ihopeyouuanswer

people these days love to talk about “limerence” (like they talk about attachment styles) to explain away the meaning of passionate feelings. “you’re not in love, you’re just limerent – or insecure.” that can serve a purpose. it’s horrible to see people carried along by feelings that they do not enrich with thought, imagination and experience, eventually burning those feelings out and leaving only a hole where once there was a great sense of meaning. it frustrates me endlessly to see people so incapable of making something of their passions by putting them in places that can expand their lifespan, transform their substance. but do other people know what i mean by this? or have we really given up on the idea of passionate love, especially one that is enduring? as just as the critique of the culture of romanticism may be, i fear that we are too existentially and emotionally lazy to learn the right lesson from the discovery that many people can’t keep a passion alive. it is not that such a thing is impossible, or that it does not ebb and flow, but that it requires an attention and activity, the ability to recognise absence and ambiguity, not to close the connection over with the consolations of the certainty of the other person’s presence, the meaning of their conversation. the etymology of ‘passion’ is no mistake: suffering is part of it. an ego must shatter in order to keep love alive, for pleasure not to just mean numbing oneself out of life and the potential for transcendence offered by its alterity. perhaps most people cannot do this in general, under whatever social conditions, but i fear that such possibilities are especially under threat in a culture that increasingly sees pleasure only in the most superficial of sources. a pleasure that is mixed with pain, such as writing an essay for example, is considered merely a means to an end, such as a degree or document that can transfer knowledge, not in itself a powerful source of meaning. our vapid utilitiarianism makes us dumb to what is present and how much we could really love and be transformed. last night in a dream someone said, 'this pain is my manna.' i thought it was somewhat cringe at the time, but having written this post, i now find it poetic, and i agree that miracles come from embracing emotions that do not merely console but stretch the soul. that is what i want, but will there be others to want it with me? all alone i fear that i won't be able to do it.

i often replay my dead friends' voices in my head before falling asleep to make sure i'll never forget them

yesterday i wrote a boring sex scene because my heart wasn't in it (8 hours of yawns and groans, literally) but i needed it to advance the plot so i thought i'd write it intimacy coordinator style and fix it later and at the end of it i realized i had developed a bartholin cyst out of the blue. like. my body is literally telling me no more bad "i'll fix it later" sex, not even fictional! so in the end i made them piss on each other very tenderly