Unfurnished self
Is it time to unpack and move in?
It’s a sunny, windy day in the Presidio.
I’m still thinkin’ and loopin’, although the loops have become softer, looser, and gentler.
One of the things that came to mind today is that there’s some stuff in me that I’ve been waiting to unpack. Some things that no one I know or love would really get, because they haven’t been fully legible to me, even. My current situation is yet the latest in a long line of deferrals, in which my nervous system clamps up and says, “I’ll relax into what you want when I get what I want.”
Sorry, bud. I don’t think it’s coming. We’re going to have to pop a squat and do the doo here, in the wild.
To be more clear... there’s a nature of my curiosity and interest and love and fascination that is so delicate and so ephemeral that I’ve been looking for 20+ years for someone to hold it with me. I don’t know that I’ve gotten very close, although this last foray truly felt like I had stepped on some sacred ground, but alas—my inner child’s youthful exuberance was too much. If it’s too much for me, why wouldn’t it be too much for someone else? Don’t I preach that people need to face themselves? And yet, I think because I can work on all manner of other parts of myself that my severity and intensity around this is somehow exempt from that?
Sadly, that’s wrong. My most precious “treasure” is mine to unearth and explore, and I’m going to have to do it alone. That’s not the curse I once thought it was. It will also be mine to share. Maybe I’ll find that someone finds it just as fascinating and beautiful as I do. But the mining is mine and mine alone to do. There’s no delaying this any further.
If you don’t know what I mean by any of this, it’s okay. Just think about the things you’re most passionate about, sensitive to, scared of, fixated by, devoted to, or curious about, and think about how you might want someone right by your side, loving you and holding and carrying it with you, while you dive in—headfirst, with no oxygen and your eyes open wide.
Got anything? Yeah, it’s like that. I’ve got to dive in, now. If I don’t make it,1 tell everyone I love them for me. Be excellent to each other.
🫶🏼
If I don’t make it… I’ll probably come back with a half-assed answer and have to go through another year-long cycle of bullshit dissolution to recover. I’m so not feeling it.