Never Seen Blue
I am extraordinarily tired as I type. I haven’t eaten anything resembling ‘real’ food all day. I survived the funeral. I don’t tell you this as a ploy toward gaining sympathy, but simply to set the scene for what follows.
Isn’t it interesting the things you remember and the things you forget? The things that seem so important in one moment and inconsequential in the next?
I can’t for the life of me think of whatshisname. I didn’t really know anything about him, beyond his name, though I would ask about him frequently. “How is (insert name here)?” That is what I would ask. Seemingly on every other day; whenever the opportunity would arise. Not because I had any real interest in the lover of the person I was infatuated with. No, surely I was just clinging to the hope that sooner or later whatshisname would no long enter the conversation.
In truth I wanted to be whatshisname. I wanted to be this person’s lover. But asking about that person constantly hardly seemed to help in that pursuit. Nothing would. I think even at the time I knew that, I understood that. No, I think I delighted in knowing his name (then) because it helped me verbalise the question. It served as a point of reference. Rather than saying, merely, “John, why aren’t you good enough?” I could instead say, “Why aren’t you as good as (insert name here)?” I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t have that which I desired. I assumed there was something wrong with me, I just wasn’t sure what it was, exactly. And, again, it was all fairly inconsequential. Except in as much as I could use the idea of the two of them to berate myself further. To make myself suffer even more.
I am almost disappointed that I can’t remember that name now. Not that even knowing the name would carry as much potency as it once did, for while whatshisname had what I desired, he didn’t have it for very long. Knowing the name now would probably require a new formulation and a new question. And I almost pity this man whose name I cannot recall. For the first time we have something in common, a common lack. Perhaps a common wanting.
In the spaces between the lines of that ritual I call ‘The Morning Pages,’ I’ve come to many conclusions. Good, life affirming realisations. New and helpful understandings. But it is, surely, one thing to know something intellectually, and another to know something emotionally. I think I understand with new clarity why I drew something toward me that was completely unsustainable. I think I understand, too, why I used the incident to berate myself, to hurt myself. But it is one thing to pontificate about such matters. How do I let them go? How do I hope for good things again? How do I look to embrace some new dream when I am so preoccupied with an older unfulfillable one? Because right now I would give everything I possess for one last stab at something which would likely mean nothing at all, and that scares me. It scares me that my thinking has been so trained in such a way to spite myself in attempting to get something which would not serve me.
I would like to claim this as a new sensation, but we’ve been down this road before. I need something new, I need something different. I need to stop prostituting my nature in attempts to win love and approval from people who don’t have my interests at heart. I can’t continue being so masochistic. It feels scary. It feels confrontational because there is a part of me that still believes I deserve to be treated badly, that I don’t deserve to be loved. But if I can’t give myself this gift, then who? If I can’t choose to take a stand, to resolve to treat myself better, what use could I possibly be?
hmmmm, I don’t knjow, I have mixed thoughts about various things, but I think the name is better forgotten.