Something very strange

Something very strange is going on. I came here to write about relationships, to ask why any of us continue them, particularly when they are not seemingly going anywhere, and I came here via Bloglines. Which means I came here via the spurious Polar.... who is either my psychic twin or who has been watching me again, and sees fit to comment on my recent and ongoing traumas in some general and non-specific way. Who knows which of these is the truth? Most likely it is another example of the state of "coincidence" that has been plaguing me for a few days now (see previous posts. Whatever the reality, whyever he is commenting on relationships in a way so deeply meaningful to me, now... the fact is I feel (again) unnervingly watched. No, exposed. That's it - exposed... In fact, I have exposed myself recently in this hall: letting it all hang out for anyone to understand. I feel vulnerable walking back to this place, as if the investigators will be here waiting for me. Can I not have even one truly safe space? I have said too much, but that is only possible while I am watched, and specifically only while I am watched by people of whose motives I am not sure (and Polar, you are not one of these)...

But, back to the reason I came here... Polar writes:

And for you who have only what failed to complete itself? You are not the lovers who rejoice in the fact of their love, and can recount its story: 'that was when we met'; 'that was when I caught your eye.' What, then do you have? Perhaps the dream that one day you can speak of it together, and what did not happen can be called to account. 'Why didn't we speak about it before?': now 'it' has a consistency, a substance: it has come together like love's future anterior. The non-event is at last born as an event.

It happened - not then, but now, and can be called a failure by the measure of loving. 'It couldn't have worked out for us'; 'it could never have begun, not then'. Imagined scene: the two of your talking, at last, about what did not happen. Together, at last, and talking about it, and happy in their speech.

Yes, this is precisely what has been present for me for some time. The dream. Not really some idealistic state, a lover's dream...the lover believes - truly, somewhere at least - that the dream may come true. Do I believe such a thing? Maybe, if I'm honest. Do I want it to come true? Increasingly not. I am dismissed, derided, ignored, humiliated. Not I am these things: she makes me be these things. She derides me, dismisses me, ignores me; she humiliates me...

Which ultimately leads to my original question, the reason I turned on my computer this evening: why do we invest in relationships with others? What is it that human interaction does for any of us? It must surely feed some desire in us - it always gives us something. Enjoyment, maybe; company; lightheartedness; amusement; sex. Something. And typically something positive, at least on some level. But is that always true? If we engage in interaction with an other whose mission it seems to be to bring us down in some way, as unconscious a mission as that may be, why would one go back for more?

Well, often, of course we don't. If I am ignored, dismissed, derided, and publicly on occasions, then usually I am filled with anger, maybe not hatred, but certainly I find such behaviour despicable and deeply unpleasant and I avoid that person as much as possible. But sometimes... sometimes we go back for more. The promise of something. What? A body? Why would a body override my natural instincts to run? I keep searching, yearning... maybe less now for Her, her body, her approval, her touch... but more for the reasons why I would want any of those in the first place. And maybe, then, despite the reasons that IQ gives me to run, and regardless of whether or not I do, She - the idea of She, generic Her - is someone to whom I will keep returning. And for now, IQ is that She: what she gives me is a manifestation of the Idea of She, to which I can keep returning not for immediate pleasure (God no!), but for something tangible on which to hang my desires, in the search for an understanding of those desires.

Because I know only too well that I have been here before. Others have pushed me away, or only had so close I could get, and I have continued to walk forward, into a glass wall. But I keep finding these people. And now, soon - God soon please! - I have to try and understand why...because I am tired, tired by my own inability not to do this. Exhausted by my own persistence.

This, then, is my document of what failed to complete. That was when I caught her eye. That was when we talked easily together. Now is always the failure of completion.