I was reading some Anaïs Nin late last night. Yes, I couldn’t sleep. When I go through a period of insomnia, I usually read. Every emotion like an exposed wire in a rain storm. Every reaction a spark that jolts. It makes it impossible to relax long enough to go to sleep, although I have of course caught a few hours here and there.
Anyway, back to Anaïs Nin, I was reminded in my reading of,
“Passion gives us moments of wholeness.” Anaïs Nin, Volume One 1931-1934
When you are put together the way I am on the inside, it is exactly as she writes. This is a pretty well known quote, but it is well known for a good reason. Passionate people, people who are ruled by their passions, are driven by the #1 passion of all–to be whole again. To be one with, or whatever you want to call it, it is a drive to ‘be’ with something. To express yourself as part of something greater.
It can be through many things. I am often at one with my writing. Not always, but often enough that I realize that writing is one avenue for me to express that passion to ‘be’ with some *thing*, to be made whole, to be joined with something. Writing is the expression of one of my passions–it is an expression of self.
Love is another of my passions. There are many kinds of passion that drive love in all of us. But the passion to be made whole with another person, is one of the most enduring, I think. I don’t mean made ‘better’ or ‘healed’ (which is of course a passion of its own as well, just not what I’m talking about), I mean made whole.
That sense that you are a ‘mirror’ image of another. That there is some cosmic thread that actually *does* connect the two of you. Not a soul mate, (which BTW is widely overstated by most westerners) but that sense that you have met someone who truly understands who you are or at least is on the same wave length so they can ‘try’ to understand. How much can we truly know of another, we barely know ourselves.
Like two pieces of a puzzles, you fit together in some image that just makes ‘perfect sense’, and for someone like me, fitting those pieces together is one of my long-standing passions.
Like Anaïs Nin said, this passion can bring moments of ‘wholeness’. I know. I’ve been there. I’ve looked into a mirror and seen my reflection in another’s eyes. I’ve been gazed upon and known that he saw his reflection in mine. Pure moments of ecstasy. Moments of ‘wholeness’.
“I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic — in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.” Anaïs Nin
This quote is one of my favorites. I’ve reread my journal this morning, well, the entries for the last few days. I can see that some of it is so completely me, caught up in my passions. I would normally apologize for that, I’ve been known to feel guilty for such outright expression of self, but I won’t. Not this time.
I’m not crazy, but I accept my dalliances outside the norm of society. I don’t just accept them, I embrace them. I do live in my world. What world would anyone have me live in but mine? Yours? I do not belong in your world, you do.
All my life I have sought to become adjusted not to the world and what it tells me I must be, but to myself. I am who I am. I will not lay on a couch to be molded into an acceptable norm, by a doctor who has no clue.
I will not accept the admonitions of friends who say, “Move on,” or “you did this to yourself”. Of course I did it to myself.
I cry. They say ‘you brought this on yourself’’.
Nice, neat, and let’s get to the important stuff now, “How about those Yankees?”
If I have been driven crazy by my passions, then so be it. I am passionate. I love intensely and completely. I do not say that as an excuse not to take responsibility for my own actions. It is not an excuse to wreak havoc in the streets or with family and friends. I accept my passions as part of me. I also accept responsibility for where they led me and for those consequences.
BUT I will not accept ‘you did it to yourself’ as an indictment that should now bring me shame. No, I refuse to see this as some sort of mistake I made that needs to be accepted. I will not wallow in some sort of regret because my passions were misspent. Because they were not, and are not.
They are mine. I direct them. I know why I love. I know why I made the choice. I was not some simpering doormat who was unable and incapable of seeing the choices I made, and I knew the risks all the while. I will not bow my head in shame–EVER!
I cry. That is not shame.
