The Yo-Yo Girl

I want to kill this curiosity.

It feels as though it is killing me.

And I feel so weak. I take a look at the world, and it seems as though all the people around me deal with their lives and circumstances with such great strength and hope and faith.

In the meantime, I am wavering, wobbling, giving into despair. This is an ugly sight indeed.

I truly do not understand why I am the way that I am. I loathe certain aspects of my character. I often wish that I could extricate certain qualities that seem embedded within who I am.

The intense and overbearing emotions of sadness and desperation that pound through my being at the most inconvenient times. The hurt and longing for someone I have never known and most likely will never know that fetters my daily existence. These are just a few of the elements that I frequently wish to eradicate from my composition.

My husband tells me, though, that doing so would then have pervasive repercussions on my person as a whole. He says you can’t just shut off one part of your heart without affecting the entire person. He always tells me that if I cut out those parts of who I am, then I will turn into a non-feeling automaton. He proceeds to repeat that he in part married me because of my capacity to feel things deeply. In short, if he wanted to marry a robot, he would have. But, instead, he married me. Lucky him.

But then, the question still remains—why can I not dig myself out of this hole? My life is good. Why do I crawl into this hole in the first place?

Why can I not just forget? Move on? Why does she always come back to haunt me?

I do not want to become hardened and calloused. I don’t want to be a non-feeling automaton. I do not want to deceive myself or lie to myself.

I can tell myself that I do not care anymore. I can tell myself that I am over it. That I am just going to move on and forget the whole thing. But such would be pure deception.

I do care. And as I much as I tell myself that I am over it as much as I realize that I am not.

It pains me deeply that I may never know her. That most likely I will never meet her.

And yet the cruel and everlasting nature of hope cannot help but relentlessly taunt me. Hope can never stop hoping. Even the most infinitesimal quark of hope cannot perish. Its anatomy, its structure is indestructible, even when I do my best to annihilate it. It is immune to me.

And this drives me absolutely crazy.

There is some small part of me that cannot but compulsively assign wacky and absurd explanations to the emotions I feel. I must give them reason and purpose for their existence.

So I tell myself that I cannot let go of this painful hope, because I am destined to find her. These emotions, these longings, I persuade myself, are compelling me to search for her. Without such a drive of emotion, without such a depth of desperation, I would never be so motivated, so urgent to seek her. I feel this deluge of emotion because it is leading me to her.

Emotion is what drives us to initiate action. When we do not feel, we do not act.

So, I tell myself, this pain, this longing, this cruel hope will end in joy. These tears will end in laughter.
That’s what I tell myself.

I wrote a poem years ago entitled, “Emancipation.” I posted it in conjunction with this entry. It basically reminds me that love makes us fools. But that being a fool in the name of love is not necessarily a foolish endeavor. Or is it? I’m having second thoughts.

Doing so is what can often lead to greatness, I try to argue. It’s just, well, the kind of greatness that is great in a foolish kind of way—at least in the eyes of those who are not willing to take such risks?

What else is honest, true love other than the sacrifice of the ego, of the self? A willingness to embrace humility, and even more specifically, humiliation for the sake of another.

Love does not give to receive. Love gives without thinking of what it will gain.

(Is this me trying to convince myself that my meekness and feebleness are somehow more than that?…Or perhaps, I like to patronize myself at times, like patting a child on the head for believing in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy…)

Why do I persist like a fool, subjecting myself to emotional turmoil and desperation, to endless uncertainty and doubt?

The only answer that I can honestly give is this: No matter how much I fight it or try to neglect it, I hold deep within, even against my own will, an undying and relentless love for my birth mother. It is more than curiosity. And that’s why I cannot will to kill it.

This kind of love is not subject to the average will.

Even though I have never known her. I have no recollection of her face or her person. She could be dead for all I know. She could despise me for all I know. She could harbor me as a shameful and baneful secret.
And yet, I cannot rid myself of the love that I possess for her.

This is the madness that compels me to long for her, to weep for her, to even rage against her. To hope that one day I will see her face to face.

And that makes me a fool. But an emancipated one?

I do not feel emancipated.

I feel trapped.

I feel stifled.

I feel like I want to rip out the walls. Scream. Tear out my hair. Shake my fists. And then crumble upon the ground beneath my stomping feet, never to assemble again.

But I always find myself back at the same place. At least it feels that way.

Even though I tell myself, this is it, no more. I cannot do this any longer. I shout at my husband that I can’t take this! I don’t care! I can’t feel this any longer! I do my best to will myself to walk away once and for all. Forever.

But I return, like a strange and meek addict of hope, or an obsessive, compulsive, neurotic glutton for punishment. I return.

To her.

My mind returns to thoughts of her. My heart returns to longing for her. For answers. For resolution.

If only I could forget. If only I could close the door and lock it once and for all. If only I could cure this addiction. Medicate this compulsion.

But to do so, again, only neglects, ignores, suppresses, denies the truth of a significant piece of who I am.

Yet still, I will most likely continue in my attempts to forget. To push away the truth. To bury the sentiments. To hide from that which haunts me.

Not because I am fond of deceit or lying. And not that I will ever succeed.

I simply need moments of reprieve. Times to breathe. To run. To escape.

To kick out the pretty little walls in their sugary paint and the perfect little white picket fences that try to tell me that my life is wonderful and sane.

Contrary to what one might think, running and hiding from what I feel doesn’t make things better. It only makes me more aware of that which troubles me.

But it at least gives me the illusion for however brief the moment to think that I can get away. It allows me the opportunity to embrace the drama while at the same time running from it.

I sound like nonsense. But let me have it.

Let me drown in my melodrama and hurt. And really perhaps, this is all a selfish luxury anyhow—to be able to reflect, to entertain thoughts about a past that faded from my sight before I could even really see.

Who am I to think that I have the right to moan and groan about my life? Am I simply the spoiled brat, trying to dig up reasons to whine and weep? Who am I to hold up victimhood like a banner over my bloated head?

Here I go again, entering into the conflict and tension of justification and de-justification of my existence and the emotions that come along with it.

I want to tell myself to shut-up and get over it, while I simultaneously yearn for comfort and solace. Just call me an emotional yo-yo—up and down on the strings of my internal banter.

And when I get sick from the vacillation and rocking, I’ll have no one to blame but myself.

The world is never the problem. It’s one individual at a time.

And it’s really hard to change even that one, that singular individual. She always resists.

Yet eventually, she also always, ultimately, seems to succumb, for better or for worse.

Let’s hope, this time, it’s for the better.

(Note: Inside joke: "Sugar Daddy" wins...for now...wipe that smile off your face. You know you knew you would win. But don't get overconfident just yet...;) I'm still skeptical and unfortunately cynical...)