I get frightened. I recognize walls of inhibitions starting to crystallize. It doesn't seem serious, but it may lead to problems. If there is a loss of openness between us, there goes the basis of why this relationship is special, why it is working.
I can't be afraid to be myself. That, I think, has been a recurring struggle for me in trying to make a relationship work. I lose sight of myself. Being with another person takes on a characteristic of its own, I stop being me.
So many things eat at me from the inside. I appreciate how Joy makes me feel not alone. But if we focus on such seriousness too much, that will just wear us down. It's hard to balance between serious and heavy, and playful and goofy. We try to, and I think it's possible. She's flexible and she's empathic. She doesn't just get stuck on one thing.
She sits at the table. I observe her. She's unaware. She shows what's in her mind on her face. I can tell when she's thinking, when she notices something. If she finds something funny or ironic, she'll smile. Her thoughtfulness and consideration, it's obvious she's paying attention, it's obvious she's doing something, involved in something, engrossed in something; she's here and alive and living.
She flips through a pile of papers, looking for something, grimaces not quite able to find it. She spots something important. She writes it down. She sighs in frustration. She shakes her head. So thoughtful, so focused, so comfortable, so intent. There is a reason why she loves me. She wouldn't otherwise.
(excerpt from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson, pp. 170-171)
". . . But where was God now, with heaven full of astronoughts, and the Lord overthrown? I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadn't rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup. As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never the destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy.
The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met. If you want to find out the circumference of an oil drop, you can use lycopodium powder. That's what I'll find. A tub of lycopodium powder, and I will sprinkle it on to my needs and find out how large they are. Then when I meet someone I can write up the experiment and show them what they have to take on. Except they might have a growth rate I can't measure, or they might mutate, or even disappear. One thing I am certain of; I do not want to be betrayed, but that's quite hard to say, casually, at the beginning of a relationship. It's not a word people use very often, which confuses me, because there are different kinds of infidelity, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, then being on somebody else's."
