What a funny thing this heart of mine is. Why the desperate need to believe in love, to believe in passion that conquers all? Why the inability to be truly happy without the secure knowledge that it exists in a tangible way out there? In the absence of it in my own life, I seem to find joy in the love others have in their lives. Which is all well and fine, except, well, when other people's relationships don't work out it breaks my heart a little bit. My eyes well up and my chest hurts a small hurt. Even if I don't know them. Why? I'm not sure it's healthy to allow others to influence my emotions so. But it's my silly little heart and I'm stuck with it. Emotions are funny things. It's silly I suppose, but I need to believe that two beautiful people can be blissfully happy and make it work. Famous people, regular people, everyone.
Along a similar and very vulnerable line, from my night-time notebook last night:
I lay in my bed swaddled by darkness. My mind however is deep in the middle of the novel that lies discarded near the couch in the other room. I love Scarlet O'Hara. I love her gumption, her fortitude, her survivability, her strength, her brazen disregard and defamation of convention. And yet, she is one of the most truly terrible human beings brought to life. She's a terrible terrible person when it comes down to it. A terrible and wonderful person. I find myself relating to her all too easily, readily, and on the whole. So I love her.
As my mind races through thoughts and feelings, it opens the door to a stark cold room of fear that brushes past. I feel myself recoil from the feeling as though it never existed and race to other thoughts. "No," I tell myself. Feel it. It was fear you felt. Why? Fear of what? Find the hidden door that led to that room and enter it. Sit with that emotion. Don't run, don't deny, don't refuse, don't ignore. What is it about that train of thought that opened the door to the cold draft? Am I afraid to admit that I love those fierce qualities? That I'm like her? That the ways in which I relate to her will ultimately keep me from happiness as they did her? Or maybe it was just a supremely written novel with a cast of characters that we all have a piece of within us. I don't know.
But through the dark I probe the corners of my thoughts searching for the release to the trap door. I open it up, feel the cold draft brush past, go to the back wall of the room and sit down.
That's a lot of vulnerability right there... struggling to stay open, not to close it off... Progress.
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