“Parents fight — my gut reacts. Fascists get elected — my gut reacts. The magnitude rarely differs. The severity is usually paramount. […] That is why I feel bewildered when onlookers of my high-strung dismay dare to tell me It’s Not That Deep.
How can nothing affect you so viscerally? How can you watch your world burn and choose only to dribble water at your feet, if you bother to get that far?”
Trauma’s a bitch, huh?
Without it, I would have a much easier time learning to love the beast that I am, but for years now, I’ve avoided examining me too closely. I’m sure this seems absurd — what else has my blog been if not a place for me to analyze shit within my life?
And that’s just it: I’m too focused on the cerebral. And for the past couple months, my body has been Beasting in a way I haven’t experienced before. My heart has never genuinely leapt or ached as it has in recent weeks.
I am radically changed, by many factors, though most prominently from falling in love with the people in my life. And I mean these words: I am in love with some of my closest friends. I can’t escape it or attempt to rationalize how unquestioningly I would go to bat for them, how fiercely I desire to be at their side. I’m quite lucky to feel so strongly about people in my life like this at all.
This question of depth plagues me, though. As far as I can tell, I am alone among my beloveds in analyzing as much and as hard as I do. That’s okay — in fact, it’s probably better that I’m in the minority here. And that’s a bit of a revelation in itself.
It is that deep, AND I can choose to come up for air.
I wouldn’t have concluded this had I not observed through such doting lenses the subjects on whom I place my affection.
It’s no wonder I’ve felt stifled; no wonder I find it so easy to drown in The Implications of All That Is Or Could Be Happening. I’ve forgotten that the depths do not control me — I control my place within them. And goddamnit, my lungs are starving.
It is not inherently a virtue to become subsumed by the numinous, the liminal, the unknowable. I am not doing anybody favors by hanging out among anglerfish and assessing their symbolism as carnivorous seductresses. True, I find it fun; otherwise I wouldn’t do it. Also true is that it often prevents me from Getting Shit Done. And, regardless, the anglerfish just want to eat me.
Another lesson: Don’t Think, Just Do.
Of course, this first began merely as a mantra for me as I was relearning the controls to a video game. But I took that mantra down with me into the abyss, and now the anglerfish laugh at me whenever I say it around them because they think it’s pathetic I clung so tight to such a throwaway moment.
I, voracious and greedy shark that I am, did the very thing the phrase discourages in response to the phrase itself — I thought!
It’s so easy to want to rebuke myself for “taking something so far.” And yet, is this not the beast that I am? And, furthermore, was that not why I chose to get an arts degree? Was it not baked into the training, this wisdom that throwaway lines are to be treated more seriously than a character’s most conscious speeches?
Characters can lie. People can lie. Emotions can’t.
Still, then, it is that deep. But it doesn’t need to be if it’s hurting me.
I will always be a defender of depth, especially in this cultural moment where “being shallow” is preferable, as it allows empire to flourish unchecked (I’ve really gotta read Chomsky). But something I’m learning, which I couldn’t have concluded without observing my friends, is that Shallow ≠ Unnecessary. There’s just as much life and color and meaning to be found on the shores.
This is not merely where they live — it’s where they choose to be (and where they choose to take me, thank the fucking gods). I’m grateful to know such lively spirits. In my opinion, they’re this way precisely because they know the abyss beneath them, and make the choice to orient their faces skyward. Still tangibly existing in and aware of The Deep, but not feeling the need to suffer always within it.
I’ve never felt less of a need to suffer of my own volition, now that I love so many creatures who turn my own face skyward. There’s enough suffering no matter where in the ocean you are; and I need to see the sun more often anyway.
So now I get to start kicking an old habit, or else focusing on the one emerging from within me: choosing, in fact, to emerge.