Is Love a privlage?
There are times when I am in love with the idea of being in love. Logically, I have no right to be seeking out such selfish things. I have been withdrawn for so long I trample over people’s feelings without a modicum of remorse. Instead I grow frustrated at them when they reasonably become angry. I live in mortal dread of conflict, as I’ve been taught it is best to avoid conflict or try to resolve/compromise as quickly as possible. I am so used to people expecting the worst out of me, it’s become engrained in my very thought process. I expect the very worst out of people, I expect coordinated and strategic deceit and elaborate emotional warfare. In response, my thoughts are becoming very militarized: Plotting and planning what I want to say, hoping to maintain some facade of confidence and control. Then when I go to open my mouth, my thoughts go blank and hazy, and my speech is half hearted, dejected, and easily twisted. I don’t know how to give comfort. I am painful shy, making me a moving target for predators, shysters, and manipulators. I am poor, though I strive to be responsible and law abiding. If I ever lose my job, I’ll be out on the street. It feels as though everything around me is collapsing, and that I’m waiting in fearful anticipation for everything to blow up. I have failed as a human being by the American Corporatist culture’s standard. The only refuge has been in fantasies. My favorite being me working in conjunction with a female partner, living at our own place, working our jobs to support ourselves while the two of us go to school. We share each others interest without embarrassment or fear of rejection. We can freely indulge one another on each others terms. At night we make love like craven beasts.
Which brings us today’s thought of the day. The phenomenon known as love is one the most confusing, and above all else frightening emotions of all. Almost from the moment we are plucked from the womb, the notion of romantic love is drilled into our heads. Ideally we are born into this world because two people loved each other and trusted each other so much, they desired to spend the rest of their lives with one another. I don’t understand how anyone can stand to be that vulnerable. For most humans, they are so eager to be in a relationship they jump into the first most desirable pair of pants they can find, only to learn all to late they neither person have anything in common and hate each other for the rest of their days. Our misogynist culture doesn’t help matters either. For the male we are taught . I’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way, by bringing grief into the lives of many women, I guilt I will continue to carry, for only for some shred of dignity. I am grateful to have learned this lesson, for many men in their lifetimes never do, bringing misery upon misery, blindly and stupidly bludgeoning their way through the lives of other people. How quick I am to judge, when I am no better!
I keep hurting the feelings of one who’s gone out of their way to help me in my hour of need. At first I just thought (and still think) they are just overly sensitive. They’ll have week long grudges and then it’s a bummer to be around them. Then the paranoia started to set in. I became convinced they were playing at emotional warfare to get what they want out of me. Now I am not so sure. I have sabotaged everything, and with it desire escape. Now they are at point of losing all their assets, and need help. I have brazenly announced in all this mess my intent to pick up and leave. Should I remain, it is clear that we will continue to wallow in each others misery. Should I run away, I’ll be abandoning them.
Have I become so helpless, so jaded, so fearful, that I can no longer even recognize the suffering of the people closest to me? Is all this just a pale facade? I am really alive? Nagneto. Are you but a mask of self righteousness? The grease paint of a cajoling jester, claiming to be a seeker of truth and justice? How can you be? When the THING that lives beneath it is a blood sucking, treacherous, loathsome gutter-rat? Who are you? Just who do you think you are? You have not earned the privilege of good company, least of all a partner! You cannot love yourself, let alone trust those you may or may not actually care for you. How can you demand love of another? The only thing you deserve is a bullet in the brain. Yet you are too much a coward to do even that. No, you’ll slink on, pawing your away through existence, nibbling greedily on what scraps of time and energy people deem to give you. You seek to be compassionate but cannot comprehend it. You cry out for fairness to save your own hide. You’re the one that should have died in place of your mother. She upon which so many depended upon is dead! That which remains is not a son but walking corpse!
I fear I will continue to hunger for something that isn’t there, as surely as I will rage over the corruption and greed by our so called leaders. As surely as I will turn a twisted eye of suspicion and mistrust to everyone around me, and when I am caught red handed, I will beg and plead and people-please my way into forgiveness. I don’t know if love is a privilege or not, but I know I am not ready for any kind of intimacy or commitment, no matter how much I might profess to be. I fear I never will be ready.
“We think we’ve come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it’s all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again.” - Picard from Star Trek: TNG
(the following quote from Shadow Of The Vampire)
[Asked what he thought of the book, Dracula]
Max Schreck: It made me sad.
Albin: Why sad?
Max Schreck: Because Dracula had no servants.
Albin: I think you missed the point of the book, Count Orlock.
Max Schreck: Dracula hasn’t had servants in 400 years and then a man comes to his ancestral home, and he must convince him that he, that he is like the man. He has to feed him, when he himself hasn’t eaten food in centuries. Can he even remember how to buy bread? How to select cheese and wine? And then he remembers the rest of it. How to prepare a meal, how to make a bed. He remembers his first glory, his armies, his retainers, and what he is reduced to. The loneliest part of the book comes, when the man accidentally sees Dracula setting his table.
