Blaugust #4: On being loved & what the fuck & etc, a stream of consciousness exercise
A poetic personal essay for Blaugust.
I am trying to think about a universe in which I can see that I am loved. And I mean really loved, you know, not just stuffed with the dog's unwanted table scraps and the witch's fattening-ups and then devoured and later regurgitated as some sort of wet, half-me shredded thing. Really loved, like how someone I used to know paid to have fresh flowers placed on her husband's grave every week until she died, except in this universe I am thinking up I am not as dead as I am in the present, so maybe that isn't a very good comparison. I am trying to imagine a universe in which I am loved in the hungry way that is good and not in the hungry way that is bad. There's only a difference if you know there's a difference, if the difference chooses you. I'm starting to think that universe might be this universe, or that universe will become this universe soon, like a children's book opening itself up to alter reality into something fantastical and kind and - well. Loving. But I go back and forth, a newton's cradle delegated and forgotten to the back of my own desk.
Now I am trying to think about a universe in which I accept that I am loved. And I mean really accept it, you know, not like how I watched everyone else's finger placements at the fourth grade recorder recital because I never figured out how to play, not like how I refused to fight back even when I was bigger and stronger, and not like how I ran away from my solidity. I am trying to imagine this universe where I have muscles that build over muscles and I am strong enough to say, well hello universe, I'm here to exist now! I am here to be taken, and I am ready to be taken well! I am here to cough up the stillborn little infant I was before it all went south, vomit the cord up, and reanimate! Do it right this time!
I am trying to imagine this universe and I find that it is like a horror movie. What was that one my ex watched---the one where you get put in the contraption and have to fight your way out? The one he wanted me to watch despite the fact that I can't swallow gore unless it's happening to me? I am trying to make the point that being loved is like being chased with a knife or skinned alive into a whittled-down vulnerable alivecorpse or placed into a machine that tears your eyeballs out before you can witness what it's like to truly be happy, to truly know joy, but that's wrong. They all tell me that's wrong.
I am trying to imagine a universe in which I am not afraid of being loved. I find that, despite the fact that I used to believe in the "multiverse theory", there are a few criticisms to be made about that line of thinking:
If that theory is true, it means that yes, there is a universe out there in which I didn't end up this way in the first place, and I don't think that God is cruel enough to dangle this possibility in front of my face like bribing a dog with treats to get it back in its kennel. I just don't. Somehow I still have faith. If that theory is true, it means that every universe has a sub-universe, every possible decision branching out into another world. A road no one can walk in a city I'll never visit, and that's just unfair. See above. Worse: If that theory is true, it means that I am capable of changing into something else, potentially without even traveling to another universe, and the concept is unfathomable. Alien. What am I when I am not a thing stuck in an unbalanced stasis of suffering? What am I when I am not this thing that desperately wants to remain a thing instead of becoming something full and complex and greater? What am I when I am not scared?
Anyway, the point is that I am loved and I just don't know how to deal with it yet. I am trying to stop waiting for the day love flings itself in front of a train and says, I cannot belong to you anymore! I changed my mind, and I don't know how to get out!
I am trying to let love speak for itself, instead.