ve come to a personal theory that the eyes are affected by the experiences we have in this life, as well as by all we have been through as a soul throughout eternity. You can tell in the eyes who is used to telling the truth and who is not. Yes, the truth and the eyes are another language. You cannot reverse being wounded. And wizened.
This has been my process to recover—challenges to concentrate, extreme longing, feelings bordering on despair, like I could slip off a rock on the way there, fall, and hope to die. Sometimes drunk and splattering, honest in my fumbling. Defending my honor, taking great aims to make what I want.
Narcissism is much more than a celebration of performances. How about for hard work? How about for trying and risking? For our sleeping spirits reflected open?
Intensity is ALL the way through.
Empathy is Poetry 