love and imperfection

People will always let you down.
Love is seldom forever.
The hurt will always come.

I don’t want to know one part of those closest to me.

I don’t want to see just one facet, one side of them.  I want to see the ugly parts as well.

The whole picture, that’s what I’m after.  The multi-layered biopsy of the soul.

I can’t be content to hear things like I love you and I would never hurt you anymore.  Too often these sentiments have turned out to be lies.  Maybe they weren’t intended to be lies, but time always tells the ultimate truth.

Perhaps this stems from my childhood.  From never hearing I love you out of my parents, from never feeling at ease in my own home, from living with near-constant chaos and animosity.  Or, perhaps the root of my insecurity can be traced to my failed marriage, or the many lovers who followed in quick succession that promised me the world and gave me shit, or who promised nothing and left me empty.  Maybe – probably – it’s because I just lost something precious that belonged to someone I love dearly.

But, as Kurt Vonnegut once said, we are trapped in the amber of the moment.  And in the amber of the moment, I am insecure.

I find ways into the secret places people where people think they have their privacy.  They assume that just because it’s password protected they have an almost god-given right to absolute secrecy.  So they say whatever they please, with no thought for consequences, and there I begin to piece together the less desirable truth.

I wish there was a way to become more accustomed to betrayal, but it’s like that feeling of vertigo you get when you take a step expecting solid ground and find air: it’s always unexpected; the heart always skips a beat as the body panics and tries to work out a way to minimize the impending damage.

But I don’t mean to say that I can’t see the full scale of the bad and weigh it against the good.

An ounce of goodness is worth a great deal more than an ounce of badness, and so in the end it becomes a calculation of risk.

Recently, I learned that the badness drastically outshines the goodness in one of those people who are supposed to love and care for me unconditionally.

I’ve also begun to piece together a picture of someone I want to love unconditionally.  It’s hard, though, because the initial feeling of euphoric love wants you to believe in fate and synchronicity and meaningfulness, and it’s hard to feel that blind euphoria erode into a clear-sighted but happy contentment.

In the amber of this moment, I am scared.

I know time will reveal what the amber hid from my sight.  Betrayal is almost sure to follow.

Because hurt is inevitable, people will always let you down, and love is seldom forever.

The trick is to find a balance between love and imperfection, to see things for what they are and nothing more, and move forward the best way you can figure.

And hope.  You also need hope.

there is no why

Religion is based on an ignorance of nature and psychology.

Long ago, people wondered why it rains, or why people die.  They felt grief, and consoled themselves with the idea of an afterlife.  They saw the sun move across the sky and wondered who put it there, and how.  Life all around and no explanation as to why.  A man once said Homo sapiens wasn’t an accurate description of humanity, but rather Homo religiosus.  Not the upright man, but the religious man.  All over the world, throughout history, there is a religious up-welling that permeates the development of human society.  But as we move forward and expand our knowledge of the world around us, we don’t need God to tell us why.  Indeed, the most commonly heard argument for God is “someone had to put all this beauty here for us to enjoy!”  But really, it’s all chance.  We got lucky.  We evolved out of primordial gook out of sheer luck on a planet that wasn’t too hot or too cold, had just the right amount of gasses in the atmosphere, and the right kind of stuff growing along side us.

Someone asks, Why me?  Why am I here?  Why did my marriage fall apart?  Why did my child die?  Why did my car break down?

They say, Everything happens for a purpose.  It’s like mommy kissing a boo-boo: you think it works, so in your own head it does.

There is no why.  There is no purpose.  There is no grand design.  Life is a series of accidents we happen to get caught up in.  Sometimes happy accidents, sometimes lamentable ones.  The human experience is a series of cause and effect, consequences to our own actions or actions taken by others that we must deal with.

The secret to life is there is no damn secret.  Life is what you make of it, it only has the meaning you give it.

Love is important.  Love and sex and happiness, those are the key to making the most of it.

Everything else is up to you.

a blip in the flatline of my hiatus

[in]security*

i went to church once.  the pastor brought a piece of wood, some nails, and a hammer up to the pulpit.  he called me up to drive the nail into the wood.  it was hard.  i didn’t want to hammer my finger at first, and then the nail wouldn’t go in straight, and i couldn’t swing the hammer hard enough.  i handed the board back to him.  he said, pull the nail out.  that was equally as hard, but i retrieved the nail and handed everything back to him.

he said, get rid of that hole.

i said, i can’t.

hurtful things are like nails, he said.  when we hurt someone we drive a nail into their heart.  you can pull the nail out, but the hole is still there.  you can cover it up, sand down the rough edges, and paint over it, but the hole will always be there.

i was pregnant.  we stared incredulously at positive pregnancy tests.  we talked about names, looked at baby clothes in the mall, cringed at price tags in baby sections, and smiled despite people’s thoughtless words.  a few weeks later, we were holding our breath as a doctor searched for the flicker of a heart beat.  today, there is no more baby.

for a while, my insecurities were gone.  hope had numbed the pain of past hurt.  now it’s like i’m waking up still a little drunk from a night of trying to forget.

i’m insecure about my body.  about money.  about my worth as a person.  about love.  maybe i don’t deserve this.  i’m probably going to fuck it up.  he’s going to regret this.  maybe he regrets it already.

part of me knows it’s irrational.  i read into things way too much.  i’m constantly looking for affirmation of my fears, trying to keep my guard up so i can be prepared for the inevitable hurt.  but focusing on the possibility of failure never led anyone to victory, and right now is not my past.

i’m abandoning salvation.  i was going to give casey nine months to clean up the town.  nine months because cherry is pregnant with the native’s baby and if casey didn’t drive out the bad guy the baby would be killed.  i was going to give myself something to focus on so maybe i would still have the drive to write between feedings and diaper changes and whatever.  but there is no baby, so there is no salvation.

maybe i’ll write a story about a heroine who overcomes her insecurity.  i’ll make her do something completely out of her comfort zone, and i’ll put the life of someone she loves on the line.  i’ll drive nails into her and leave her to rip them out.

i think i’m actually going to start on that right now.