Long ago I decided there would be no more boredom. I decided that the world was too big and beautiful and varied and interesting and wonderful, and that boredom was an affront to it all. That I myself am too varied and interesting and wonderful, that there’s too much to think about and too much to do, and I decided that boredom would no longer touch me.
And it has worked, so far: I can’t remember the last time I was intellectually bored. Always, I can find something, go for a walk, meditate, read a book, call a friend, something. I can sit in one place and stare at the sky and concentrate on being grateful. The internet has helped me with this enormously, but also hinders, because I don’t want to just be entertained: I want to be engaged. Boredom repulses me because there is so much goddamn world to see, so much happening every moment. Boredom, I feel sure, is a side effect of a too-busy life. We rush and rush and rush, fill every moment with radio noise or to-do lists, and then suddenly there’s nothing, a howling vacuum of time, and we don’t know what to do. Sit in front of the TV, masturbate, sleep. Surf around online until suddenly it’s three in the morning and eight hours of my life just clicked on past, and at the point of a gun I wouldn’t be able to tell you what I had seen, much less something worthwhile that I had learned or found or created. How much more rewarding the hour I spent practicing handstands, or writing poetry, or cooking dinner. How much better the walk to downtown to sit at the coffee shop and read, and how very much better the long and winding conversation at the bar, when we talked about god and politics, our parents, the changing leaves, how much better our first kiss.
Ah, which brings me to this: intellectual boredom I’ve eliminated, but I’ve discovered a new trap: emotional boredom.
This is a lot sneakier. It isn’t like sitting in your room, tapping your fingers, looking for something to do. It isn’t intentional, and I’m not sure it even really exists: I’ve never left a relationship because I was bored of it. I just never last very long in between them, and I never ease into them like normal people. It’s a headlong, jump in screaming, run in flailing and blind and breathless, or not at all. And from the beginning it’s all fire and ash, explosion, even eventually when we settle into comfort I am passion and sex and drama.
I know I left because the city was going to kill me; I wonder if I left also because I was afraid of our love settling too much, that I might – what? Get bored? No. No, I think the fear is that I might become boring. I’ve come a long way in loving myself, but at the very heart of it I don’t think I believe that I am worth the continued effort it takes to love me, I don’t think that I will live up to your expectations, the whirling sparkling beauty that I convinced you I was at the beginning.
But I do love being her, the crazy sweet spontaneous girl who throws kicks over your head and doesn’t get jealous, I love being the girl next door with a twist, the persona that rose up out of nowhere around me when I decided – right along with the boredom – that shyness was no longer going to have a say in my life. And I am nowhere better at the careless brilliance then when flirting, and when in the throes of the first spinnings of a new relationship. And then, slowly, eventually you get to know me deeper, find my fears, and I want to be strong, I want to be that perfect bright thing that I’m so good at convincing people they’re falling in love with. And she is me, she’s some of me. But the rest sits underneath, no, not underneath, just over to the right, in the shadow cast by the first part, and she’s all full of cracks and insecurity, and she gets pimples and she does get jealous, and she’s so goddamn scared.
In steps the honesty, or tries to: I realize in the middle of our conversation that I’m selecting the stories that make me seem a lot more balanced than I am. I do want to seem strong and even, but even more I want to be a real person, and I make myself tell him: It wasn’t really like that. I cried for two days straight once, I screamed, I was crazy jealous and inconsiderate and manipulative, god it was awful sometimes.
And he smiled. Which almost made it worse, because god, I wanted to dispel the myth of me that I could see him building, I wanted to make myself human again, something that doesn’t need polishing. I want to be able to be stupid and petty sometimes, stumble over my own feet, burst into ridiculous tears at a moment’s notice, and not fear that my glaze will wear off.
I had that with you, I know, and I left it. You knew me, each shadowed corner, each petty fear, and you never turned away. But the terror was still there, embedded deep, and I ran from it, and for that I am sorry.
So now I sit in a bar with him and we talk about god and politics and everything we can think of, and I want to seem aloof and mysterious but even more I want to kiss him so I say that: I want to kiss you. And he smiles.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home