Calculus
Notating the blockage
It’ll be six weeks tomorrow since I arrived in SF. I’ve settled my life into a pretty basic structure. I have my espresso machine which I use every morning as part of the ritual. I have a little half-furnished room that I’m slowly starting to set up. I even have an e-bike that I ride everywhere. In most regards, I’m here.
And yet, something inside me is so hesitant to truly settle.
Now it’s true that I’m still getting over my last relationship’s sudden and painful end. I attach quickly, and detaching takes SO long, especially when my partner wasn’t a threat. I’ve dated some threats, and those were much easier to conclude. In some ways, a lot of my subconscious and even some of my conscious energy is spent on the memory and the hopes of that relationship, so it might be a contributor to this feeling of unsettledness. But I don’t think that’s the full story.
I have this sense that something about my life, here, there, or anywhere, is missing. Something inside me, as I’ve written before, is wholly unexpressed. I’ve felt this before, back in Seattle, and I’m feeling it now. The difference is that I feel physically out of place here, now, so the feelings are compounded. What am I missing? What is unsettled in me? Why can’t I relax and feel at ease?
Maybe there’s something in me that hasn’t been fully grieved. Something that isn’t about her, or you, or anyone else. No, it is about someone. It’s about me. The fundamental constraint I’ve placed on myself since my earliest years, reigning it all in so as not to run afoul of my stepfather, my teachers, or the general public. The little resident module of my inner operating system that preemptively polices my thoughts, feelings, and expressions... that thing is still here, still churning away, even now.
The fear that holds that thing in place... a fear of who I am, deeply, umediatedly, being so unokay for this world. That fear is pinned in place right there, in my gut. Would I rather die or live a lie? Were it to be true that who I am is so fundamentally offensive, so enduringly too much, so gobsmackingly unintelligible to everyone and anyone who might have otherwise given me the time of day... what is there to do? And moreover, how is it that I—this person who has felt through so much, grieved so much, peeled back so many layers of compensatory patchwork layered on his own self-esteem—how is it that I might still have something so huge, so lodged, so imminently load bearing, still in there?
What to do?
This is why, at my core, I’m so deeply unsatisfied. This is why, when my ex asked me, “What do you want to do,” my only answer was, “I don’t know.” I just wanted to sit in her presence, where I felt a little more okay and a little more accepted than anywhere else. Where it was easier to be with and hold this thing that I’ve been carrying since I was four.
What to do, indeed.
