viragette

Earlier this week I got confused. Really confused. I lost myself for a moment there, and I seemed to *need* someone else to tell me what was going on. And this felt weird, because I know better. I know that no one owes me an explanation. Like no one can “make” me feel - anything. And I don’t *need* the people I love to do anything but just whatever they’re doing. Because - like - I love them - and I love what they do. And want them to keep doing what they love. ‘Cus I love them.

But I still didn’t understand. I still didn’t know what to think. I didn’t have the answer. And I felt for a moment there that my head would explode trying to contain my confusion.

And then - it was so simple. I stopped thinking. I stopped trying to solve the puzzle. And I just realized that although the solution to the puzzle - or maybe more accurately the mystery - does matter to me, it doesn’t define me. I didn’t need to understand to be kind, strong, intelligent. Affectionate. To be safe. To be me. The sane version.

And I have never, in my life, solved a bigger puzzle than I did in that moment. I have felt weird - but never weird like this. Allow me a bit of hubris here, but I just cracked THE mystery of my life this week - and I have barely bothered to think about it because I’ve been busy just staring out the window at Lake Michigan. It is really pretty. Really.

I’ve written here before about my high school fascination with Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night. I remember reading this particular passage on the bus, on my impatient way to visit the first boy I ever loved. A boy I loved so much that I could barely breath, whose memory is inextricably linked to almost blinding sunlight. No doubt my addled and terrified state magnified the tangible nature of Fitzgerald’s sentiment. I remember looking up from the book and staring into the slanting sunlight feeling as if I was grasping at the Truth passing me by. That it had touched me for a moment, I had felt the brush of it and for a second so brief that I couldn’t quite make out it’s shape, the Truth had shocked through me. Fitzgerald was describing how he lived in constant fear that some thought in his wife’s head would send her teetering off the brink into insanity. Thus, he was always there, poised to catch her should she stumble. The idea captivated me. So recently driven insane by pitiless first love, it seemed real and possible.

It still seems real and true. As tangible and mysterious as the physical events in my head that make me believe I have a heart. That’s what happened to me this week. I thought the magic thought, and suddenly, I was falling over the edge into - paradise. Maybe not paradise. But it might as well be. I’m in a garden of delicious ignorance.