On being friends

I've never been that good at being friends. Growing up, I always felt wrong and strange and out of place. I envied loners and their seeming ability to detach and self-sustain. I lack any such ability. I'm consistently over-attached to everything, people, places, things and even ideas and perceptions. I am the opposite of self-sustaining: I am self-consuming. My inner voice tells me to starve myself physically so that my being will feed on itself - the only thing that is leftover. On the other hand, I know that the consumption of my spirit will bring about only more of me, perhaps in a more concentrated form. I become obsessed with transformation: ANY transformation be it physical, immaterial or imagined. I have a need to constantly change. I used to think that I was just using a trial and error method to perfect myself. Now I think the need to perfect is really a need to transform and, ultimately through this process, nourish myself with myself. Living with this vortex inside my heart makes it difficult to share myself with other people. The vacuum inside sucks everything in, but doesn't keep it all. The rejected parts and pieces of my consciousness swirl around in my head so quickly and quietly; the light of my true nature is obscured, like the stars are obscured on a cloudy night. The map of my internal sky is lit brightly, but I am confused by it, because it looks so different to me from moment to moment.

This same cloud covers me when I am trying to make friends and build relationships. I desperately crave authenticity, but because I am unable to decipher my true feelings, I also deeply fear the unknown inside. The desire to know my personal truth makes me seek out people who resemble the image of myself that I cannot see and the fear of that same truth makes me avoid openness with those people. Because my own mirror is smoky, I look for reflections of myself in others and their perceptions of me. This makes me a dutiful, caring and affectionate companion; ultimately, though, when I fail to find what I am looking for, the relationship simply fades away or escalates into conflict. Once the satisfaction of creation wanes, the need for destruction sets in.

None of this is to say that I intend to hurt people. I don't even believe I really intend to hurt myself. This cycle of creation and destruction seems to be inevitable for me. Even as I begin to understand myself and why I may never have true self-knowledge, my past experiences and behaviors make it difficult for me to trust myself in relationships. I am protecting myself from disappointment, but part of me doesn't feel qualified to be in a relationship. The emptiness inside me cannot be filled, but also cannot be stopped. I WILL hurt the people I love, no matter how hard I try.

Even as I write this, I feel that it isn't true, or isn't the whole truth. I can see that I am rationalizing to an extent. I see that I may have imagined this emptiness to explain away the hurt and disappointment the people in my life have caused me. Even that fact, though, proves that it's all true: no matter what I do, it's never enough. Even if I accept that other people are also responsible for my pain, it brings me no relief, just the desire to try again. The cycle of creation and consumption continues. I am a second-rate Shiva. I cease to create because I fear that my own creations will consume me in the end or I will consume them and have even more power to create and destroy.

I am trying now, to create without fear, or rather to embrace my fears as part of the creation process. If I am able to truly connect with another person, perhaps I will be able to connect with my own self. Sharing consciousness may lead me to an acceptance of myself. I don't know how, but I feel compelled to try. And so the cycle will continue on: creation, consumption and ultimately destruction. Maybe this time I'll be able to skip the doubt and anger and just accept the process for what it is: necessary.