letters
A Berlin-based writer engages in the study of belonging and in-between places after years spent faraway from 'home'. Also, rats.
|
You know what really doesn’t suck? Not having depression.
It just makes everything so much easier, it makes me feel much more like I’m the person I actually want to be, even though that person has to do an awful lot of things, involving an awful lot of people all at once and is like a spinning fairy of joy who is in desperate need of a personal assistant while being old enough to acknowledge that that’s not really a thing that can be outsourced because personal responsibility about such things is the only thing that saves us from being an annoyance to everyone. I’m not chalking everything about my newfound, happy exuberance to the microdosing, though it’s obviously played a part in what’s been feeling like a transformative stretch of time in which I’ve unflinchingly taken more leaps of faith than I have for ages. The adventure began as an experiment in which I would act according to one question: What would Sarah be like if the fear of rejection played no part in any of her decision making? And that fear of rejection cuts both ways: fear of rejecting, and fear of being rejected. I can’t decide which is more painful, if I’m honest, although what is clear is that any immersion into the dating world involves experiencing both with a regularity that makes me think about those beautiful lines in Paul Simon’s Graceland: There is a girl in New York City Who calls herself the human trampoline And sometimes when I'm falling, flying Or tumbling in turmoil I say "Whoa, so this is what she means" She means we're bouncing into Graceland Living fearlessly, what does that mean? Living according to the rule that it’s OK that the things you want you grasp for even if you might not get them, and that the people that want things from you, you might not be able to or want to give them and all of that’s OK, too. The rejecter, and the rejected. Roles that show up in all areas of life when you’re actually moving through it with an emotionality that has turned techicolour after a long stretch of monochrome. Most recently, I’ve found myself in the unfortunate role of rejecter in a short lived friendship in which I have, as I understand it, failed the ‘emotional availability’ test. ‘I just want to get close to you’ were words from one voice note I was sent, along with many others detailing my many omissions in friendship acts, the clincher being that I was too engrossed with a story I was working on that had taken longer than expected (which is usually the case with stories I actually care about), to be able to accompany them to a film about a cocaine-addled freak bear on a murder spree, which admittedly does sounds awesome. If I am honest, if I had graded myself on how I had gone about performing my role in the friendship, I thought I was doing quite well. I sent encouraging messages in response to some voice notes, and comforting messages in response to others. I didn’t send voice notes of my own. I don’t really have this reflex to treat whatsapp conversations like ongoing podcasts, and, well, I like my human contact like I like my journalism: succinct. But then I also showed patience when boundaries were overstepped, took none of the projections or misunderstandings personally, tried my best to make myself understood to someone who, admittedly, found me a bit different and ‘exotic’ (weird wording to be honest, but again, I have to make space for the fact that a lot of people just aren’t as finicky about words as I am and that it’s not fair of me to use this sensibility to catch others out). So I did all of that. But what I didn’t do was match this person in the frequency of attention they wanted to give me. After some hours of guilt I asked the friend in question to make peace with an asymmetry in needs from one another, asking that our friendship deescalate to something more manageable to me, at which point I lost a friend. I tested a theory I was turning around in my head that I might be a bad, or unavailable friend somehow and that many people resented me for not reaching out more to chat about mundane things with them: I tried to spark a quick conversation with a friend I love dearly, but only see and contact intermittently. I was met with a “I’m tired, but looking forward to seeing you soon” which I understand is hoe code for ‘love you but piss off’. Well that was a relief. Does this mean both of us are unavailable, closed off or avoidant or whatever word we want to use to describe our dissatisfaction with someone who is not giving us the attention we feel entitled to? Or does it just mean we’re just happily being busy with things that really interest and matter to us? I keep meeting people that inspire me at the moment, keep finding out things that inspire me, keep thinking up things that I want to do that I’m actually excited about doing, projects and people that have motion to them. I wish there was room for everyone on this journey, but there just isn’t. And likewise, some people’s adventures can’t involve me either, and that’s OK.
0 Comments
Spring has sprung, as they say. As it did last year, with a lot of palpable enthusiasm and joie-de-vivre from everyone, myself included.
I’ve been on a bit of a trip for the last couple of weeks, to be honest, and a pretty enjoyable one at that. Microdosing has helped, although dosage management is still a work in progress, as is finding my centre when everything gets too colourful and life starts to spin. The nicest thing it does is take the edge of the kind of emotional triggers that I would normally have an outsized response to, which is great because it makes me feel like there’s more coherence between what is actually happening to me in the present, and how said things are making me feel. Best of all, it helps me embrace the absurdity of human behaviour -- myself and everyone around me, too. “I hope what you are doing now sucks. Like you just found out you had overdue taxes, or wound up in a cult. And not a good cult, a crappy, bougie, hemp-smelling one,” was a text message I sent to someone who had ghosted me after approaching me on a night out with all the usual, probably drug-fueled effusions that disappeared as quickly in the light of day (ok, a couple of days) as they had materialised in an evening of hedonism. I liked my silly takedown because it matched the circumstance: I didn’t wish anything heinous on this person, I just wanted them to feel as irritated and nonplussed as they had made me feel, releasing them from my orbit of frustration as efficiently as they had wormed their way into my consciousness. Most importantly, I didn’t really internalise it. The thing with being a desirable object under such circumstances is that the attraction is so skin deep, you are so thoroughly fungible that you have to make peace with that fact. And likewise, the person you are engaging with is not really a fully formed person yet, but, if things are going well, probably a mirage of all the things you’d hope them to be that reality will slowly (or extremely quickly) chip away at until you’re left with something far more cringy and real. Did I mention that I went on a couple of dates with someone who turned out to be almost a decade older than they claimed to be? Just, don’t brazenly lie to an investigative journalist. Just don’t do it. No witty takedown sent to that guy, just lots of thoughts on the topic of the false self. Is this what we’re all doing now? We’re so wrapped up in the veneers of ourselves that we present in such jarring and discombobulating forms, that sort of, help us hurtle from one potemkin-village of dopamine kick to another, that we are completely incapable of seeing ourselves or being seen at all? But anyway, I am trying to psychoanalyse people less, especially recreationally. “Stop trying to dissect people, embrace their mystery,” my therapist advises. Because this endless scrutiny takes up a lot of needless bandwidth, and I’m starting to accept that there’s just so much I can’t control, and even if I can figure out why someone behaved in a certain way, it doesn’t really give me as much power or protection over the interaction as I’d like. As they say, the only thing I can control is myself, (and how funny my takedowns are). And anyway, it’s all matter. It’s all stuff for all of us to churn through as we figure out what it is that’s supposed to matter to us, what’s supposed to stick. And as my therapist keeps reminding me, none of this ‘getting out there’ is in pursuit of a 'soul mate', it’s alchemisable exposure therapy, and it’s getting easier and easier. And sometimes, also kind of fun. |
Sarah KaracsA Berlin-based writer engages in the study of belonging and in-between places after years spent faraway from 'home'. Archives
April 2023
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed