I’ve been thinking about poles and meridians to avoid thinking about conflict in terms of oppositional dichotomies, because I was taught that dichotomy was an artifact of colonialism, though if I’m being completely honest I think dyads all bear the same empirical role for me. I have always known to conclude in comparisons between opposites that the relationship is a universality between things. And so equilibrium, or balance, is my attempt to intellectually understand why my heart longs to get along.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my privilege (I have low debt, am socially legible, etc.), but the roteness of this self-reflection today verges on cliche to the point of a put down. I have only to add that the privilege bothers me because the world speaks misery while I embody satisfaction. And therein lies the guilt, and all this circumlocution; avoiding getting to the point because thinking about it feels so embarrassing to admit to. How do I collapse the distance?
Someone is disavowing my leadership, and I worry people will always afford less grace to those whom they resemble. I remind myself that the polar reflection of a disavowal is a commitment, a validation. Some kinds of validation and commitment bring me real personal joy and fulfillment. I offer this validation to others. Other kinds of validation go much farther than joy, and bring me what I can only describe as sexual excitement. So I take that excitement back to the mirror image of its auto-derogatory, antagonistic counterpart. The absence of compassion, the insistence that “the sisterhood of man” come with extreme skepticism and distrust, fear. Where is the excitement there?
Where between my meridians can I hold your breath for you?
It occurred to me last week that I watched November come and go without writing a single love letter for my self-proclaimed “National Love Letter Writing Month.” In the last two years, I insistently wrote one every day, ritualistically, relentlessly. I was obsessed with the notion of a relentlessness, like a historiography of crushes. This season, contrarily, I watched time pass, reflected upon the letters, and felt gagged. I do not attribute the pause to depression but it has the markings of someone who cannot be motivated to follow in the outline of their intentions. I attribute the pause to anticipation, to the certainty that what incubates inside me now is a love so much more profound for waiting. I am moving from ritual to sublimation. An igneous rock forming from light reflecting through the dark.