An Alternative to What Was

 Well...it's been a while. The last thing I wrote was essentially a mad, Covid-inspired rampage where I desperately tried to get rid of ants with Apple Cider Vinegar and called myself the Rambo of ant-killing. Yep, typical lockdown stuff.

Since then...we all know what's happened since then, in the world and our country, so no need to rehash other than a general malaise and increasingly repressive weight and burden of dismal futility seemingly increasing by the day.

Okay, depressing statements over, for now, at least.

What did I want to talk about today, roughly 4.5 years after my last blog? 

I think love, maybe, relationships?

When you're in the midst of something, fully and irrationally caught up in the web of someone else, it's like you're stuck in a loop - the image of a hamster wheel comes to mind.

When you're finally able to step off (or pushed off, in some cases), the world is spinning for quite some time. It takes a while to become readjusted to stability, to solid ground again. Time itself seems to steadily slow as your heartrate returns to its healthy stasis, and you can finally look at the image before you properly - your own face in the mirror stills, and for the first time in years, you see yourself reflected back instead of the person you were focused on for so long.

I don't believe all relationships are like this, but the ones that take something from us, are.

This isn't inherently bad, by the way, I think it fully depends on the situation and the person, and what it ends up transforming you into. But it's these specific types of relationships - the ones that are a direct reflection of what you're reaching for within, of the child inside of you desperately searching for a love that can't be fulfilled, at least not in the way you deserve. It's this type of love - the clinging, piercing kind - that reveals what's broken inside of you, the way pain receptors indicate what needs attention. If we're numbed, we'll ignore the issue until it grows in severity, and it overtakes our cells.

I finished writing a book last year. It's not the one that's being published in July, but one that will probably take years to come out. I might set it aside for a while until the time feels right - although, having said this, it'll probably come out quicker than I think and it'll be horrifying.

Regardless, it feels like a snapshot in time, this book, pieces of a girl that so desperately wanted something outside of herself, periodically falling in love with the wrong people until the issue grew in severity so deeply she could no longer look anywhere but within.

The "she" I speak of in this last sentence is me, not the character - in the book this character gets a "happy ending" of sorts, as happy as the type of writer I am can make it, at least.

In reality, I'm in the process of achieving this for myself, I believe, just not in the same way the character did. But it feels good, to immortalize the positives of a brutal and powerful relationship, to show it in all its painful complexities, giving way to what could of been, pretending like it was.

For this relationship to continue on the page, to have something to look back on as the years progress, not so much as a "what if" - it was always going to turn out this way - but as an alternative to what was. Another possibility. 

And by doing so, as my heartrate stills, as I can finally look at myself in the mirror and not see him reflected back, as I can learn and heal and reclaim the power and love that was always there, I can maybe read back that book, one day, and thank him.

***

As I'm reading this back before posting it, the song "Take This Waltz" by Leonard Cohen is playing, which feels appropriate. One of my favorite films, also titled "Take This Waltz", directed by Sarah Polley and starring Michelle Williams, Luke Kirby, and Seth Rogen, is rather fitting to this all.

I won't get into the full plot here, exactly - if anyone ends up somehow stumbling upon this blog and reading it (though I also feel like I'm typing into the void, which is maybe for the best), then I recommend watching this film. 

I've seen it so many times because in many ways, for years, I wasn't as convinced relationships could last. I don't feel that way at all, anymore. In fact, somehow, due to this whole experience, I think I might feel the opposite now.

It's funny, but I didn't realize this until now, exactly, but I do. What a relief, this sudden instream of optimism, of renewed faith in the midst of heartbreak - but in this heartbreak, it's like my heart has been broken open, finally, maybe. Yep, having a full-on revelation here, in real time. Oh, thank God, I needed this.

To continue, the Michelle Williams character, in the end, finds herself stuck in a similar loop I was speaking about earlier - despite her attempts to follow passion and her heart, to escape into something new, she winds up back where she was, experiencing that familiar melancholy and longing that can't be filled.

Because, despite the excitement and thrill, of experiences that lead us out of ourselves - put us on that hamster wheel, flurrying and dizzying with excitement and adrenaline, with unsteadiness and desire - we can't truly outrun ourselves. And the longer we fight it, the more harshly it will catch up.