On Civility and Desire

ci·vil·i·ty

/səˈvilədē/

polite remarks used in formal conversation.

plural noun: civilities

"she was exchanging civilities with his mother"

synonyms: polite remark, politeness, courtesy; formality

"she didn't waste time on civilities"

I can think of no higher vulgarity than “civility”. The fastest route to insulting the one you love is to propose that you each be “civil”. When you said this to me, I knew... I knew that we could no longer be intimate with one another in the truest sense. Not physically, nor mentally, nor emotionally, not until the point at which we arrive again at the same frequency. I recognize the distinct possibility that this will never occur. It certainly won’t if you don’t let it. And do understand that I do not mean that I am at a superior place. Instead, I just mean to say that I have simply had the luxury of remaining open to change rather than resisting it. I know that you have not been afforded the same.

This is the crux. I am afraid it always is.

I have thought about these things, it will be no surprise to you to hear, quite a lot. I thought about the way that we all go around wanting. Wanting love. Wanting sex. Wanting attention. Wanting money. Wanting recognition for our achievements, consolation for our shortcomings, to be more present, to get away from it all, learning when we are curious, ignorance when the knowledge would be less blissful. We want. We want. We want.

We cannot help ourselves.

Until we discover...that we can. Because we must. You see, the problem with all the wanting isn’t the wanting or even with the things that we want. It isn’t even the people who might be hurt in the aftermath of the pursuit of our want. It is, rather, the denial of our want.

Want more sex? Don’t think about it. Want to get high and escape your own mind? To do so would surely lead to ruin. Want more attention? What are you, a narcissist? Get over your Self.

I also thought about how the way that we feel inevitably makes it real. When my father thought about all the terrible things that could happen to him, about the way he feared becoming a bitter alcoholic just like his mother (to be fully honest, this is a fact I am only now just recalling). His terror at the thought of doling out the same abuse to which he’d been subject manifested as words of hatred he spat at me and around me, invectives I buried deep inside myself. They were the fuel that propelled me away from there. I never ran out. But, then...I realized I’d gone far enough and I no longer needed the fuel, not for the journey away from home at least. Instead, I’d need it for the journey back there, to heal myself. So, I set about unearthing them and examining each with the curiosity, detachment, then sorrow, and, eventually, empathy they deserved. But it was the fear of becoming what he unwillingly became that led to my own pain. It also led to these incredible realizations that I would have never thought to have otherwise.

I wonder what might have happened if he had understood this. I wonder whether an understanding of the fundamental fact that he was different that most would have made him feel better. I wonder whether talking about how the visions of himself devolving into his mother would have eased his suffering and rendered the idea of escape unappealing. Maybe if he could have talked to someone about the things his heart wanted, he wouldn’t have let those things sit inside him as he tried to fashion them into something else, something palatable for everyone else, until they became so corroded and tangled up until he could no longer recognize them. Perhaps, if someone had pierced his heart to try to make it bleed every once in a while, if someone asked him what he wanted, he wouldn’t have launched those distorted desires at me like arrows with poison.

It doesn’t matter. He is dead and I’ve figured it out, the start of it at least. The important part is that you know that you are not your mother, or your father. You’re not your wife. You’re not even your children. You are, tautologically and literally, you. Alone.

And...everything you fear will happen. If you continue to fear it.

Stop being afraid it will happen and it won’t. Because you won’t let it. The only things that happen are the things you allow. You will only become your mother if let it happen. I will only become my father if I fear it. Because he allowed himself to become his mother. Because she let herself to become… And so it goes. Until it doesn’t. Does it?