Week: Who the fuck cares at this point?

If you never stop clutching, you can never let go. If you never let go, they can never abandon you. If you never stop clutching… your fingers will atrophy on one side, while anabolizing the other, your muscles hyper-developed/withered, turning your hand, the one you so wanted to be open and loving, has twisted into some misshapen claw, rigid in its clumsiness, sharp and unyielding.

It is sunny out. That perhaps goes without saying, and not because the saying is obviated by some universal truth, but rather because we often leave out the most salient details, because as we evoke a scene from within it, the warmth on your skin, the palid blue sky, wires crossing looking out across the alley, skimming the tops of mid century ranch houses, the air chopped in rhythmic patterns by the blades of an angry helicopter… and we absorb it, without any sort of awareness. You think that might be an indifference of amniotic proportions, that is to say, we don’t mean to miss the most important details, but we are simply slipping from this womb-like trance, with black letters marching across the white screen, into a warm bath, and we never even notice our own crossing-over.

The heat that promises to unleash on this city of the sun, is held at bay, for now, its pounding fists held back by wispy arms of wind, gently tugging at its sleeves. The sun is spilling a diffuse light, just past its zenith, and the helicopter swims back through the sky. You think, “they must be doing a man-hunt.” Then you think, “the poor bastard. I bet he didn’t deserve what he’s gonna get. Poor brown or black man… poor motherfucker” and you look back over at the alley. The dog lazily scratches the sand. He is enjoying this sun. So are you. You re-read. You think, “yes, I agree how unfair the gendered the language of criminality is: he is always the perpetrator of violence, and she is always the victim. And they are always people of color... How cliché,” you think, “and yet…” There are too many sounds, chirping at varying intervals, the grind of rubber tires on freshly laid asphalt (emitting that smell of hot, wet summers back east, where trees hung pregnant with photosynthesis, and embraced your childhood wonder).

Just last week you were in another hemisphere, a country you had never been to, but whose cuisine you had long enjoyed, and whose countrymen have been your artistic family, and you wonder if perhaps you dreamed it all. If this perfect parenthesis from your life, 4 days in an ancient, sacred valley –you notice the pain of hunching over your laptop that perches on your outstretched knees and the sound of the train whistle in the distance. The helicopter circles back out of earshot, and the swoosh of tires remains—could make you see the version of the truth that you MUST accept in order to move forward in your life, would you try to hold onto that evanescing, fleeting key to your happiness? Or would you just. Let. Go?

Emails pop onto your screen and you distractedly click at them, swatting away the peskiness of words about things about which you have no desire to elaborate. You sigh, maybe metaphorically, no, no, you actually also physically sigh. And feel a creeping sadness, that is almost comforting, like an old, worn blanket that weighs your chest down as your eyes close.

But you are conditioned, aren’t you, your claw-like grip more than a habit, a gnarl-jointed, emotionally crippled deformity. So you don’t let go. Can’t let go, your rigid, painful, grasping, aching clutch cannot save you.  You think that by holding on, you are helping them stay afloat, when it is really the opposite: at best you are only joining them in a downward spiraling black hole, at worst, pulling them down faster with your excess weight.

Your daughter comes out and sees your stricken face. “What’ wrong?” she asks, “it helps to name what hurts you and let it out.” You cry. That is, you were already letting the tears roll down your unkempt face, but now you start to cry in that way in which your chest heaves just a little, like a hiccup, when it is still cute and doll-like, rather than some gape-mawed, choking nausea made sound. It could go downhill from here. You can’t say what hurts. You make a psychic squeeze inward as if there were some emotional kegels you can do to strengthen your permeable barriers, to make them only semi-permeable, to shrink the pores through which your pain leeches, even when you think it doesn’t. She leaves, like she came, a beautiful hurricane. You think about how much you love her, and how much you fuck her up every day because of your worry, and your hope, and your unrelenting pressure on yourself and thus, her. You think that you don’t deserve the unconditional love that she gives you and you think, “is this my hurt? Maybe some of it. But there is more, and it has a material shape and name.” You are tired, you must acknowledge that much. The pain in your back is a low-grade warmth, the helicopter makes another one of its kaleidoscopic rounds, and the dog has come to pant on the bench, next to you. He loves you too, you think. Stupid animal.

An airplane tears west across your sky. You have gotten nowhere with yourself. You cannot name your pain because you, too, are a withholder. Maybe he is always a withholder of love, but you… you are a withholder of truth. Which is worse. Of course, you would justify to yourself that you protect your core so much because you have empirical evidence to substantiate your claim that you will be guaranteed pain in 100% of the experiments (you glare down the flashing neon: “sample-size bias” that bleats out across the darkened screen of your psyche). But your justifications are bullshit. You know it, they know it. It doesn’t fucking matter anyway. You still can’t solve the problem of your claw-like grasp, your goddamn terror of abandonment, that you, yourself attempt to stun, detonating little bombs of aggression, hoping to blow your own fucking hand to kingdom come if it will just let you stop clinging to a sinking ship. Every.Fucking.Time.

Name your pain? Break your hand? Break the ice. Just…Let…Go.

After all, you've always been a strong swimmer.