#39 | truth
Conjecture about the future no longer serves me. There is no point in wondering whether she will love me again or how long I will continue to love her from afar. Doing so used to bring me comfort, but my mourning has outgrown it. Lately I can finally embrace a minimalist present: we are not together. She needs space. I am in pain, and so is she. She cares about me. I care about her. My mind is now relatively quiet apart from these facts.
It's a wonderful ability I have honed, to embrace facts openly. Facts are simple and small, like pebbles. I can hold them gently in my palms and turn them back and forth, admiring their texture and shape, relishing their constant state from every angle. No matter how I look at things, I cannot deny that she needs space or the care and pain between us. Sure, I can shine a light and play with reflection—I can wonder if we will speak again, or if she has soured on me over time—but I am aware that that's only an exercise and doesn't bring forth definitive information. I did not have this power a few months ago. My mind ricocheted off every wall, speculating and mapping out every possible conclusion, thoughts morphing every moment; it worked so hard but could not establish order.
But now that I write this out, can't facts also shift and erode over time? The scientific method insists that there are no truths in the world—only hypotheses backed by research and evidence. People I previously dated, whom I told myself I would always care for and love in some capacity, I actually don't think about anymore. What does it even mean, to care about someone if you are no longer in each other's lives? That if I were to hear something bad happened to them, I would feel a sense of loss? I would, but to be honest, not profoundly. Perhaps care is only a verb, and if you are not actively in each other's lives to put care into action, care is the same as thoughts and prayers, which mean nothing to my nonspiritual mind. All I have is actually a mere data point: She cared for me three months ago, when she mustered the strength to face me in person, a month after her dad died. I do not have evidence to back the hypothesis that she cares for me now, in the present. That doesn't mean she doesn't wish good things for me, but it simply means I know nothing about her now because she gives me nothing to go by. Or is it actually care after all, for her to exit my life so she doesn't accidentally hurt me as she grieves, as she was beginning to do on occasion? See—I really have no knowledge at all. In each passing moment, all I know is that my telomeres shorten, mountains crumble to wind and rain, and streams carve canyons into the earth. Truth brings temporary comfort, but truth is also an illusion.
Once more, this brings me to the topic of anger. My friends and therapist often ask if I am angry. They say she's treated me rudely and coldly. They wonder if my lack of anger is a lack of self-respect. Although I believe what she said about me is wrong—no, there are moments I know it is wrong, for I know I am dependable and patient—I feel pain for sure, but not anger in particular, because to me anger is outward. Anger is about someone else. And I don't have descriptions for how she has acted. I know nothing about her right now, only the person I knew her to be before the tragedy. So how can I be angry at someone for how I feel, when I don't even know what they are doing, nor why?
Now that our lease is officially over and we aren't speaking, there is nothing but blankness. No more new developments; less and less to actively process. I have the ability to name and understand my own emotions and put them in words, but nothing else. Yes: sadness. Shame. Guilt. Indignation. I have vague ideas of where these emotions come from. They are reactions to the events of the past six months, and they will peacefully shift and pass through me. I can feel sad because I interpret her actions as cold, but that doesn't mean she actually is cold or intending to be. I know nothing about her state of being, about the world. Perhaps she has been rude. But perhaps she is simply detaching. Call it whatever you want, but I actually have no truth. Things simply are.
Jessica Baum in Anxiously Attached writes that attachment styles can change, but your original attachment behaviors will never 100% go away. This can be a good thing, though. Being anxiously attached means you are perceptive to the emotions of others, able to compassionately see others' intentions despite their actions. Likewise, being avoidantly attached means you can endure and not allow emotion to consume you. I would like to think I learned some of that from my ex. I don't want to see the world in one way. I'm learning the beauty of all forms of thinking, so I can embrace the endless present, and be comfortable in the unknown.
I'm ending this rather philosophical post with this quote from Things in Nature Merely Grow, which truly embodies an undeniable present tense. Yiyun Li writes about her two sons, both gone to suicide:
"The verb that does not die is ‘to be.’ Vincent was and is and will always be Vincent. James was and is and will always be James. We were and are and will always be their parents. There is no now and then, now and later; only now and now and now and now."