Sleepless
I want to tell my brain: fuck rational thought. Stop thinking. Pursue happiness and pleasure. If you can recognize them.
Why? Because the pursuit of happiness and pleasure can be dangerous and you, brain, are not a risk-taker.
Sure, this space is all about me (tirelessly, pedantically about me. Oh, I am so tired of me. Sometimes I think: get a job, Jennifer! That would quiet your inner voice for at least a portion of the week.). But writing about me isn't an exercise in pursuing happiness. Or pleasure. It’s about my mind. About how I think. It’s about organizing and labeling the past, the creative work of making reality into a story. Controlling reality – that’s what this blog is about. That and bringing a few people into my head, making them witnesses to the past, a warm virtual circle around the person that I used to be. If only I could have let the old me know that was possible: Dear fifteen-year-old, sixteen-year-old, twenty-year-old Jennifer: you will tell your story, will be observed. You existed.
There is a fine line between controlling realty and having a death grip on it, on trying to get it right or trying to write around dangerous feelings. I’ve done a lot of that, have taken anger and guilt and desire and given them a framework. I’ve transformed them into something else, but sometimes, I just want to wallow in them, to accept them as part of me. To revel in being human.
I want to stop feeling so contained.
. . .
I SLEPT ON IT
I tossed on it, ground my teeth above it, nudged the boy across it. I hung onto the edge, I waddled away, I came back and slept again, eventually.
Originally, I thought my angst was about the situation, the differences between us, my own heavy history hanging over the room like an anvil on a worn rope, gently swaying from side to side. Only I know how hard I’ve worked to create a feeling of stability, how in the process I’ve pushed things aside, cleared the room of ambiguity and risk, of the chance to cause pain, to ruin everything. But now, this: the danger was palpable. Potentially life-changing.
By design, my life is small. Contained. My forays into other worlds shake me up. I want to be shaken up (need to be shaken up), but still my security, my stability, feels so tenuous. It’s as if I’ve been holding it together with my teeth and fingertips, my arms outstretched, pulling the protective netting over my family, keeping both the outside world and the worst of me out.
I need to drop the net, to expand my life, to be in the world. I am tired of hiding. How to do it safely? If I fill the room up again with myself, take on ambiguity and risk (if I cut the anvil loose, let it hit the floor with a BANG of relief), I am afraid of what will happen.
The desire for upset, for drama, is in my bones. Like any good addict, I must avoid temptation. My fear is that I won't be able to tell the difference between temptation and happiness, that openness means pain, that my desire will betray me and hurt the people I love.
JOY DIVISION: DISORDER
Image: Me, last summer.
DISORDER is from my mainly sleepless brain. I SLEPT ON IT is a modified prompt. Is all of this too obtuse? Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am sleepless, I contain multitudes.
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