This sort of thing leaves a hole in you. That hole may be numb. But numbness has a feeling texture to it, and within it is a creepy horror of sorts. How DO we lose one another? Do you think my story is that unusual?
Fear hovers over the landscape. There are many fears. There is the fear of nuclear annihilation, of course, fear of crime and losing your job. Fear of illness, perhaps.
But mostly I think there is this fear that we are all alone, that we are all destined to spend our lives pretending to be somebody we aren’t, and that all of our screams need to be silent and never seen.
Perhaps horror movies represent the inner landscape of many, perhaps of many who do not even realize what is wrong. They feel, something, but they have no word for it, and to the extent it is an absence–an absence of true love, of true intimacy, of true belonging–it will always be hard to put a name to it.
I myself remember fighting with my father, who insisted he gave me everything I needed, and when I protested–I will never forget his face or the word he chose–he said, is it something, more esoteric?
What I needed was love and recognition. What I needed was a father who was emotionally alive. But even I couldn’t put words to it back then. Love was simply not a word that was used in our home. They never told me they loved me, and it didn’t occur to me to wonder why. It just wasn’t something I ever thought about. Love was not on my radar as something to worry about or pursue.
And so I became intellectual, as I am here. Over time, I have grown, but I still have severe developmental deficiencies. It can be hard being me.
And I am not so foolish as to think there are not millions like me. We are the potheads, the drunks, the heroin addicts, the techies (addicted to work and abstraction). We are all the people who feel alone wherever they go.
I feel terror every day, sometimes, still, to the point of shaking. At night, always, if I don’t go to bed drunk. But I am determined to make a difference in this world. I continue to take steps to pursue my vision. None of this alienation is necessary. If our best minds had made it their task to reestablish Gemeinschaft rather than mine alienation for political gain, we would live in a different world. But our best minds came up with Nazism and Communism, which are simultaneously totalizing and atomizing.
There is a better way. There is a better way. I am well on my way to mapping it out fully.