In life you will find people with an elusive charm that draws you in. A familiarity, a warmth, a glimpse of the gateway to intimacy, mischief, and reclamation of trust that existed before throes of childhood, before the child brain knew chaos and abandonment. These people will leave a mark on you that is like the pull of addiction, the thrill of snorting a line of painkiller that feels like complete safety, mental cashmere against your mind’s skin, sensitive to touch and craving more. You will be drawn in, perhaps mildly resistant at first, hesitant out of old fear, but that thought is already retreating, the last horse left behind at the gate as the rest charge.
People like this can become a fantasy construction of the mind, a simple person with insecurities and mediocrity transformed into something greater than reality, imbued by the mythology and the disservice of memory, the persistence of memory.
When I think of loving someone like this I think of that greek story where a lover travels to the world of death to reclaim his lost wife. He is instructed that he may bring her back to the world of the living, under one condition: that he not look behind him as he leads her out, that he just trust that she is following. He fails to do this, looks behind him for assurance, and she is lost, slips back into darkness. He is then torn limb from limb and placed in a tomb at the mouth of the place where she is lost to rest in peace.
Having faith in another person’s ability to do the right thing by you in frightening. Admitting feelings for another, pursuing another, can feel humiliating and undignified, that you don’t deserve to go after what you want, that perhaps you have it wrong, that just because you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there. There is unknown, the fear that being forward means you are being too available, that the other person has power over you. But the reality is, that person had power over you as soon as you realized they got under your skin. And directly pursuing them is a way to negotiate that power dynamic. For me personally, directly pursuing is preferable because it gives me control: the control to have affection for them freely, and then the control to move on quickly when it is clear it is not working.
Be forward. Have faith. Have perspective. People will fail and disappoint you. Do not be bitter. Do not have expectations. Do not let fantasy constructions take over and become obsession. Have faith in yourself to do the right thing for others, and feel confident. You cannot make someone love you back. You cannot control what the world throws at you. You can, however, make a decision to fight back in the form of doing well by others, even when it is painful, even when it would feel easier to be bitter, angry, self righteous. Fight back. Pull yourself out of graves created for you, pull yourself out of people that marked you. Leave the dead to bury the dead, do not be a casualty of strangers, your past, or wasted love.
yousharknotpass
romaincrisis
blakekathryn
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
vaporwave
gummygunk
