Relational Fatigue.
No One's Coming To Save You | Conversations On Love & The Lack Thereof
I don’t often think of myself as a rare breed. I don’t normally wish I could be less than but the older I get the more I think life cannot be this insufferable. It wasn’t until this year I realized how much emotional capacity I have. Things I do for people with ease, others find extremely challenging. To some extent I think I must be really special and then the reality hits that no one may ever be able to match my effort. I’ve noticed that asking for consistency, genuine curiosity, communication and maturity is a mouthful nowadays. I don’t know what to make of this. I guess I should have realized it was a little too much when I grew up being more emotionally mature than both of my parents or when I was the one giving good advice at the tender age of fourteen. I should have known that later in life all of that emotional effort would turn into a painful grief that’ll never go away—not even with the latest advancement in therapeutic modalities and magnesium gummies.
In the spirit of practicing radical honesty so many painful emotions came to the surface during Valentine’s Day this year: anger, resentment, betrayal, disappointment. Once I began to experience them I immediately started shutting down. Every year I avoid Valentine’s Day like it’s an incurable disease and every year it comes back around to remind me that it’s not going anywhere. I’m committed to co-creating a new reality at this time of my life. Therefore I’m separating the story from the wound. The wound was never abandonment, it was always self-betrayal. It was always me choosing to put others before myself in hopes of earning their love. The anger is not at them, it’s in the fact that I haven’t yet forgiven myself.
“I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not a virtue. It was a disguise.”
-Anaïs Nin
I was not prepared for the grief. I think grief is always acquainted with physical death but grief is not dead it’s living. It’s a living, breathing, moving state. Grief as a child scared me, it was always so foreign to me. This year and last year I learned that grief doesn’t go with the deceased. It doesn’t get get buried. It lives in living, it follows you everyday. You sit with it. The first time I felt grief and heartbreak was when I went no contact with my mom three years ago. I had always wanted this close, emotional bond with my mom [and I wanted it at any cost]. The cost was high. The self-betrayal started there looking for my mother’s love, something I’d never find. I imagined my mother being one of my best friends. I imagined going to her to talk about dating, sex, womanhood or going to her to cry and being comforted—to feel validated in my choices. To feel protected, guided, even chosen but those things never happened. The grief that I’m experiencing is the fantasy that’ll never be able to experience the bond that I truly want [and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it]. It still to this day one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
Most recently it’s been the grief of going no contact with my brother. I try to avoid this truth so much. I avoid talking about him or even thinking about it because it’s so painful. You go from sitting at their bedside after they get jumped and end up in the hospital with a concussion to not speaking. From talking to them on a jail video call to not speaking. From showing up for them countless times and having the live with the fact your love can never save them. I’ve never shared this but five years ago I found my brother’s biological father after not knowing who he was for twenty seven years. I hoped that the reconciliation would bring a transformation in his life, that finally knowing him would bring him hope. Why did I do it? because I loved him.
The fantasy had to die so that I can live.
I realize you cannot love without grief. You cannot save anyone and no one is coming to save you. Everything I was taught about love has come into question recently—that’s a good thing.
I can tell you firsthand that de-conditioning and deconstructing the savior complex both from yourself and from this ideal is hard work. It’s ingrained in us that someone is coming someday to save us from this tyrannical government and this evil world. The reality though is that no one is coming. No one is coming to save us from this mess we created—collectively or personally. So, the question we are left with is now what? What do we do? I’m also writing this on the eve of the new moon in Pisces. The sign that represents Christ and also the sign that represents endings. As I stated in my post on the sign, Pisces is not the end but it is the final grief. It is the smack dap in the dead of winter. It’s cold. It’s a cold reality. It’s the dance with fantasy. So, I’ve been taking this time to really sit with what I’m letting go. As Aries season ask for radical honesty and acceptance. While the seed is planted in the darkness of Pisces, the flower is blooming in Aries. I say all those flowery words to say when no one is coming to save you how can you bloom in the darkness anyways. Because that’s what Pisces is about, if you forgot. Please don’t mistake my integration of myth-making as spiritual bypassing we don’t do that over here. I’m just able to see everything with new eyes.
I been grieving the love I never received—the love that eluded me. Every fibre of my being is ready to experience the ugly parts, the messy human emotions, the obscene, the scary parts that before I would have ran from. It all started with this rage and anger, an ugly emotion, I was deathly afraid of experiencing. That’s the thing about anger, like grief, it’s just takes a hold of you. It’s like dropping a match on kerosene. I use to be so afraid of anger, not only because I’ve seen the ugly parts of it, but because I didn’t understand it. It’s like a spirit has possessed you. So, I was so afraid of what anger could do what it could build and what it could destroy? I know all to well what it can destroy. I know it can build to but if you don’t control it can do more damage than good. So I held my anger in, I ate my anger, I shoved my anger in closets. I did the same with grief I pretended that if I didn’t notice it wouldn’t show up. When we moved from my childhood home, when we left were I grew up, when I left my mothers house. I just pretended that that all wasn’t grief. For grief to exist there has to be love. We don’t grieve things we don’t love deeply, passionately, unconditionally. But no one prepares us for the way it aches and it hurts. I don’t think we’d able to write a manual for the human experience of grief—it’s far too vast, messy and complex to every transcribe.
I don’t think unconditional love is waiting for me—unconditional love was always unsustainable. I know it sounds pitiful but think about that statement. We wait and we pause and we anticipate a love that could heal our wounds like a balm. We are told that if we nurture our relationships they’ll nurture us back. The truth is far more sinister. Harder to stomach. It doesn’t flutter our hearts the way hopeful redemption does. We’ve all been sold on the idea of unconditional love when love is nothing more than a condition. Love is a state of being. Love is in my slow mornings when I’m rested and the first thing that leaves my lips is an appreciation to my ancestors. Love is water droplets hitting the small of my back under the shower head. Love is watching the moon in awe. Love is a state of commitment. Love is fleeting, passing.
I’ve never experienced true love. I’ve never been chosen. I’ve never been protected. I’ve never felt like I belonged. I’ve never felt like I had a strong bond to where that person would do anything for me. Love has been the one force that’s been absent in all of my experiences. I’m not ashamed of saying that. I’m not scared people are going to think anything of me. Love has nothing to do with me. I cannot manufacture love. You cannot manufacture love. You either decide to love me or you don’t. Once we remove the conditions from the condition we can see that love truly is a choice. It’s the choice of the other and nothing you can do can make someone love you more. Bell Hooks talked a lot about cathexis. The term was coined by that sick white man Sigmund Freud but it means to invest emotional energy into something in almost an unhealthy way. Bell Hooks said this is often what we think is love. It’s not in preoccupation. Love is a choice, when we make a choice, we’re committed. I’ve never experienced my existence being a choice. I’m deciding to make my existence a choice. I’ve been waking up everyday and choosing. I’m choosing not to operate in cathexis. I’m choosing and deciding where to put my energy investment and it’s not in the people who brought me into this world.
It took me a long time to realize that interest does not equal emotional investment and accepting the reality that people desire me but they aren’t willing to invest in loving me. I’m tasked with answering the question again now what? How do you operate when love has been absent? I never want my story to be reactive or defensive. I watch how my uncle changes his phone number every few months and blocks family members. How he attempts to control the people around him because he has never felt loved. How bitterness has become his portion. I don’t see that as an existence I want—I have always felt like I was made for loving. I don’t want heartbreak, trauma or rejection to harden me. I don’t want to become someone who is like poison to themselves but I have to admit that not being consistently chosen hurts.
Schools for love do not exist. everyone assumes that we will know how to love instinctively. despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we still accept that the family is the primary school for love. those of us who do not learn how to love among family are expected to experience love in romantic relationships. however this love often eludes us.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
SIDE BAR—
Where I’m putting all my emotional investment these days:
I’m publishing a magazine. THE MYSTIC HOUR.
So, far it has 30 pages.
OYSTER DREAM
The oyster dream is something that came to me in twenty-twenty two after a casual relationship that I had with this taurus. I discovered it originally as my spirit animal but the philosophy became forming over the last four years. We share dreams with everyone across generations. We all want the same things essentially. A fantasy though is our own untapped and unrealized potential. In the oyster lives a fantasy which is the pearl. I was surprised how much I related to the oyster initially now it all makes sense. I too need to disappear into the depths of the ocean in order to recharge and recalibrate. For so long I’ve been the woman with many unfinished projects but this time that won’t be my story. The reason we are drawn to archetypes is because they exist within this deep, collective repository. Dreams are ancestral. Fantasy is enigmatic.
Anyone can sell you a dream. No one can sell you a fantasy. The fantasy must be your own. The American Dream has been sold to us for centuries. Respectability politics, black excellence, homeowner, college degrees, etc etc etc. The American Dream has been repackaged and sold to every new generation. Fantasy lives within the revolutionaries. The ancestors who understood that freedom could not exist within the capitalist framework. Fantasy belongs to you. I’m notorious for being a popular loner and a private socialite but now I’m inviting you into my world which is the oyster dream. It’s exciting. I recently told my therapist that I’m not use to being understood so when I find someone who understands me deeply, it’s so intense. It’s like a release. That’s how this magazine feels too. As I’ve been creating it I feel like I’m being shucked. At the same time this is the most tuned in I’ve felt about the vision. I’ve been a photographer over ten years and just now I’m starting to understand my angle. I’ve always loved photography but it didn’t really hit me until I realized I could shift my camera anyway I wanted to. I’m creating some of my favorite work. Most of the editorials in the magazine are shot by me and thats surreal. If you feel compelled to support you can do so by buying me a candle. Everything is going towards the budget for the magazine.
I’ll be sharing some of the vision behind the debut issue, you can always follow day-to-day updates on the magazine updates tab. I was also working on the personal canon series and then out of nowhere my draft got deleted. I have no way of restoring the draft but I'm working on seeing what else comes to mind. The whole experience made me upset but when it all comes straight from the dome you can just do it again. The oyster dream is never out of ideas.
That is the grief I’ve been experiencing over the last few months. I honestly don’t enjoy relationships the way I should but I’m hoping someday they’ll feel lighter. There are things that are good about love I’ve just yet to experience them.
With Love,
Deziré
