Has basically been doing this for as long as I can remember. Picking up and moving to a city where no one knows my name and I can leave as soon as people commit it to memory. Not leaving a permanent mark anywhere but doing my best to remember every single thing about every single place I see. It’s specifically been New Orleans for years. Being around so many interesting people swirled up in their own lives, the daily drama, the heart- it was like an introverted moth to the voyeuristic flame.
Although now I’m seeing a few critical flaws in this plan.
Coping with feeling unimportant by making myself unimportant is a little stupid. I cry and complain and lament about not forming any real attachments (outside of my incredibly small circle), but as soon as I do form one I bolt. Intentionally. In the most not cute way possible. I spoke with a new therapist this morning who basically said what I was doing wasn’t harmful as long as I wasn’t, and I quote, “leaving a trail of broken hearts in [my] wake”.
Oh.
Well.
That was a little rude ma’am.
But she’s not wrong. It is okay to build out a fantasy in my head then try to enact it. It’s not okay to treat people, real actual human beings with their own thoughts and feelings, like they are an accessory of that fantasy. I’m in the habit of creating a perfect image in my head. Generally combines a place, a sound, a temperature, and a feeling. And unfortunately the only way I know how to fabricate a feeling is by pulling a person into it with me. A person who may or may not have feelings of their own and may or may not dislike being pulled into my manipulative bullshit only for me to disappear when the new whim strikes me. Okay yeah they definitely have feelings of their own and definitely don’t like being pulled into my fantasy.
So you can see where my thinking is flawed.
Where I’m at right now is trying to change the expectations I put on a goal or a dream. I am in New Orleans. I play my records in the morning, and I dance to Lizzo at night. I walk around in the afternoons when it’s not raining, and when it is I drink tea and pet the cat. I can’t control the temperature or the feeling. I can’t control the people who are in it with me. I might think I can, but I can’t, and even if I could, it doesn’t mean I should.
My favorite author said “you never had control, all you had was anxiety”.
Maybe by casting these strangers as facilitators of a feeling in my head and never giving them the chance to move to their own tune, I kept myself safe. Maybe I’m a total effing monster. Most likely it’s somewhere in between.
But I guess that’s not really something I know how to unpack just yet, so for now I’m here. Living out my actual daydream, and getting more and more confused about what to do inside of it with every passing day.
Ash tells a story 