Passion, Trust, Safety, and Faith
I have always found myself a creature of great passion. This statement normally would lead one to believe that, as I’m male, I intend to imply I either like sex a great deal or I sleep around or I am promiscuous with my heart. I suppose I am with the last one, but only in a paternal or platonic way and not in the most intimate of ways. My passion tends to instead refer to a great depth of feeling that I cannot shake, that seems to flow through me, which I feel in my fingers and I feel as either a pressure or a great hole where my heart is. I can get violently energetic when I discuss things, fed endlessly by some unknown wellspring of feeling, and it tends to upset most people because this passion seems so great that one would think its manifestation is an indication of a certain narrow-minded vehemence. As if I’m enraged or energized because of outrage, a zealot-like fervor, or perhaps that I’m simply offended by the existence of an idea counter-point to my own. It’s not the case. Ironically, my passion, while genuine, drives me to appear to have a level of conviction to ideas that I may, in truth, not possess.
That is to say that while I’m passionate and believe deeply in many things, not everything I’m passionate about I believe in deeply. It’s as if I have no compass, no meter to determine what level of passion I should display, it’s either a great deal, or next to none. The choice is generally a bit more arbitrary than even I’d like to admit. Sometimes I can and have sounded downright placid at the thought of something I can’t handle in the slightest. There are times where I can attribute this to a certain fatalism, or a certain morbid acceptance that bad things will happen to me, but sometimes it just happens that the passion got turned off and is waiting the switch.
Where is this going? I guess it’s going to the fact that my passion I think gets me into as much trouble as it gets me admiration. People often compliment me on it and I have no intention of changing my nature, since I believe my depth of passion is a good thing. But it seems semi-alien in this world and my lack of control over it doesn’t necessarily help situations. I’m far more vehement about things than I probably should be. It has led more than one person to assert I’ll have a heart attack at a young age or to tell me to calm down, when in fact, I feel I’m perfectly calm, that my inner workings are not being stirred into turmoil or tumult in the slightest. I just happen to be yelling and gesticulating like a madman at the same time. It can be humorous.
The way my passion gets me in trouble most, though, is that it drives me to connect to people on a very deep level whether they ask for that connection or not. And it is unfair in certain senses. They do not ask to be thought so well of, the thought stemming from a deep love for them as a human being and a recognition of their good traits always over their flaws. It is not that I never complain about these people, I often do in private. It is a habit cultivated by my parents although the maliciousness with which they use it is far more prevalent…I don’t feel I’m malicious, I just tend to recognize that people arent going to just change or even accept my opinions of them unless they want to, and most don’t. That is their perogative.
I feel I’m digressing a lot here. To embrace brevity, my point is this: I have always been able to dig deep into the wells of passion. But I have found myself digging deeper, by accident, discovering levels yet untapped. They are levels only reached for Kristen. I love her so much.
Recently, we had a horrible fight. It seems like a lot longer ago than it was. Perhaps it’s because I felt she has already started committing to surrender back around the turn of the New Year. I cannot tell you why I felt this certainty, but I suddenly felt a more prominent and frequent level of coldness and distance. The actual fight that ended it, however, was far more recent. Well, the good (no great) news is that it was only ended for a brief moment…a few days truly and a week or so technically. Shortly after repairing some of the damage she asked me if I cried and I said no. I did not say that I wanted to, but I couldn’t. The amalgam of reasons is probably even beyond my full grasp, but the most basic and significant being that I had felt the coldness already cutting between us, I tend to accept terrible things when they happen to me as something generally bound to happen, and the most significant…I just didn’t know how to react. With Stephanie, with Kate, with anyone before there was on a certain level a thought that there was something else out there that I would be able to invest my time in…a sort of replacement for what I had. Even when I was fully committed to them, the logical nature of myself seemed to recognize that I had felt these feelings before and, given the unfortunate opportunity, I would feel them again. But I couldn’t say the same for Kristen.
Oh, Kristen and I aggravate each other at times. Neither of us is truly perfect in each other’s eyes…but yet….we are. She is to me at least. And honestly, I cannot recognize this feeling I have for her as close to the feelings I’ve felt before. It seems much stronger, more intimate, more important. And when she deprived me of it. I didn’t know how to respond. She wasn’t happy, so I felt some level of happiness for her that she was free of the burden I was being. But I was miserable. I was confused as to what brought it upon us and at the same time, part of me recognized certain aspects of our natures that were contrary to each other that would only build to confrontation unless we found a way of accepting one another.
We have since repaired our relationship and I feel we are coming together more and more. We are closer than before, which is exciting and wonderful. But even that brief break-up seems to have left some unfortunately durable and perhaps long-lasting fears and doubts. In truth, the doubts were being cultivated for far longer than the brief time we were apart…but to leave the details to my private life (something which I’m not accustomed to), basically my trust and my confidence has been shaken. The actual break-up was so strong and so sudden that it shocked me, even though I had expected something to happen. And certain results of it, having begun long before it but still continuing, I think will make the path back to a safe place more arduous than it has to be, and yet I feel that it is the necessary route. I feel that these cultivated things are important and I’m perhaps morosely coming to accept their presence, no matter my disposition towards them. I apologize for the vagueries.
I think accepting these things despite my fears is a good step towards regathering my faith. And that, truly, is one of the most important things about a relationship, at least to me. Love, a singular love, the kind of love that one person gives to one other person alone, is to me the greatest fortress to protect faith. It
is, without doubt, also the most dangerous, for when it is betrayed so much gets crushed to dust and scattered to the wind….but oh what a feeling to believe so truly in someone and to have it fulfilled. I hope I do not let her down in this regard and I hope that I can build my own back-up now to a place where I can feel the way I always have felt about humanity.
I will always survive. That is my nature. But I would like to really live. I would like to be able to have someone’s heart to feel safe in. I think it does not make a man any less a man to want this. I do not believe that my optimism is a weakness. It is so fragile a thing, how can anyone who cradles it and attempts to protect it be looked at as a coward? No one is accusing me of such things. It is just simply a point I’m making.
I think my New Year came a month and a half late.