journal 10: light
Monday, October 14th, 2024
There is a line at the end of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets that may have changed my life. Or affirmed it. Illuminated the direction in which I was already heading, only now it seems more possible. I don’t want to spoil the conclusion because I think everyone should read this book. Many will not appreciate the way it is disjointed and unconstrained by narrative, but I believe it is worth the try. And I will speak just a little on the ending.
She wraps up this heartbreak of a book, this three-year long saga of loving the unavailable person, with the idea that love is light and that she aims to be “a student not of longing but of light”. And because I am a person who always reads the acknowledgements, you will find that she thanks her “dearest Harry” who “brought the light”. She toiled and healed through the grief of her longing, found her light-giving love and immortalized this journey in a book. Read it.
This notion became a sort of mantra for me. Maggie actually references the quote by Simone Weil that inspired it all: “Love is not consolation. It is light”. I repeated it to myself. I wrote it in my journal. I considered it, turning it over again and again in my mind. I started to become aware of how I felt leaving certain places and certain people. I noticed when this was a heavy feeling and I also noticed when it felt weightless. I noticed when it drained me and when it left me with more energy than before. More inspiration. More hope.
I realized it is confusing to the self and to the body when we feel love in one way, but not all of the other ways. It is confusing to refer to someone as a friend or family and yet walk away feeling poorly about yourself. It is confusing to be assured that you are special to someone, right before they behave in a way that suggests you are categorically very unspecial. And it is confusing to hear that you are wanted when you are treated simply as an option, and one lower on the list.
I’ve been reflecting slowly and intently on the alignment of love. I had a very limiting view of love for a really long time and it was a view perpetuated by people who mistreated me while simultaneously insisting that they loved me. I had been mistaking this longing for love and craving consolation instead. But love is not confusing and muddled, it is clear and it is bright. And I will no longer be persuaded that something that talks like love and looks like love must be love. It is not. It must feel like love. It must uplift like love. It must bring the light, like love.
May 30th, 2024
I find that I sometimes confuse my lover with my inner child. On a dark note, this feels like a deeply subconscious desire for the wounded partner. Someone I can project all of my healing onto. Someone to distract from the fact that I need healing too. On a light note, it is in my nature to help people and to give care. As it does sometimes, the darker impulse has won, so far.
Perhaps this was all a wish fulfilment to see my steadfast methods succeed, at least once. But unsurprisingly they never did and of course not. I placed the other above myself. The others’ healing, the other’s needs. Enmeshed. Entangled. An indiscernible blending of me and them. And it should be admitted that they never quite asked for this. I decided for them and off we went.
Looking at this, it’s deeply manipulative. I wasn’t sitting there scheming, but my subconscious was running rampant and unchecked, old ingrained habits dying hard. Finally I did focus this energy on myself and I did begin to heal, beautifully, miraculously so. And I stopped projecting that onto others. I could accept them where they stood, separate and whole. If things never changed, would I feel loved? No. And yet the fantasy lingers. I take your head in my hands and lay it in my lap. I know you need a safe place like that. I know because it’s what I wanted.
What is love if not a mirror, the thing with which you see yourself more deeply and more kindly? The child grows up seeking their dreams. The lovers intertwine with possibility on their lips. And love continues, transforming, alchemizing, healing. What is love if not becoming? I love you at the level I am willing to be changed by you.
July 1st, 2024
If I am fierce about my dreams, about building a safe home, a safe family, about being cared for- and I am fierce- then my choices simply must reflect this. I must choose people and places that support these dreams. I will love good people, who live life as good people. A man who is consistent and trustworthy in behaviour because he embodies these things. Who moves through the world as such, with or without me. Who simply is. How naturally this arrives when we live as love, rather than just want it or give it.
“You’re looking for perfection,” he once told me. We were breaking up.
“No I’m not. I’m looking for kindness.”
July 4th, 2024
I am trying a journaling challenge where I wake up and write down my dreams. Last night, I had a dream about a man with blonde hair and blue eyes. We were together and the romance was easy. The connection, the love. It was steady and I remember feeling that it would be there. It was a wonderful feeling of warmth and ease and being wrapped in both and I think I was dreaming of what I desire, what I will build. Both a feeling and a choice.
“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.”
August 19th, 2024
“Community is the colour yellow.” -Leah
August 24h, 2024
Listening to a boxing class outside of my apartment. They are in the park, under the trees. The muted thwap thwap against the leather mitts.
There is skill involved in this boxing lesson. The teacher has mentioned the strength of the core. She has demonstrated the technique. And yet, so much of her work is to motivate and to cheer on. Surely the most inspiring takeaway of her class is not to be the most perfect beginner boxer, but to believe you are capable and to feel proud that you tried something new.
Realizing how many people benefit from simply being encouraged. Technique is important and mastery comes from repeated practiced skills. But how excited would any of us be to even practice if it weren’t for uplifting support? The most vital, most basic ingredient is being coached to keep going. She just clapped brightly and cued a water break.
The best teachers are motivators. They help you to believe in your own potential.
September 26th, 2024
It is never enough to tell someone that we love them. We must also show it. We must also demonstrate it. We must also embody it. So that everything we are shows another human being, “You are worthy of this respect. You deserve my care.” We love in our choices, in our decisions. We love in our actions. We love in our integrity. We love in our alignment. We love when we don’t force another to second guess or to question. We love in our capacity to be direct. We love another when we, on all levels of our being, believe they are worthy. And behave as such.
We don’t simply give love or show love.
We are love, in everything we do. True love takes on a wholly complete form. We say I love you not with our fleshy human mouths but with our entire being.
It is not that I feel love for you, but that I act in, and with, love for you. I consider you. I take and ask for accountability. I show up. I see the world in you and I give energy to that light. I encourage it to shine. I lend you my support. I make decisions that respect your personhood, I will not ask you to sacrifice that. I hold you in my arms and in high regard. My love for you is so aligned in my body that there is not a single level where you are not loved. You are loved within and throughout and across all.
I am my love for you.
October 2nd, 2024
Jotting down this fleeting idea that you are moving towards something without really knowing what it is, what it’s like. You are moving towards love, one that feels good, even though you only really know what love is not. You are moving towards a family in a safe home, even though you never lived in one until you lived alone. You are moving towards some inner ideal, some desert utopia, but where did these concepts even come from?
How do you know what you are moving towards? A sort of grappling, hands fumbling around in the dark. A long series of trial and error, of not this, not this, not this either. Until you get to the part where you create it yourself. That hidden driving force within you materialized in the real world with you as its creator. You first dream it and then you make it real. And suddenly you know what to look for because you are holding it in your hands. And then you stop looking and start recognizing. You notice when something moves in the world the way you do. You are aligning instead of compromising. You are seeing instead of seeking.
My survival and my resilience is because of that inner knowing. But where did it come from?
I am these things and I always was. I am made up of everything I ever sought. I once dreamt of my own light.