being (and that's all)
a lot of my energy in the past several months, years, even – has been devoted to making myself keep living, despite, despite, despite.
despite the fact that i feel like i'm not built for it. i said to my counsellor once, "why is everything so fucking hard?"
despite the fact that i've spent years barely doing it and now feel like i have to hustle twice as hard to be where i should've been years ago.
despite the fact that i feel like i'm not wanted. i'm stubbornly uncompromising in who i am – i may keep it close to my chest, to protect it, but i can't let it go. even the smallest comments – positive or negative or neither – make me hyperconscious of how i'm perceived, a loss of control that makes me want to retreat into myself even more.
despite the fact that the world is cruel, and unforgiving, and unkind, and full of coldness, and emptiness, and severance, moreso than it is gentle, and logical, and just.
the feedback i often get (on my writing, on my arguments, on myself) is that i'm too uncertain. i'm hedging, i'm positioning myself on the defensive. i'm justifying something before it's asked for, too ready to riposte an arms-open embrace. it's hard for me to live without justification, without knowing that i deserve it.
i've been thinking about this poem by mary oliver –
you do not have to be good.
you do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
you only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
tell me about despair, yours, and i will tell you mine.
meanwhile the world goes on.
meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
sometimes just being is the hardest part.