Amante,
The time apart from you has been harder for me than I anticipated. I was so looking forward to some time to be on my own. I expected to find renewed strength and empowerment in the space you left behind in my life. I expected that with increased time for myself, I would find increased understanding of myself. I expected to greet you again radiating self-love and renewal.
Why did I expect these things? I know I am not a particularly rational person, but I think I believed that in the absence of your presence, I would also discover an absence of passion for you. Of course, I should have known myself better than that. Even in my best moments, I am never free of the passion that rules my life and tugs me away from higher pursuits.
So now I have been giving myself over to the contemplation of passion. It has proven an interesting and intensely consuming subject. Of course I am experiencing the contemplation of passion with the same level of passion as everything else. I can never be free of it, so it seems. But why shouldn't I passionately contemplate passion? To do otherwise would be like attempting to look at an elephant through a peephole.
I think of you more than I want. As usual, I find excuses to remember you in the most mundane details of life, and at the most awkward times. All through Christmas Mass, I couldn't stop imagining your hands on my body. When I attempted to rein in my fantasies, the images only surged back into the forefront of my mind more visceral and unsettling than before. The passion of my body for yours.
I have adopted your perspectives on things I do not fully understand. This allows me to postpone further contemplation until you are here to discuss it with me. By allowing my own convictions to hinge on understanding your understanding, I get to put off any further contemplation of a new topic for myself. I crave your mind. In bed last night, I imagined a whole conversation with you. There was no touching- that would be entirely too appropriate for a bedtime fantasy- only our minds reeling back and forth and wrestling passionately with a new idea until we both stare off, exhausted and ready to fall into the peace of meditation or one another's arms. My passion for the alchemy of our melded minds.
I allow your desires and preferences to inform my own, and I make decisions based on want you would want even when you are not here. Is this passion? I think it is a passion to please you that drives me to consider what you want at all times. This does not mean that I dismiss or suppress my own desires and preferences, only that I allow my desire to please you to slightly color my decision-making process. My passion for giving and the joy of you receiving what I have to offer.
I miss you. This drives me crazier than all the rest. I do not want to miss you, but the longing is there. I hate myself for that longing and utterly fail to see the sweetness in this constant ache. I don't miss you in a misogynist way- this or that piece of our relationship that I realize is missing from my current life. No, I don't miss us. I just miss YOU. I miss the essence of you that has allowed me to hope and feel inspiration. I do not miss feeling inspired, or hopeful. I miss YOU. And fuck all, because of course I might easily find other ways to feel hopeful or inspired. I might easily replace your presence at this or that activity with someone else. But I can't replace you, and that frustrates the hell out of me: my passion for the singular being you are is burning inside me and there is nothing I can do about it. My passion for your singular self. The passion of wanting what you can't have. The passion of hating what you love for the weakness that fire creates.
But all this contemplation of passion has led me to one truth: If I can't be free of passion to pursue higher things, then I want to make passion a higher pursuit. This is why sex is so much more to me than simple coupling. Why can't sex be a vehicle instead of a distraction? Why can't love be elevating, instead of hindering? Why can't our bodies provide a platform for greater understanding, instead of a sad shell we struggle to leave behind? And for that matter, why can't I channel the feverish passion of my mind instead of trying to calm it, to diffuse it?
On the beach, I saw fire shooting through channels like delicate red veins. That's me- there is fire in my blood and it's not going anywhere. So enflamed, I can either shuffle from disheartening dousing to dousing or I can stoke the flames until they propel me beyond.
I made a startling discovery yesterday: I am not cold when I meditate. But I am also not calm. I am still, but I am not calm. I am on fire, literally pulsing with it. Coming back into myself I am immediately cold, and weary. I feel the same during and after sex. Why not combine the fire of these two experiences to try and cultivate a bonfire? To try to understand the passion that courses through me and forges a connection between us, despite my reticence.
Amante, you are all and nothing to me. I miss you but I know that I want more than I see in you right now. I want more and I don't want it to feel like anything that I have experienced before. I don't want any of that worldly shit to douse my passion for you. I don't want anything like promises or complacency. I don't need the comfort of a partner now. I don't want the banality of making life decisions together. I don't want the burden of worry. I don't want the fear of loss.
I want you to inhabit a place of constant uncertainty with me. I want you to push me and ignite me instead of offering comfort. I want you to make decisions for yourself, and offer me the chance to challenge myself to come along. I want to do the same for you. We can explode our odious comfort zones for each other. I want to trust in your ability completely, to trust that you will always do what is right for you and for the world. I want to live completely in the moment with you, to banish all thoughts of loss from our world.
Amante mio, my precious lover, I don't know if you can be this for me. I don't yet know if you can give me what I want. But through my passion for you in this moment, you have given me a vision of my desire clarified by fire. With all the fat and flesh burned from the bones of my desire, it stands naked, pure, and powerful against the sadness and sorrow I have experienced before.
I have also felt a change in us recently, and I don't like it. I felt us slipping into a pattern of comfort and calm. I hope that you have found fire in your meditation this week as well. I hope that you do not seek only calm and peace. I hope that I can build on this clarified desire and work to make this new kind of connection with you desire incarnate. I hope for these things, but I do not expect them. I also don't fully understand where to go from here. I don't quite know how to make the theory reality. I hope that by channeling my fire I can reach a vision of the next step. And I hope you have something to offer me when next I see you. I want a challenge. I am ready for something entirely new.
Yours,
Janel
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