deadheading

on my anxious undercurrent & the nature of unconditional love

it feels too hard to write. everything that could be said is overshadowed by what could, instead, be done: watering the plants. washing the dishes. reading more books. sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee in the morning’s humid stillness.

my wife has been gardening. the pea plants are chin-height. the tomatoes are full-leafed. she nursed so many seedlings she had to give some away.

i pull stalk after stalk of new lemon balm from the perimeter of the yard. it smells heady at the slighest touch, too good for me to really care about its sudden, sharp-toothed spread; i wish i grew as recklessly; i wish i were so sweet when wounded.

the peonies have bloomed into heavy pink bowls that sink to the earth and beckon the ants. we staked what we could; the rest sweeps the grass. i deadheaded the first of the roses, learning for the millionth time that brutal lesson—to grow better, you need to first be cut back.

sometimes i think i need to cut myself down to the root. other times i think no, i am starving and thirsty and barely hanging on, this ground is fallow, oversown, and what i really need is to be dug up and replanted somewhere else, in richer soil, nestled close to someone who can keep an eye on me,

instead i force my houseplants from their rootbound homes and witness all the work they’ve been hiding from me. i move them as tenderly as i can from one pot to another and pray.

it’s been months since i wrote my last essay. as usual, i’m scared to do anything i want, even more than i’m scared to do anything i don’t want.

i dread most things. i find joy in most things too. i cross the threshold between unwant and doing every minute i’m alive. everything feels more exhausting when i think about it. hence, the not-writing.

i’ve been in the throes of a new obsession. this time it’s a too-long book series where two people meet, are instantly drawn to each other, and in pursuit of togetherness proceed to fuck everyone else over forever.

there’s something that’s always captivated me about this type of relationship: mutually codependent. devoted beyond reason. people who cannot let each other go no matter the cost.

i think i’m drawn to these relationships because i yearn, deep down, for love without the interruption of boundaries. love that dissolves the Self. love that takes deep root and sends out runners.

some people may dismiss this kind of relationship as “not real love.” but i think it is real and it is love, and it is probably the truest definition of what we call “unconditional love,” which is beautiful in theory and incendiary in real life.

here i will piece together some old tumblr tags and a text i once sent to a friend, the year i began thinking about this topic in earnest:

i want to be loved unconditionally. i want to be loved like a child is loved. i want the kind of love they told me was divine. but outside the realms of parent/child and god/soul, this kind of love is too big to be contained within the bounds of a healthy relationship. in the end, it has to be violent. in the end, something must be sacrificed.

to love someone else boundlessly is to be violent against oneself and vice versa. for two people to each other without boundaries is—perhaps the desire, perhaps the secret and enviable peak, but what then? if i love you so much i would be subsumed into you, and you love me so much you would be subsumed into me, where am i? where are you? where is the relationship we so desperately wanted? at this point the relationship itself no longer exists, obliterated by the shrugging off of our individual selves.

i used to crave this even though i knew better.

but the time has passed. the life where my wife is my mother is another life. simply, she loved me so much then that i remember it now. but in this life, i was raised by someone else, and the child kicking up a tantrum in my body will have to be soothed by me, here, twenty years too late.

the flowers that my wife planted in the fall bided their time. now with the first glance of the sun they’ve sprung up as if the past eight cold and dreary months never even happened. what is it like, to be so sure of yourself, and so patient?