A series of articles exploring Love, Pathriarchy, Sexuality, Relating and whatever else may arise.
Over the past few weeks, I have been in a deep liquid state and chaos about the construct of 'Relationship'. I have been going through what people in modern culture call a 'breakup'.
I 'broke up' with the man I had been in a 'relationship' with for the past 2 years.
I am writing 'relationship' in quotes because it is a word that represents a construct, a conglomeration of assumptions, stories, expectations, conclusions, projection, fantasies and morals. An aspect of Life that we have imported from the culture we were raised in and that you may never have questioned.
Even though I have questioned and even reflected a bit on this idea of having a 'relationship', I had not yet been hit in my 5 bodies, experientially, with what inhabiting and reproducing this construct on a daily basis can do to Love. Until now.
I was faced with the prison and gremlin feeding frenzy this construct created in my life.
I'm writing a series of articles on this topic, sharing my liquid states, noticings, questions, pain and discoveries. The name of the series is 'On the Edge of Relating'.
Here it goes the first one.
The dry Space Between Us
When a man loves a woman he thinks that his love is directed at an individual like himself whom he can incorporate into his sphere of influence and who desires to be united with him. When he causes my face to glitter, he will discover a certain beam of light that sets his heart in motion and illuminates all things … Soon however he is confused by the violent emotions that are unleashed within him as I draw near, and he senses that he cannot stay with me without inevitably becoming a servant of a universal work of creation. He thought he had found a companion: but now he knows that in me he has touched upon a great hidden force, a mysterious and latent power which has approached him in this form in order to carry him away. Whoever has discovered me stands upon the threshold of all things … When he realized how much I meant to him, he thought he could grasp me in his arms. He wanted to lock himself up with me in a remote and isolated paradise where we would only need each other. It was at that moment that I vanished into thin air- Eros Unredeemed, Dieter Duhm
I’m sitting at the table in the living room, at my parent’s house.
I’m visiting them where I was born and raised, Goiânia, Brazil. It’s Saturday afternoon. My mother has prepared lunch for us—my father, my brother, and me. She’s setting the table.
The sun is shining outside. It’s hot, like 36 degrees. As I put the food on my plate, beads of sweat roll down my forehead. The lack of humidity is just as oppressive. It is dry. The drops of sweat evaporate in seconds. The air is as dry as the desert, as autumn leaves, as a plant that hasn't received water for weeks. It’s also as dry as the space between us: no words. Silence.
I look at the food on my plate in amazement. There is smoke erupting, carrying the particles of my mother's aroma and love that I can feel that was infused in this food. It has dazzling colors: green, orange, yellow, white, brown, red. My bodies celebrate. I immerse myself in this rainbow, I dive deep in the smell and the taste, I delight myself. I start eating.
As I taste the food I can sense that my month is wet. I'm reveling in the pleasure of flavors. It’s quite a contrast with the dryness of the air and of the space in between us.
My mom is sitting right in front me. My dad is on her left side. I stare at the both of them and a question pops up in my mind, as a bubble in a sparkling water:
Can I imagine this woman and this man as a glowing, shining, amorous couple? Can I remember them in love? What has occurred within their souls in these few years or decades that has caused them to drift so far away from love and from each other?
Puff.
This question hit my heart. I feel sad.
I have the impulse to ask them these questions.
My fear rises.
NO. Keep eating your food!- A dry voice in my head speaks.
I think this voice is me. So I don’t ask the questions.
I keep eating.
Part of my attention goes to the space between us again.
The silence is as metallic as dry. It reverberates through the room with the sound of the cutlery on plates, as the four of us keep eating.
My mother breaks the silence.
With a sharp look of hating anger she says to my father:
‘Once again you did something without asking me first.’
My father continues eating, as nothing is happening, moves his shoulders up and down, and says Yes.
My mother huffs. I can see her anger bubbling inside her, like water close to 100 degrees Celsius boiling. All she says is
Ok.
I keep eating. I increase the speed at which I carry one spoon after another to my mouth. Like a moving train constantly accelerating.
My whole body tenses up. Today I can distinguish my feelings. I feel fear.
I feel terrified of the invisible war.
Inside me the phrase here we go again… plays as the opening of the Movie.
A movie I've watched over 100 times.
Not because I love it, but because it's the only movie that plays on this video cassette, called Low Drama. I already know the characters and how the scene unfolds before it even starts. I memorized the speeches and the actions of each character.
Silence. A deafening silence. The unspoken words, the questions stuck in the throat and the fear of being close and intimate are an invisible mist that hangs in the air.
A few minutes pass after the first interaction between them.
Then the next bullet.
‘You know we don’t have the budget to build cabinets in the house, why do you always do this?’
A wall rises. My father ignores what she says again. He keeps eating.
Silence. Fake silence.
The sound of the cutlery falters louder.
An attempt to fill the agony of the devil screaming from within.
‘On Monday you can come over and pick out the colors for the cabinet’
My father says with an ironic and sarcastic tone.
My mother replies
‘Oh, what an incredible husband you are. I can pick out the colors. Can I also pick out the handles? And the hinges? So you want to consult me and ask me what I think about the cabinet you’re putting in YOUR house?’
From then on, things can escalate to the point of breaking things or physical violence.
In this case, the war remains invisible and in dry and cold silence.
One wanting to kill the other hidden below the carpet.
Where did Love go? What has occurred within their souls in these few years or decades that has caused them to drift so far away from love and from each other?
Resentments, stories, conclusions, non complete communications, assumptions, expectations, projections, judgments, thousand years of patriarchy, unhealed traumas…
I could keep going with assumptions. With stories of what might have happened with the heart of these two beings that gave Life to me.
How come do I reproduce exactly the same things as them?
I stop here.
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