There are many ways indifference can hurt. For instance, I indifferently told someone once, "You know, I don't think I ever loved you". But as I justified, "I love you" was a statement dragged out of me. You know how I get when I'm pressured to do/say these cliche things? You know I can never feel "I love you" when I have never been that close to "I" or "you". So really, it's your fault that things got strung along, and of course, I had to say "I love you" everyday afterward because you just can't say it once and let it be. So really, the culprit is repetition. Of course, I said this in less words with sparse guilt. I also still had an appetite and a bounce in my step afterward. I'm a piece of work, I really am.
But I'm beginning to think that the issue is really the balance between expression and intention which apparently never existed simultaneously with me. I can express love but it does not necessarily have a strong base of loving intention aside from a notion of duty, obligation or otherwise. I can travel two boroughs to see someone for an hour which is an expression that I care, but the act itself, while meaningful for the other party may not necessarily carry any significant meaning for me. In fact, I can proceed about it grumpily, feel like a transportation martyr, or whatever non-loving thing. On the other hand, I can (albeit rarely) love very, very hard and betray these feelings with opposing expressions. In these instances, I am always grieving. Maybe this is why I'm always writing elegies even if they start out as love poems.
Most parents usually bear the weight of the blame for their children's relationship issues. I've recounted my parents' marital issues to others before, always quite sarcastically and humorously though I never get laughs back in response. (Ignorant) People try to rationalize my sexuality as a clear response to my father's infidelity and controlling instincts towards women. My mom would make a good dyke if she put in some effort (joke joke, calm down). Refusing men left and right, she distrusts them. Some days I feel as if she's secretly glad I'm gay. My mom's an interesting individual--interesting to me because I read her two-dimensionally. She has clear objectives and how she goes about them are always either in support or in opposition to them. She has no gray area. Perhaps she's only transparent to me because I've watched her all these years. I understand every piece of her logic and trepidations despite their irrationalities. She has a mechanical outlook of life in which everything can be separated into productive and non-productive piles. Unfortunately for me, none of what I do falls into the productive category. But who can blame her? She only knows how to survive. One summer, a friend of mine passed away. My mother and I were driving a rented car in the Bay area. I'm navigating as she's driving when I get the call from a mutual friend. I cry as most people do upon these news. My mother shoves the map in my face and demands to know whether we make a right or left on Mission. In my mother's eyes, the appraisal of what's productive/unproductive also identifies emotional excesses, grief being one of them. Irony being grief is my subject of expertise.
But you can never call her insensitive. Death is a regular visitor. I can't remember a time when we didn't live under the tagline of what if's--if each parent should pass away, if my guardianship of my brother comes into play, if the material foundations are stable enough for life to continue to move forward after death. I can blame capitalism for this vocabulary of life insurance, bills, credit statements, etc. But at the heart of it, these components become internalized, and I lose sleep over it even if by all rationale, these shouldn't be primary obstructions. And in knowing the stacking responsibilities ahead, I grow to realize a different sort of purpose in life, begin to understand my mother more.
Love for me has ties to duty. Not to be confused with patriotic sentiments. I do what I do not because it is reputable, contractual, a form of shame if I refuse, etc. It is love that is not explicit in expression, because the terminology that we've been socialized around love makes this unfit for expression. It's silent because it comes without expectation for gratitude. It's a series of acts in performance, ritualized, part and parcel to the body. But mostly, there are no demands. It just is.
Here is where expression and intention divide. If expected to express what I don't feel--that's simple. Consumer expressions of love means candy, chocolate, flowers and Hallmark. It is what most people understand and desire. Even bitter little words like "I love you" probably is trademarked by a greeting card company. So if you can mass produce glossy cards with those words on it, how do you expect me to match my intention with expression when I say it? But most importantly, why do you want me to say it so badly?
I want to say it boils down to ownership. It is no coincidence that in every "close" relationship I've had, I've felt suffocated, like half a body. There are other factors of course, but lately I'm beginning to wonder how the idea of dating has evolved from traditional ideas of courtship, and how that has become informally written into societal codes. Is dating not just another way of preparing for your school's annual pageant? A consciously bad performance with highly dramatized symbolic overtures. I feel like the stuttering monotone narrator with the bad mic.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just a jerk. Maybe I need to assimilate to these socialized codes regarding dating and love. Or maybe I can just sit here, and be indifferently indifferent.
