lemon ruth

it’s been a long time since i’ve wanted to write again.  i guess this means the fog is lifting?  i guess i’m just an open book.  or at least words are some sort of catharsis for me.  what else am i supposed to do with this mess up here but map it out in sentences?  i’ve found little to no reason not to be perfectly honest.  i think this is the beauty of life: the universality of the experiences.  yes, life is quite different for each of us.  but we are also quite specifically the same in ways that all add up to what we can call humanity (thus, i have no secrets.  or at least we all have disturbingly similar secrets).

and this is what makes human connection possible, i suppose.  this makes it possible for me to sit on the couch and have hour-long discussions about life with people i’ve only just met and who have no idea who i am or where i’ve come from on any level.  and this makes it possible for us to find people in the maze of our years that we want nothing more than to hop onboard with, people whose presence in our days becomes as necessary as oxygen or a night’s rest.  yes, i truly believe that this human need is as crucial and basic as our need for food and water.  and the only reason i know this is because when taken away, the heart dies a small bit in the same way that to deny ourselves nourishment would be to cause our bodies to die a small bit (when i say “die” here, i do not mean completely… only to lose normal function to a degree).

we are hopeless creatures when left alone.  reading dostoevsky (specifically “notes from underground”) was a turning point in my philosophy on this issue.  what a terrible fate to be left to wallow in one’s own thoughts.  the soul fades leaving nothing but raw and ignorant emotion.  the beauty of our frail humanity is reduced to animalistic instinct.  and as much as we are instinctual beings, we also are intelligent and capable of so much more than blind impulse.  in a very abstract way, this could be metaphorically described by the domestication of certain wild species.

you see, i believe we learn how to be human by our interaction with other humans.  this begins the day we are born, when we first learn what it is to be touched by another, held by another, sustained by another (and this works in the opposite direction as well.  i’m sure you too have read those heartbreaking stories of orphans who were never held as infants.  what a horrible crime).  and as we grow, we learn about the power of language and expression and communication through further interactions with humanity.  it’s the most fantastic phenomenon.  we can all argue about circumstance creating who we become, but i really think it’s who we’ve been surrounded by since that first day.  we are more like our families than we are willing to admit.

at any rate, i have been thinking a great deal about these ideas.  mostly i’ve been landing on the issue of heartbreak (because it is so damn relevant to my life at any given moment.  and yours too i’m sure.  another terribly universal human dilemma).  as i mentioned above, humanity dictates that we form these connections with one another much like the rumble of a hungry belly causes us to eat.  we crave it, need it, seek it desperately.

and yet love becomes so horribly disfigured amidst our other contrary human qualities.  i, for example, am disgustingly selfish with my time.  i would die for any one of my family members on any given day, and yet, i rarely call.  and i have been known to up and leave on occasion.  leave after years of building relationships and sharing major life experiences and getting so closely intertwined.  you see, we learn from each other (from our first day on) how to need each other…. but not what to do when love is denied or taken away (unexpectedly or not).  sure, we learn to expect it from a young age (heck, just go to any middle school to witness the foundations of this drama.  we learn to expect disappointment too early in life).  but we never know quite what to do once the event occurs.

the old adage “time heals all wounds” is such a cruel lie.  i know this from experience.  i have waited and waited to heal, but i am still just as much of a mess as i was the day my biological father walked out the front door two decades ago.  despite my lack of understanding of the situation at the time (i was quite young), we are perhaps injured the most intensely by these crimes of humanity in our formative years (or at least turned into more fertile ground for the damaging events to come.  and these childhood events teach us to always feel like these new issues are only the same reccuring issue.  a.k.a.  ‘i am not worth sticking around for.  they all leave.  just expect it, lauren.’  ouch).

it’s true that we can heal in small ways, of course.  time does help with this.  so does space.  so does major life change.  so does new human interaction.  and yet the underlying issues remain, dormant at best, waiting to be awoken by even the slightest trigger.

although this seems like the grimmest outlook possible, i assure you there is hope.  you see, i would here argue that despite the horrible pain and destruction caused by our dysfunctional human crimes against one another, the general cycle of life has proven that growth and progress comes out of darkness and devastation.  it’s terrible, i know, and i have no idea why the universe works this way, but it is so deeply ingrained in everything.  the first step to planting a garden is to clear out the old growth and upturn the soil, no?  (as cheesy as that metaphor has become…)  none of these ideas sit well with me.  i hate being so broken in such similar ways (always similar).  a few months ago i found myself at the exact same impass with someone new.  and after he spoke the words, i realized they were true for me as well, which only made the pain more acute i assure you.  we are all capable of love, i suppose, but do not always have the luxury to give and receive it at will.  some figurative soil has yet to be upturned and readied (and perhaps some never will be again).

anyway, i would love for you to disagree with me.  please do.

love, LR