I’m gonna write from the heart. None of this “if I write in a journal it’s cliché and I’m wasting my time; when I write I should be thinking about publication and things that I know others will appreciate.”
The reason I like writing and the reason I started doing so in the first place is because it’s a safe place for me to express myself. Paper doesn’t judge and neither did I until I decided one day that I wanted to start sharing my work.
Even now, as I’m writing solely to “express myself”, the back of my mind is going “pssst…Caro, maybe this’ll be interesting enough to post on your blog.”
Oh, to have grown up in a world where productivity is everything and nothing at all.
Sometimes I write down what I’ve already “accomplished” with my day in my agenda just so I can cross it out later.
Getting to the point: right now I feel like a failure in many aspects of my life. I’m in debt, so economically I’m in the shit. Friendship-wise, I have people that I care about deeply here, but that I feel aren’t willing to open up as much with me as I am with them. I find myself often feeling frustrated because many of them appear to be uncomfortable when I attempt to share anything too personal.
It’s not that I want to recount every last detail of my life with them. I suppose what I mean about being able to open-up revolves around being able to share ideas. Ideas about positive change, about things one would like to happen in the world, far-flung initiatives that one wants to take, and so forth.
I miss talking about books, about dreams, about my feelings. I miss talking about my feelings so much. And having somebody there to my validate my fears and my sadness, and to share similar experiences with me.
This is perhaps the reason as to why I am longing so much for a partner at this point. As is expressed by the Swedish proverb “Shared joy is double joy, shared sorrow is half-sorrow.”
In this exact moment, I feel like the joy in my life is half of what it could be and my sorrow, double.
I have moments of desperation where I all I want is to have a partner, assuming his presence and our rapport will “solve” this longing that I have. But why? Why can’t I address this longing to "share" right now?
The desire to share= the affirmation that one is not alone=the desire to know one is loved and can love.
And how Caro-centric of me to assume that everyone is capable of sharing their love through words! Yes, words are an integral part of who I am, but others share their worlds and demonstrate their love differently.
And there is no denying that love is everywhere, in abundant and unconventional forms.
The love that nature transmits when you allow yourself to remain serene within its power, the love that a friend demonstrates when they make the effort to send you a valentine your middle-of-nowhere address, the love that your elderly neighbour shows by giving you a jar of guava jam just because she saw you walking down the street.
Love is ubiquitous, and perhaps I haven’t taken the time to savour it as much as I can. When one finds romantic love it’s as if one has scored a Costco bulk package of heaven. You have it all concentrated at once, and because it is so easily accessible you begin to think it’s the only real source of love, and perhaps the deepest.
But how can there be a measurement for love, when it is such a pure and noble sentiment, consuming the heart differently, not so much in terms of depth but in presence?
Using this logic, I retract my previous use of word “failure” to describe my current state of being. To be human is to want to love, and be loved. To fail at being human is to stop desiring these things. As long as one is missing, searching for, and ultimately uncovering love, one is human. And being human is succeeding.
