you are a stand in for my optimism.
really, it’s you, standing in the place where typically I have to invent a thing.
I have to consult my therapist. “Is this right?” And then, because he is a psychoanalyst I feel the need to assure him that I know it is revealing that I am asking him for this kind of reassurance. About how to be.
you were not designed for this purpose.
and, according to my beliefs, you were not designed.
I have a script for the way things would go if I were always in control of myself. And if I always felt the breezy air of possibility. I did not account, in the script, for how the air thickens when there are any stakes at all. How looking with affection, and feeling, inside, the same look you are giving, intensifies the atmosphere. Now there is something that can kill you.
there is always something that can kill you.
you laugh about it because the things you are thinking of are not the worst things.
And now I’m thinking not of the worst things, but of something personal. It won’t kill me, though, because I have had practice. I have had the feeling of being killed which is not how it actually feels to be killed since no one has tried to kill me. But I have had the feeling of thinking you have been killed when you are grasping at life, when your cells painfully rearrange into new life, one you haven’t chosen but is surely a more viable outcome than the one you had been choosing, and which rejected you.
in the middle of writing this I think of you
and that maybe I should lighten this up since I want you to feel my optimism
that maybe I should soften up because I want to feel my optimism
because I do not want to think of you as hope
but of you as you
the last time I had to do away with symbols
but only after the fact
and it was too late
and now I know something about it
about how to be
and I change my mind every 6 weeks
and everyone I love has to hear about it
and the hope, which you are not a symbol of any longer,
is that you would like to hear about it.
Anyway I think rejection is the best thing that can happen to you that is actually interesting. I also think the words “actually” and “interesting” are terrible words and that I must use them. I also think I’m wrong about this. About rejection. Probably love is the best thing that can happen to you and it is actual and it is interesting. But saying that exposes you to that thick air. Writing “love” down twice on the same page in your journal is a curse. It means that you will be disappointed. And I know it doesn’t mean this. I know that nothing inherently means anything. That I give it meaning. And that I am obsessed with this, the bestowal of meaning. That I usually take it too far, that I tell people what things in their lives mean when I don’t know what I’m talking about. But sometimes people think I’m right so I feel the need to keep it up. And naturally, I get something out of this. And when I think of you, and especially when I say anything about you, the people I love ask me what I’m getting out of it. And to me it is self evident. This is what we do it for. This thing, that I am currently living, it is why I do anything. The great ambition is living, and you are my witness.