distance

Sandpaper

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“Any one of us, over the course of our lives, can know many different existences. Or occasionally, desistances. Not many, however, are given the opportunity to wear a different skin.” –A General Theory of Oblivion, José Eduardo Agualusa

It’s a strange contradiction that when one feels most defenseless, she becomes most defensive. The armor of sarcasm and distance traveled in retreat should cry out ‘vulnerability’ but instead create all new barriers.

How does one never learn that insidious attempts to understand will not lead to understanding but rather will lead to being rubbed raw from the inside out? Being too close to a ‘subject’ and trying to get under its skin, and feel as it feels (or learn why) means that those carefully crafted barriers, built over so many battles and through so many years fall -swiftly – so much more swiftly than the time it took to erect them. And the barrier building and demolishing goes both ways. Often leading to reckless ruin and unforeseen disappointment. Closeness always brings a sensitivity that makes words sharper, or heavier, with interpretations, the ruins of barriers more perilous to climb out of, the injuries more acute to nurture back to health, and that sinking feeling, deep in the pit of the stomach, leaden with the realization that she must start all over again.

All those afternoons in darkness spent with the voice in her ear, loved and loved and loved, feeling broken down and completely enveloped in only that one being. Suddenly, abrasively rubbing against all expectation with words and images that moved so completely against the grain of how smoothness had felt up to that point, with walls falling and joints fitting together perfectly. Sanding the skin, seeing the bloody, pulpy reality underneath for the first time rather than smoothing edges out. She had never felt sharper edges or been more splintered, gasping imperceptibly, thinking, “I really got this one wrong.”

Could it be that this sudden need to wear down the surface is a need to create distance, or a smooth plane and flawlessly empty horizon? Was it a splinter she left behind and failed to pluck out? Or was it a command move of making sure no rough surfaces would assert themselves again – a reminder that nothing is joined, or even clamped, together in the way that one could so easily imagine?

Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov on Unsplash

Love Convenience

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Twenty-one winding kilometers to go, and as always on these long drives, my thoughts are random. Last night, it was this vague thought about love in all its forms – what is “real” love, how much of it is informed by “settling”, “convenience”, not having bigger or grander expectations? I have been thinking the last two days about how love is often dictated by convenience for some people. These people may not even recognize that they have chosen convenience – and even if convenient, it does not negate that love plays a part.

Sometimes convenience would make so much more sense. I have often asked myself why I could not just love the guy in Gothenburg who professed his love to and for me confidently and completely. He wanted me to live with him and move forward with a future together, and that would have been a really easy option, especially given my “homeless/hotel existence” in Gothenburg for much of the last year. He was a great guy, very nice, honest, direct and decisive. But there must have been something missing – or at least there was not enough there for me to submit in such a committed and tethered way and give up what is otherwise a very happy life being on my own. Being nearly 40 years old and not having any strong desire to have a real, committed and serious relationship has not given me cause or evidence to believe or know that the fabled and storied idea of “love” was something real – certainly not something that a rational, older, experienced sort like me could connect with. The case could be made for consciously choosing to be with someone who meets all kinds of positive criteria even if there had been no “falling madly in love” on my end of things. But that is not me.

I had never seen or felt this elusive “click” – certainly not mutually. I have made a lot of choices and decisions in my life based on the assumption that I never would.

As people tell you, though, you can be hit by this powerful feeling at the most unexpected and inconvenient moments. If you plan it or are looking for it, it probably won’t happen. You will probably find something – maybe even the set of positive criteria outlined above – but it won’t be this bolt of lightning that somehow makes all the sense in the world while simultaneously being totally crazy. And naturally, it being an unexpected, unplanned and inconvenient – but not at all unwelcome – intrusion on the grind of daily life, it has none of the calm outlines of something well-considered or rational. It may turn out to be rational – or may work in a fluid and beautiful way – but it never makes sense at first. How does one reconcile falling in love with someone far away – and all the waiting, distance and inconvenience of that?

Only because love cannot be another way.