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| Morning view |
You were born into your circumstances, remember that? Slowly unfolding to become yourself, guided by the spaces presenting themselves to you. Spaces that shifted as home, family, and expectations evolved around you.
It was almost never up to you, where you went or how. So small and without any control, you were moved this way and that, told what was what, expected to find your way to fit in. Also to stand out.
Sure, you were quickly thinking beyond the things people said, feeling emotions beyond easy comprehension. You asked your own questions, were met with mixed reactions. It’s sad when I think of how often you were cruelly shut down or insidiously (even if unintentionally) misled. I’m sorry about that for you.
But the freedom, too! Especially in your mind. Especially when you think of the ideas you’d explore, alone in yourself, tangled up in there with all the stories, rules, expectations, and myths given to you by others. The freedom to move ideas this way and that, consider them from every angle, overlaid with the ever growing roster of experience you were racking up. Freedom to imagine and think about their things your way.
Yes. Despite the freedom there was nothing you could do about the filtering in of expectations on you from others: what you should or shouldn’t be doing. And then that other level, what “someone like you” should or shouldn’t be doing.
Your questions and ideas were encouraged by some, punished by others. Ya, it was messy, and the freedom was still only of imagination and mind, or spiritual, or whatever, and it was never without the influence of outside of you, but it was there. It was there!
Do you think it was that freedom from inside yourself that finally spilled outward? The freedom of thinking, of exploring your own ideas, that pushed you to seek your proper place, physically? I think it must have been. Or at least, it contributed.
Where do you physically go when you know you didn’t physically choose where you are? Your first choice: somewhere else.
Speaking of physical, those were the first real years of seeking to understand your sexual self, weren’t they? How crazy it is, that ride! It’s almost like losing the freedom of your mind while getting some freedom of body. The hormones have ideas of their own but don’t speak our language or obey our rules, so we’re desperately telling the story of why we did what we did or they did what they did or who they think I should be or who I think I am and who I want to be, trying to catch up with what’s happening to ourselves and our peers…. Well, you know. You were there.
Remind me, what was that hurt? That big one? Those big ones? I can’t remember the specifics. You know, the hurts that stand up and everything in life seems to whirlpool around them. They don’t even exactly hurt anymore, but the fluidity of yourself flows with the feature of them.
Oh, but those passions! Remember that? The roar of things mattering. You grappling for the handles of the machine, needing to handle it right. And then diving into the details, the assemblage of the thing, the parts that put it together and knowing there was a way, must be a way, needed to be a way, to make it work. Society, life, care-giving, the world. It mattered.
Aaaaahhhhh…. But the desire for death. I hope I’m not rekindling that feeling. It was around that time, wasn’t it? Well, it was not only around that time, but you had a time where it was loudest. Maybe I’m wrong about that? I do know that your desire for death was different than mine, coloured differently, driven differently, but the mood of giving up was the same, I think.
I was somewhere, I don’t know where, when you came to understand your body as political. All of it. Every inch. Inside. Outside. It probably shouldn’t be, but it is. Correct me if I’m wrong but you’re still moving between accepting this political aspect as a challenge to meet, and disregarding the whole thing: you have days where you just are.
I know sometimes you wonder if you are missing something, avoiding something, forgetting something. Sometimes you wonder what you are meant to do.
I know sometimes you know. Sometimes you know everything and nothing.
Have I told you: that’s my story, too.
I am not you, I know that. I promise, I’m not comparing my beginning, middle, and where we’re at now with yours. I’m not trying to discount your story by making it about me.
Yet, it’s true.
That’s my story too.
Hugs, smiles, and love!!