But I'm beginning to think that the issue is really the balance between expression and intention which apparently never existed simultaneously with me. I can express love but it does not necessarily have a strong base of loving intention aside from a notion of duty, obligation or otherwise. I can travel two boroughs to see someone for an hour which is an expression that I care, but the act itself, while meaningful for the other party may not necessarily carry any significant meaning for me. In fact, I can proceed about it grumpily, feel like a transportation martyr, or whatever non-loving thing. On the other hand, I can (albeit rarely) love very, very hard and betray these feelings with opposing expressions. In these instances, I am always grieving. Maybe this is why I'm always writing elegies even if they start out as love poems.
Most parents usually bear the weight of the blame for their children's relationship issues. I've recounted my parents' marital issues to others before, always quite sarcastically and humorously though I never get laughs back in response. (Ignorant) People try to rationalize my sexuality as a clear response to my father's infidelity and controlling instincts towards women. My mom would make a good dyke if she put in some effort (joke joke, calm down). Refusing men left and right, she distrusts them. Some days I feel as if she's secretly glad I'm gay. My mom's an interesting individual--interesting to me because I read her two-dimensionally. She has clear objectives and how she goes about them are always either in support or in opposition to them. She has no gray area. Perhaps she's only transparent to me because I've watched her all these years. I understand every piece of her logic and trepidations despite their irrationalities. She has a mechanical outlook of life in which everything can be separated into productive and non-productive piles. Unfortunately for me, none of what I do falls into the productive category. But who can blame her? She only knows how to survive. One summer, a friend of mine passed away. My mother and I were driving a rented car in the Bay area. I'm navigating as she's driving when I get the call from a mutual friend. I cry as most people do upon these news. My mother shoves the map in my face and demands to know whether we make a right or left on Mission. In my mother's eyes, the appraisal of what's productive/unproductive also identifies emotional excesses, grief being one of them. Irony being grief is my subject of expertise.
But you can never call her insensitive. Death is a regular visitor. I can't remember a time when we didn't live under the tagline of what if's--if each parent should pass away, if my guardianship of my brother comes into play, if the material foundations are stable enough for life to continue to move forward after death. I can blame capitalism for this vocabulary of life insurance, bills, credit statements, etc. But at the heart of it, these components become internalized, and I lose sleep over it even if by all rationale, these shouldn't be primary obstructions. And in knowing the stacking responsibilities ahead, I grow to realize a different sort of purpose in life, begin to understand my mother more.
Love for me has ties to duty. Not to be confused with patriotic sentiments. I do what I do not because it is reputable, contractual, a form of shame if I refuse, etc. It is love that is not explicit in expression, because the terminology that we've been socialized around love makes this unfit for expression. It's silent because it comes without expectation for gratitude. It's a series of acts in performance, ritualized, part and parcel to the body. But mostly, there are no demands. It just is.
Here is where expression and intention divide. If expected to express what I don't feel--that's simple. Consumer expressions of love means candy, chocolate, flowers and Hallmark. It is what most people understand and desire. Even bitter little words like "I love you" probably is trademarked by a greeting card company. So if you can mass produce glossy cards with those words on it, how do you expect me to match my intention with expression when I say it? But most importantly, why do you want me to say it so badly?
I want to say it boils down to ownership. It is no coincidence that in every "close" relationship I've had, I've felt suffocated, like half a body. There are other factors of course, but lately I'm beginning to wonder how the idea of dating has evolved from traditional ideas of courtship, and how that has become informally written into societal codes. Is dating not just another way of preparing for your school's annual pageant? A consciously bad performance with highly dramatized symbolic overtures. I feel like the stuttering monotone narrator with the bad mic.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just a jerk. Maybe I need to assimilate to these socialized codes regarding dating and love. Or maybe I can just sit here, and be indifferently indifferent.
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