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Sunday 15 February 2015

goggles

I went to McDonald's to eat dinner by myself (a bit of getting away, peace and quiet, headspace. no room and no desire and no need for thinking). As I finished and got up and put on my jacket to go, I saw a little girl run into the bathroom. She might have been at a costume party because she was dressed in a normal jacket with a pair of trousers that looked straight out of Aladdin. In a horrible moment my vision transformed and I saw her retreating form from the perspective of a pedophile, probing and I think understanding what it would be like, to find her small body desirable. That's what it does to you (or is it just... to me?). It transformed the way I look at the world, giving me a double vision, a constant awareness that this is how it is for some, that this world of the unspeakable exists in parallel to us, quietly.

I know you would want me to not think these thoughts but there is no unknowing this knowledge. I know you'd rather I were happy and carefree but you are delusional. I don't understand what kind of luck it would take to grow up with no significant trauma, and when I meet people who appear that way I wonder if they really have been so lucky, or if I just don't know them well enough to know what's festering inside them, eating a hole inside out the way it does me.

The only thing I know that brings me peace of mind is not having to pretend. If I know and think these thoughts, I do. If it weighs heavily on me, it does. If I want to cry, I cry (while a sliver of myself is happy and grateful to be able to feel, at all). I've made my peace with that and I hope that you will too. If it is true, I can live with it. It's all I ask.

This morning lying in bed I asked you to ask me about me. I spoke of how every man is a safe harbour. I form these intense bonds, looking for safety, making sure that you can't hurt me because once you love me, to hurt me would be to hurt you. I drop these little anchors to secure myself in uncertain storms, knowing where I could run to for protection. Protecting from what? I am healthy, sane. I have financial means, higher education. I live in a society ruled by law. To feel the need to be protected is like feeling pain in a fantom limb. Some part of me that doesn't exist hurts in an incoherent way in a past life somewhere that isn't a place, and sometimes there seems to be no way to reach across to it.

If I had infinite time and infinite resources, I would probably spend even more of it forming these pacts with almost all the men I meet. Carefully excavating who they are and exchanging my vulnerabilities as an offering to fulfill a contract. If it should all go very badly, hide me. Wrap your arms around me as I vanish into nothing.

But that is not how I want to live. I wish I had a well of strength in me so deep that there would never be any more thoughts of hiding. I wish I could look on those who hurt me with equanimity, and not feel a trace of bitterness at their lives carrying on just as before. 

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