Attachment and Separation
I am avoiding writing...am blocking it like a dam that stops the flow of water...sometimes I have too much to say and I feel paralyzed...and I say nothing...or I avoid saying what needs to be said...I procrastinate on Truth...my here and now Truth.
It takes more courage to write from the guts than to engage in analysis...analysis is presented objectively, the I, the you is not involved...
Writing from the guts on the other hand is like digging a thorny wet, damp earth with bare hands...
There lies all the difference.
Been thinking about attachment and loss for the past days...I've lost several people who are very dear to my heart, young and not so young...some were part of me and others less so...yet each time it felt as if my heart was ripped apart...and a piece of me gone with them and a piece of them stayed on with me...
Maybe we are made of others...and we don't like to admit it to ourselves, but when loss of the other hits you, then you realize how deeply interconnected you've always been...
Maybe we are our mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, grandparents, brothers, sisters, lovers, husbands, wives...and we know it not...but only realize it when that mother, father, daughter, son, grandparent, husband, wife, sister, brother is gone...
Of course if we dare not get attached, we protect ourselves from loss...the more you love, the more you grieve...
Maybe after all, love is nothing but attachment...and maybe after all, all love is a form of dependency...yes I think that is it...Love is a dependent attachment, and all the rest, all the other stuff said about love is nothing but illusory rationalizations for emotional independence, autonomy, individuation...
I suppose we live in a culture that demands we must be independent...we must not get attached...hence we grieve our loss behind closed doors and swallow our tears with our anti depressants...
After all we are survivors of the fittest, the strong race, the productive ones, strong willed, knowing what we want, what we don't want, aware of our choices, mature adults, so we are told...adults don't get attached...they get stoic with time...they become philosophers and thinkers instead.
Bawling your eyes out in public, tearing your clothes, pulling your hair out from grief is not acceptable...wailing, throwing earth on yourself, in an effort to join that dust that has taken up, swallowed your loved one is not acceptable...you need to remain calm, together, in one piece...unless you want to be the object of scrutiny for Western anthropologists who find your case "culturally interesting".
Crying out to heaven, to God, and cursing the day is not acceptable...your rage must be turned inwards, silently gnawing at you...eating you up like the worms that are devouring the body of your loved one...
So you go to visit cemeteries and hug the cold marble instead...imagining it to be the hands of your child, the shoulders of your parent, the arms of your lover...you hug cold marble...and clean the place around it, placing a few flowers...with Rest in Peace...murmured on your cold lips, when you know there is no peace...with that kind of separation, with that kind of loss.
They tell you to accept and move on...but they don't tell where to move on to, how to accept and your are left to struggle alone with "Destiny"...with "Fate", with "Life"...Move on...you've got to move on...so you move on, blocking that water flow with a dam...
So you sit after midnight, with your random thoughts...seated next to you, thoughts of them, hoping the thoughts will turn into ghosts and will talk back to you, with the familiar voice that you miss so much.
