dear dami

Dear dami,
The moment we met, i knew that loving you is why i'm alive (and in that loving, i might BE closer to alive than ever).
Alive...not trapped in contingency or fear.
Alive...as humyns were alive before the darkness of excess and exploitation...
Alive as nature molded me, a silly ape of a tribe where wimyn are the brains and glue. Just a bonobo fantasy?
I would be surprised if you noticed my reaction to you. It was so stunning, i instantly subsumed it. Perhaps such connections are just a cocktail of hormones and loneliness...our brains cannot sustain such bliss. But for the first time in my life, i'm ready to transcend the negotiations of a world where people are commodities. I'm not advocating the abrogation of self-determination...but in this broken world, a leap of insanity may be the only sanity left.
***
Who i am at this moment, is creating a reality that shouldn't exist - a living embodiment of the aphorism (and howling lie!) "You get out of a relationship what you put in". That's one of the most egregious bullshits we sell ourselves...and almost never true (especially in romance). But this may be the one time in your life you'll be able to look in someone's eyes, and know that whatever you put in, will come back 100%.
***
Ants wants to arrange for us to meet again at an intimate musical gathering. But this virus inshelteration has put any such plans on hold, possibly for months. Every fiber of my being says waiting is an affront to life. When something this pure comes along, you don't wait one second longer than you must. Wait, and forfeit your right to anything good.
***
Wait! You SHOULD run far, far from me! The protector/nurturer in me is reawakening, and knows that no one should get involved with someone who is drowning, as i assuredly am! Horribly so...the product of my relearning normal humyn emotional responses, which this culture anesthetizes out of us as children. I've become viscerally aware of my own physical and emotional alienation, and it's made me desperate for healing...or any shabby substitute. I've become that which i'd spent a lifetime avoiding - a predator, like everyone. I can't trust myself to not manipulate you, with dripping jaws of desire heedless of right or wrong. Can you imagine how horrible that is to me? In my youth, i was walled off, but never used other people for vanity or lust. A lifetime chasing serenity and wisdom, and now...
One additional degraded layer is that there's a broken part of YOU that might love this broken part of me. The insanity i feel to make you MINE...we all perversely desire that. I could once trust myself with the universe's greatest treasures, and know that ego couldn't poison my caring. In wanting you, i flail in the hope of becoming that person again.
***
But can i keep the poison of manipulation out of my words? Are words anything OTHER than manipulations? Can i keep the last entry of this letter from being some cheap inducement? "Love me, oh love me!"
***
If you could measure my heart and hormones, there would be no limits on your loving response. If you could measure my head, you'd say "Walk along, walk along". Probably true - but if we knew the full measure of any potential lover's head, we'd all be eternally celibate. Deception is the bedrock of this society...including and especially lies we tell ourselves.
If i tried to be with any womyn but you, i'd be lying. The purity i felt the moment we met...one can go years without feeling that. Or is all this just a mostly-shallow expression of frustrated longing? Is there no deeper, unseen connection? That head/heart/hormones thing, is a false trichotomy. We are not discrete parts, we are a unified whole. I'll avoid the cheesy play-on-words that just suggested itself.
***
Another piece that might leave you anything but flattered? When i think about you, i think about wimyn from my past...ones i had a chance to love deeply and lastingly, but walked away because something was out of balance. Moments of intimacy sear my memory, when i held back, because of compassion, or self-preservation. And maybe those were good reasons. But as a lifetime of loneliness piles up, i become more and more wounded, wanting to be in that moment again, but...plunge!
Which might make you more "anyone" than someone unique and irreplaceable.
Of course, another truth we never admit is that the relationships we form at any given moment are far less about the qualities of those we choose, but rather...just who WE are. To a very large extent, life is a parade of "you'll do".
That feels pertinent to my current semi-insanity.
And the best liars are seldom alone.
***
Oh, the fantasies i have about you! So searing, so specific. Exact moments and words we share, i keep living them over and over...would you blush?
***
For as smart as i supposedly am, for all my "science-based" rejections of monogamy and marriage, jealousy and possessiveness, and the tyranny of defining our lives by romance...why am i such a hopeless romantic? Why does my longing for the great love of my life, become a more anguished howl each year? What the hell is wrong with me? Isn't romance just 11th-century poetic bullshit? Look how it consumes our media, our literature...
***
And really...on some level, isn't my desire to plunge just an elaborate tantrum against the reality that i've never found a lover (or friend) who was a perfect pea for my pod? I've had three beautiful romances, but there's always the awareness that i've never had a lover in whom i saw myself. I'll disrobe at the drop of a hat, but i've never been truly naked. I've never not felt like the only one of my kind in the universe. I've never BREATHED. I want it so bad it hurts...
Maybe loneliness is making me willing to jump off any emotional bridge, just because sanity and wisdom lead nowhere.
***
"We only chase the ones who run away". Hm. I hated that thought as early as i can remember hating any aphorism. Rejecting that ethos was probably the first spiritual leap of my life. By my early twenties, if not sooner, i wouldn't jump through hoops, charm and disarm, or plead my case...which is a significant piece of the puzzle of my loneliness. In fact, the whole point of writing a letter like this is my belief that everyone should know upfront ALL relevant information about anyone they might choose to love (or not). That includes making no secret of my desire. Perhaps in this strange culture, "laying it all out there" is just another form of self-sabotage. And maybe that's okay with me. I've always been content, even eager, to scare off the "maybes". And maybe with YOU, i'm content to sabotage things because i know deep down, when you measure the sacrifices and compromises that come with romance in this dysfunctional, codependent world, that being alone is probably the healthier, happier path.
The lesser of two miseries. Yay.
***
Not that i'm self-destructive IN a relationship. But in getting into and out of them, i don't think anybody has a healthy line on where self-preservation begins and self-destruction ends. The overlap is as large as an ocean.
***
For all the anguish and blood coursing through these words, they don't feel alive. One silence with you would be more alive than a million foolish words.
***
Or perhaps self-destruction has nothing to do with this. Perhaps i've just lived long enough to know that the dream of romance i've cherished may never happen. Perhaps there's an ever-growing, sucking wound in my chest knowing i've never shared love and understanding in the ways i'm capable. Perhaps my reaction is to throw away any pretense, and whenever love beckons, be the fullest ME i can be. If alienation and death are all this culture of greed and fear allow, go down swinging!
***
The moment we met, i felt pure adoration and humility. Yet it feels slightly insincere to say that! Like i'm selling something. Is all this just narcissus enraptured with himself? Perhaps. Still, it's humbling to feel such beauty.
your foole,
wrob