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I would say so many of the same things. I'm really lonely. I always am, I always have been. So often I feel the huge gap between what happens inside of me and how I can communicate it to others, what they get from it. Having a more intimate partner than I ever thought I'd have has shown me just how close we can get to people, and just how far away we'll always be. To feel lonely around others is one of my least favorite feelings, and I feel it all the time, sometimes just a tiny prick of it, a miniscule atom of it somewhere below the surface but one I can feel nevertheless, some sort of princess-and-the-pea attunement to the chasm between what I'm trying to express and what's being understood. That's what loneliness is to me: pouring it all out and having the vessel say I'm not sure this fits here.
I feel it with myself all the time. I've spent 36 years not really knowing who I am and running out of things to try to get closer to the idea. I change all the time, and I wonder if that's the problem; I try not to change all the time, and I wonder if that's the problem. I wonder if it'll ever change, I said to M last night, in tears, after yet another difficult conversation about making creative work together. You can't wonder that, he said. But I do. I wonder about everything. How to stop oneself from wondering? I feel like it's all I actually know how to do. This wonderment brings me a lot of joy and delight, and it also brings me handmade pits of despair that no one else can seem to help me out of. I keep digging them myself.
M wants to expand, accumulate, amass, construct. His favorite way to learn is by totally detouring into deep dives that overtake everything else, coming out on the other side with a flat but viscous understanding of the thing that he spreads wide across a griddle and cooks into something he can move on from. I know now that I learn better by doing, but I have to do it so slowly. I want to focus, want to hyperfixate, want to prove to myself that I can show up for something and build on it, not flit to the next thing that seems more interesting to me, not jump to whatever the next fantasy narrative is that I get into my head will save me from being myself.
It's why I'm hung up on art right now. It's what I've spent most of my life learning about, engaging with, creating. I know art is important to me, but I'm starting to feel like making it isn't. I'm not sure I can make it, not in a way that lets me be healthy, not in a way that doesn't always keep me on the precipice of cutting myself off at the knees. Is something meant for you if you have to carve yourself away to do it? Is it this much of an uphill battle for everyone? If I'm "supposed" to do it, why do I feel like I can't? Why do I wonder if I want to? I don't want to be an artist. I want to enjoy my life. I know art will always, always be a part of it—but what if I removed the pressure to make it? What if I just...stopped trying? "If you really want to see why you do things, then don't do them and see what happens." (Michael Singer)
I'm always seasick inside, at some level. By my ship is steady, my life is good, I love so much about it and am so grateful for so much of it all the time. Life has always seemed difficult to me. I'm not suicidal, but I've always felt like existence was a pretty big burden that I did not actively choose to take on. I got put here. I don't want to forcibly leave, but it sure seems hard a lot of the time. I don't think I'll ever stop feeling like that. I think manifesting is bullshit, but then I get worried: if that shit is real, I am manifesting hardness all the time, just by thinking my default thoughts. How many times can you say out loud that life is so hard before it turns out it's you who keeps making it that way, even just by speaking it aloud?
Yet I can't stop myself from continuing to say it. I can't stop myself from deconstructing, from picking things apart, from finding all the problems. That's what my brain feels built for, a lot of the time. The healthier I get, the more I feel this to be absolutely true, that my brain is wired to tear things apart in a way that not everyone else's is. Does it have to be harmful, negative? Isn't there value in pulling things apart to find all the things that aren't working? Isn't there value in wondering the things that others won't let themselves?
I want to be able to say everything out loud. I want to be able to say life is difficult and yet know it is also wonderful. I want to be able to think about the worst things that could happen, that will happen, and still lean into them. I feel like vulnerability, honesty, truthfulness, complexity, these are the things that help me make sense of existence, usually by unraveling any semblance of sense. I'm trying to bare myself to the world. When I do, I can feel myself getting stronger.
[You can read Amy’s full original post here on her incredible Substack.]