For years, I’ve tried to justify my feelings for someone.
For a million someones.
To them, to me, to my family, my friends, even to strangers, and definitely to my therapist.
Tonight, as I was out with this handsome man with a beautiful heart, dangerously sexy eyes, a fantastic sense of sarcasm and humor, just the right amount of intelligence, and an intoxicating voice, on a non-date, I realized the whole point of having feelings is that they’re feelings.
You shouldn’t have to rationalize them.
How many times have I hopped on MML and gave you a list of all the reasons why I’m falling or have fallen for someone? As if there’s a fixed description to the job of being my lover. Which there isn’t. And there shouldn’t be.
As I was sitting there with this guy, for the first time in a long, long fucking time, I turned my brain off. I listened to him. To his stories, to his truth, his pain and desires. I wasn’t comparing and contrasting him to every other person. I was just getting to know him. An individual, a culmination of a distinct path of choices and circumstances.
I think part of what always irritated me when guys would tell me I could “do better” is that deep down inside, I already knew they were trying to use logic for a logic-less thing.
There isn’t much to say why we start falling for someone beyond just circumstance. There isn’t much to say who it works out with or doesn’t with beyond just choice.
That’s all it comes down to.
One “hello” at the right time. One walk together and a conversation on a cold night. One car ride in the spring sun, one dinner as the sun sets. One request that I sing a song. One time forgetting my phone in his car. One declaration that he’s happy that I had fun.
I’m also doing another thing I haven’t done in a long, long time… I’m not planning the future. Don’t get me wrong; I’m dreaming about it. Or rather, daydreaming about it. I’m imagining what’s to come next. But I’m not predicting. I’m not holding on to fantasy.
I have absolutely no clue what’s going to happen when I wake up tomorrow. But I know that tonight, I’m going to sleep just fine, knowing I had a wonderful dinner with a wonderful man (even if it was a non-date as good friends) at my favorite restaurant in town, knowing that the story portion of my thesis is finished and on its way to becoming final, that the thesis soundtrack is almost complete, and that my rough draft of my Critical Intro and Annotated Biblio are done as well, and that I discovered my new favorite actress (Fran Drescher). I can sleep well knowing that my life beyond Penn State is slowly coming into focus and that instead of saying I have “ten” years left until I’m done with school, I can now say it’s “six”.
I remember, when I was a kid, my dad used to tell me that you know you’ve done a good day’s work when you fall asleep at an instant. With my insomnia, I’ve never been able to do that. He used to tell me to just stop thinking. To close my eyes, empty my thoughts. When I was a kid, I’d just nod and wait for him to leave the room before I went back to watching something or listening to something or daydreaming or something. When I was older and maybe even until quite recently, I’d argue. I’d tell him that I just can’t do that. Our brains are built differently. I can’t turn off my thoughts as quickly.
But sometimes, it’s a choice.
I’m realizing that as of late.
One of my supervisors at work, when I went to her with what I thought was some epic unsolvable crisis a few weeks ago, sighed and told me that none of it really matters that much and everything would turn out just fine no matter which choice I made. At the time, I admit, I left the room and rolled my eyes, thinking If it doesn’t matter, why the fuck am I so worried about it? What matters is subjective, isn’t it? I couldn’t blame her for not caring one way or another. It occurs to me now that it wasn’t a lack of respect for my emotions or my problems. It was a vote of confidence.
You stop caring about tomorrow when you have the confidence that everything will just be okay.
Why didn’t I have as much confidence that she did?
I remember when I applied to colleges, for undergrad, I didn’t overthink it. Penn State was pretty much a place I applied to for no good reason other than their letters landed in my inbox and I thought why not. And it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. Erie is the best decision I’ve ever made. Except I never consciously made it. It just sort of happened. It’s the best accident that ever happened to me.
Somewhere along the way in the last four years, I’ve fallen into all the wrong company. People who value anxiety and a lack of trust and confidence in themselves. Not on purpose. It’s the fault of their circumstances. Everything is the fault of circumstances.
The truth is everyone’s life is just the same amount of fucked up and fucking amazing. But it’s all about perspective. The lens we look at our circumstances through. Two people can go through the exact same fucking mess and one can come out the other side, bruised, hurting, wanting everything to end, while the other can come out happy as ever, unscathed, pretending nothing happened. But there’s an option three: acknowledge what happened, process it, learn from it, learn to let go a little, learn to be happy. Everything is a learned skill for human beings.
Everything.
Sorrow, pain, happiness, success. We even need to learn how to learn.
We need to learn how to grieve grandfathers we never knew. We need to learn to console grandmothers we cannot get to know. Learn to live with knowing that the people who carried you when you were a child might mean less than people who are with you now. Learn to accept family wars. World wars. Quarantines. No graduation and no prom. Heartache. Heart breaks. Broken relationships. Healing those broken relationships. Watching others’ relationships heal as yours break down.
We need to learn forgiveness.
We need to learn to be forgiven.
Trust. Comparability. Lust. Love. Compassion. Respect. Responsibility. Burdens. Being free.
Learning to choose. Rationally, logically, carefully, precisely, desirably, disastrously.
And sometimes we need to learn to unlearn everything we learned yesterday and the days before.
Tomorrow, everything will be just okay.
I’m unlearning something I really need to unlearn in order to be happy: life is not going to fall apart.
I’m unlearning anxiety, worry, fear. I’m unlearning that life’s going to fall apart as soon as I blink. I’m unlearning that my parents’ health is terrible (because it’s not anymore). I’m unlearning that my brother’s going to fail in life (because he’s doing amazing things and not having his whole life figured out isn’t going to hurt him; just as much as thinking so much about tomorrow’s not gonna hurt me). I’m unlearning that I need to be worried every time a friend doesn’t pick up the phone. I’m unlearning that I need to be scared every time I hear an airplane’s turbulence. I’m unlearning that it’s a terrible thing to have less than “B” mid-semester. I’m unlearning that I need to feel guilty for being closer to people I met yesterday than people I’ve known my life — it wasn’t my choices anymore than it was theirs that made it this way. I’m unlearning that I need to restrict myself to the norms. I’m unlearning that I’m somehow super human for doing a million things at once. I’m unlearning that I need to be haunted by the past instead of embracing it, however ridiculous or traumatic it may be. I’m unlearning that in order to be a strong, independent woman I’m not supposed to have a man on my arm (to be honest, if a woman’s truly so strong and independent, she shouldn’t need to hold herself back from a relationship with anyone; it’s a matter of insecurity whether you try to hard to hold on or try to hard to push them away). I’m unlearning that guys my age are obsessed with nothing but sex. I’m unlearning that my only motive to run after a dangerous love is for the danger. It’s not. It’s because I trusted in a moment, a thought, a circumstance, a choice; and taking a step backwards is sometimes necessary. And yes, boredom is a valid reason to end things. Boredom’s the worst feeling.
I’m unlearning a lot of things that I consciously fought with but subconsciously succumbed to.
I’m learning once more to be a pragmatic optimist instead of an anxious one.
I’m learning that we don’t need to try to poke into every single choice, trying to find the justifications. I’m learning to be confident in my choices, in my circumstances, and in my life’s path in spite of not knowing what tomorrow holds.
– Samhi C.
