Wish engine
25 April 2011 11:12 AM Categories: The struggle
I want to give you the details, want to tell you about the quality of light, how it changed from charcoal to puce to mist, how the blinds were slanted against it but still couldn’t keep the light out, how I was there, in my wish thinking be careful what you wish for, feeling the truth of it.
The fulfilled wish is a dangerous thing, the fantasy come to half-life. We don’t think it through when we will a wish to happen. Some vital detail goes missing. We want the man, but we don’t want his baggage. We want the move, but we don’t want the loneliness. We want the career change, but we don’t want the burned fingers and scarred knuckles, the knees blown by years of crouching, the feet calloused and ruined by the end, us with no money, youth gone, eaten up, more cynical than ever.
I’m tired of writing enigmatic posts that leave the reader in the hallway of the narrative, blocked by confusing metaphor and half-truth. I want to give you the details, like a confession, like a message. Gossip straight from the source.
You will have to settle for enigma.
It was like a hotel room, but not. It was like a connection, but not. It was simultaneously comfortable and strained. But what a moment it would have made on the stage, the scattered stuff, the awkwardness, my internal monologue, the stilted dialog, the interpretations on both sides. My story about the fulfilled wish is as full of lacunae as its aftermath, the conversation where the weight of the unspoken thickened the air. Walloped by my own silence, I had to leave, wanted to breathe freely again, wanted the purity of my thoughts in isolation.
They are still here, the thoughts. Unspoken. Unwritten. Sometimes I pace and talk to the cats, gesture with my hands as I make my points. I want to be heard. But I can't get the words out unless I am alone.
Years ago, after I asked my father for support for a fifth year of college and got back an extremely nasty letter, I cut off all contact with him.* We made up six months later, sat alone together under the shade of a sycamore in a Delaware park. I tried to talk. I tried to tell him everything, about why I was so angry. But I couldn't. I would not let him destroy me, would not put myself in a position of vulnerability. I would not be two or five or sixteen years old again and the likelihood that he would be able to really hear me anyway was low.
The engine of the wish, its motivation, is a desire to be vulnerable, to be in a position of openness, where I can show my heart and speak my mind without feeling like my very being is threatened. It's a wish of closeness, of an aching desire to be in the moment with someone who is able to be there with me. It's about love and acceptance and clear vision. I make the wish again and again, I persist in situations where persistence is futile, trying to remake the past, to redeem myself by winning over the blind, the frightened, the selfish or incapable. I try and fail and am simultaneously thwarted and safe, my scarred being untouched.
This is a compelling process, one of redemption through magical acceptance, one of healing through the alchemy of love. I remake the past again and again, trying to get it right. The wishes beckon, they call to me to escape, to try again until I am saved. They tell me they will come true if I behave correctly, if I mold my behavior and ignore my emotions. Instead, I must ignore the wishes. I refuse to live a half-life, to jam my being into the corner for the sake of malformed acceptance.
I'm getting beyond the wish. Though the trajectory of my journey is still unclear, I am optimistic. Not so much about wish fulfillment, but about the possibility of closeness. It won't come by magic or by being a good girl. It will come by opening my heart cautiously, without malice, by separating the pain of before with the reality of now.
*"Support" for some living expenses. I was graduating at the end of that year. I cut off contact because of the nastiness of his letter, which I've kept. It's still nasty after all these years.
Image by Martin Neuhof, though I don't agree. My heart is as vulnerable as an armored butterfly wing. If I'm going to imagine a positive type of vulnerability, I would say that I would like my heart to be as vulnerable as an old growth forest: living, adaptable, teeming with life. Because our metaphors shape how we see ourselves and the world. Still, I liked the photo.
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