insecurity is a dark lord, and I’m it’s main ho
There are three things that amaze me—no, four things that I don’t understand: how an eagle glides through the sky, how a snake slithers on a rock, how a ship navigates the ocean, what a man will go through to be with a woman. Proverbs 30:18-19 (I changed the last line to make sense in 2020).
After leaving Lili’s, I’m so full of love for people that I usually cry for the first half hour of the ride, listening to bittersweet folk singers who made it. By the time I get to speedway to fill up I must look like how I think I look at funerals.
Sometimes I forget about the beauty I see in experiencing things: being fortunate enough to have my heart broken, to work through a shopping list in an afternoon, to wake up and fall asleep, to be alive. To be alive. To be so alive I get lost in knowing I'm alive. Sometimes I forget how wild it is in our natural, boring lives for moments of sheer humanness to bleed out. Sometimes I forget how irreplaceable the things are that got me to be who I am. I like to be seen as replaceable, but I am not. I find myself making lists of the people that make me think and operate the way I am right now, and hoping to keep them close if I end up forgetting them. People like: The two Sam's I got to know over real face tour, which felt like a vacuum for me. Andrew, for his practicality Chris, for his simplicity Lili, for everything she is Tim Caffee, for being a real dude
Intrusive thoughts suck. They are like watching the burglar of self doubt walk through my house while I sleep, and all at his own pace, and all on CCTV from the safety of my study. My thoughts sabotage me because they are selfish. They want me all to themselves. There's some sort of difference between thought and decision. My friend John talks to me about it a lot. We are ruled by either at moments through the day. Thought is perception, decision is reality. They are not the same thing. You can think about calling him all day and not do it and in the end you did not call him. It doesn't matter how much you ‘wanted to’. Screw ‘wanting to’ if it dies there. Call him before the sun goes down and he doesn't know how much you love him. Love everyone.
Sammy Schmidt truly thinks he found the deepest layer of intimacy with Sam Sharik. He explained this to me with his hands. "People believe intimacy has to do with nature, but it's actually the pieces of you meshing with the other person in conflict and stress which makes it real." He interlocked all his fingers and said with sincerity that even his connection to his future wife probably will pale in comparison to this beautiful friendship. I chuckled because I have had sex and know it’s power to tie you to someone, but I stopped as his hands got tighter linked. He meant it. I believed him.
Schmidt told me how when Sharik comes home and he had a bad day, he likes to take a nap on top of his blanket with a pillow under his knees, because you have to save the feeling of being under the blanket for when you're about to go to bed at night. So when he finds out Schmidt had a bad day, he makes his bed for him.
The story of Jesus coming back to life is maybe the most compelling reason for me to love people like him. Picture this: he spends all day walking with his friends and they don’t even know it’s him. They’re about to go their separate ways, when he pretends he has to go further to his own place to rest on his own (the son of God played a mind game with his best friends) but they beg him to stay with them for the night. As they’re about to eat, he pulls the loaf of bread over his head and breaks it, and it’s that psychological reminder of all the times he did that before that makes it click in their heads: this is our buddy and King, Jesus who died. His love for his friends and the fact that they shared meals together are the two things that stuck with them after they honestly believed he was not coming back. I think at times we set up a full platter of the way we are as we stand in the kitchen, and there is great fear in the possibility of setting all that down for a moment to walk into the living room. This all makes me think maybe it's not that important to know who you are. There have been so many moments where I have clung to these traits as the odd limiters of reason, as if I knew there was a truer me waiting to be seen if I only would let them down. There have been plenty of situations where I saw the split set before me; either follow my 'way' and walk as a rational man, or take this strange other path which is so full of unknown and risk, it smells like the Mystery Machine itself. Insecurity is a bitch. Insecurity stops you before you get a chance to try. I flirt with it, seeing it on the other side of the room, selling my heart to it for the chance of being right with the universe. I don't think insecurity has ever helped me. There are learned fears in the world that stop me from getting burned, stabbed, or debilitated, and usually I can listen to them with respect. Insecurity is a different animal. Somehow it takes the authority of a god in my life and tells me the way things are and how I will never get them as I want them. I told myself when I was younger that I should subject to them because the alternative is selfish! Why should I take authority over what my mind tells me? Either submit to your insecurities (e.g.: why would I get in the way of the universe showing me how my girlfriend could be happier with my best friend? or: why should I go out and have fun with my friends when I could sit in my room by myself with a theology textbook and remember that I am dirt and not worth anyones time?).
Insecurity hides itself as nobility. 'Ah, I'm so mature for giving up plans for this project. It was out of my league anyway.' 'Yeah, I shouldn't bother writing music anymore. My friends do it better so I should stick to other things.' Why do I torture myself like this? Fuck insecurity. I want to be so full of light and love that even if my world falls apart, even if my own body falls apart, I can love people regardless. Not masochistically. Not in spite of other people’s love. Not to spite the people I used to love and live with. Just to love them, to love myself, to love them. To love them.
