When
I think of affection I think of one man. He occupied my life for one year but
lingered in my mind for many years before and many after. The Buddha says there
are four different kinds of affection and I felt them all for this man – not
one after the other but more like gusts of wind that circle above rooftops and
then rush through you with intention, only to soar above again and come back
when you least expect it. My affection for him was like schizophrenic seasons
with no order only chaos that rushed through me and left me bewildered.
“And how is affection born
of affection? There is the case where an individual is
pleasing, appealing and charming to another individual … the other one thinks,
this individual is pleasing, appealing, and charming to me.”
Sitting in
a coffee shop on a cold afternoon I watched the girls fawn over him. He stood
there ordering a coffee and a friend made a joke about it being his birthday
when it wasn’t. A few minutes later a group of girls came over to our table
with a cupcake and a candle, singing him happy birthday.
-The look in their
eyes-
-Desire-
-For him-
But all it did was make me want him more. The desire in the
eyes of the other women ignited a desire in my own. I wanted to be able to say,
“you want him - but I have him”. Like the best toy in the store, like a hunk of
smooth plastic to run my fingers along - rather than a person. People were
unpredictable but acquisitive mimesis had been taught to me at age two. It
trumped all. I had to have him.
“And how is aversion born of
affection? There is the case where others treat this
individual as displeasing, unappealing, and not charming. He gives rise to
aversion for them”
Months
passed and I fell in love with this man. Spring came and we took walks and
bought plastic flowers and planted them in pots on my balcony filled with real
soil. We wrote music together and performed in dirty bars with low ceilings. We
made up a language that no one else but us understood. I brought him home to
meet my family and that night after he left I sat with my mother under a canopy
of trees in our back yard. “What do you think of him?” I said. “Well….” She
said, “He takes himself very seriously.” I could already feel the cold
pervading up my feet into my body. He DID take himself seriously. He rarely laughed. He was soft and sweet less
and less. He was serious and opinionated and sometimes …he was mean. What had I
done? Where was the prince from the fantasy that I had fought and slain all the
other women to obtain? This man was broken and troubled and when I tried to
help him his defenses left gashes in my good intentions. I was torn and
confused.
“And how is
affection born of aversion? There is the case where others treat this
individual as displeasing, unappealing, and not charming. He gives rise to
affection for them.”
As time passed
this man seemed to shed more layers of the kind and gentle man I first met. As
he bloomed in front of me I saw his insides and they broke my heart. They say
darkness is the absence of light. He didn’t let any light inside lest he be
seen and exposed. In the presence of others he would wear all his armor and
play the part. But when the doors closed and we were alone he was unforgiving,
impatient and malicious. On a few occasions his voice passed through the walls
and my friends would emerge with this look on their face. They would criticize
him - the way he talked to me. One day my room mate looked me deep in the eyes
and said “I can forgive a lot of things in a man, but cruelty is not one of
them. That is the worst offence.” Still I defended him. I said he’d had a hard
day and things were tough for him right now. I was holding out - tip toeing around so as not to wake the
dragon – hoping the prince would come back and slay him and we could take walks
again and plant flowers and play music. I said to them “You don’t know him.
He’s in so much pain. There’s a good person in there. I’ve seen him.” I was
impatiently awaiting his great return …that never came.
“And how is aversion born of
aversion? Others treat this individual as pleasing, appealing and charming. He
gives rise to aversion for them”
I sat
there staring at the wall, listening to his voice on the other end of the
phone. I was tired. I said to him “Do you love me?” The silence climbed up the
walls with the orange light from the Beer Store sign outside my window. “I
don’t know,” he said. One week later he handed me a bag of my things. Three weeks later he showed up hand in hand with another
girl. I hurt and I mourned but I started to talk. All the secrets I’d kept for
fear that people would tell me to leave him. All at once they started to boil
in me and evaporate into the outside world. People were so shocked. They said
“No! Not him! I can’t believe he did that.” They didn’t believe me. They
continued to see him and tell me about it and I burned and bubbled inside. How
could they? The more they told me of his kind presence and his sweetness towards
them the more my fire grew. “But he’s fine with me,” they would say. And that
was that.
“There is said to be a monk who doesn’t pull in, doesn’t push
away, doesn’t smolder, doesn’t flare up, doesn’t burn.”
“I want
to be good.” I said to her over a cup of coffee gone cold from daydreaming as I
stared out the window. “I want to know that when I love someone I am loving
them right.” See sometimes I pull in. I treat my feelings as though they are
like organs in my body, intrinsic and unchangeable. I digest my anger and
collapse my love into my parasympathetic nervous system. When I fall for
someone I unzip my chest and let them in and then I adopt their moods as well
as my own.
But
I can change.
Sometimes I push away.
I hear the words and I know I should leave but I engage. I defend. I
want to feel something even if it’s hurt.
But
I can change.
Sometimes I flare up. I wanted him and then I didn’t and
then I did again. I stared at my reflection in his eyes like the looking glass
self. I hated me when he did, and I adored me when he did. But I don’t have to
do that.
I
can change. I will change. I do change.
Sometimes I burn. I swaddle myself in the entities of
the world as they pinch and prod me. I adopt all the lost words and gestures
and let them into my home.
I burn for him. I still burn for him. But I don’t have
to.
I
can change.
