Contact

It’s funny how people are made for connection, for community. How it is built into who we are. Wired into the way we react. A few years ago, I would have argued this as a deaf point, an unnecessary assertion. And now I notice it as the impossible truth.

Truth doesn’t always make things easier. Actually, sometimes it makes it harder. If you admit truth, you have to live by it. And sometimes, sometimes, there is no easy implication. I spend time, too much time, instead trying to convince myself of the opposite, the lie. “I don’t need people. That’s crazy! It’s too hard and too much work anyway. I’ll get used to it! I’ll write more again! I’ll talk to my teddy bears! I’ll become quiet, introspective, good...” Except, always, I fail. It’s hard to accept live a lie when the truth is so much sweeter.

I just spent an hour jumping between three e-mail accounts (kept for different purposes) and my facebook. Desperately looking for an e-mail, a status update, a posted picture...someone to send me a message or write on my wall. Someone to chat with. I was craving contact. Instead, however, I just came up impeccably short. The only contact I made in that hour was the artificial construction of involvement...where I can feel like I play a part in someone else’s life because I can see their facebook page. It was a poor alternative. It left me feeling jealous and empty.

There are friends I haven’t heard from in weeks. I miss them...dearly. But I wonder how many times I have to initiate to be granted a response. I wonder how much I have to reach out before [certain] somebody[s] finally reaches back. The funny thing is, I will probably continue to do so. Not because I’m a glutton for punishment but because I’m fairly certain I was made for connection, for community. It’s built into who I am. Wired into the way I react.

On sharing thoughts and tears...

My blog is little if not public journal space, but because I am fairly convinced no one ever reads it, I’m safe...at least for now. I read an old blog posted by a friend soon after she got an account. She noted the fact she had posted her blog address on facebook...and it was a little intimidating. After all, she had all of these thoughts that could be read...what were the chances anybody would actually read them? I think she debated the introverted extrovert verses the extroverted introvert. Sometimes I feel like that. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t just journal the things people would think me peculiar to know or say out loud the things I want shared. In the end maybe I really do want somebody to know things...maybe in the end, the people to share things with just aren’t around or just don’t care. It’s a fault of the system. So in the end, I blog. It seems like a compromise between the two.

But I didn’t actually get on to blog about blogging. I got on to blog about tears. About how much I hate crying. About how desperately I wish I could. Seems silly doesn’t it? Silly that I can’t cry? After all, I’m a girl. Some unspoken, unwritten, all-understood code states clearly as a chick I should be great at tears. And I suck. April, May, June...into July. I’ve gone nearly 3 ½ months. 3 ½ months without tears. That would be awesome if there wasn’t any good reason to cry...but on the contrary, there have been plenty. Part of me is stuck. It’s like emotional constipation. I won’t say I can’t feel anything. I do. In fact, sometimes it hurts terribly, there’s just no release. No balm.

My eyes almost, almost, started tearing today. From exhaustion or stress I’m not really sure. Perhaps the fact that the dry air was making my contacts sticky alone was enough to cause my eyes to water. Actually, it was more likely the latter than not. In some ways I willed them to come. They didn’t. And if they did, I probably would have felt like a dweeb...because crying makes me feel so vulnerable, so helpless, so small. And there is some artificial strength I glean from pretending I have control over whether or not I cry. But in the end, I find the things I try hardest to control, end up controlling me. So here I am gripped between an inability I didn’t dictate and a desire I cannot fulfill.