Just act naturally!

Naturally, I am learning—
just what to do.
Naturally.

Do people learn, naturally,
how to act—
natural?

I must learn social skills,
so I will know
what to do, naturally,
when I want to act—

naturally.

Naturally, I want to act—
naturally.

To act on my feelings,
but not too quickly.

I have to know
what I really feel,
so I’ll know what I want.

And so I’ll act naturally,
without having to stop
and think—
about what I feel
I want.

I want to feel
like I am acting
naturally.

I want to feel
that I know
what I want—
so I won’t have to think
about what I feel
I want.

Or think—

about how to best
act naturally.

People learn these things—
Naturally.

We're playing a game.

Does everyone know
we're playing a game?

If so,
does everyone know
the rules of the game.

Does everyone like the game?

Is it crazy to think
we are playing a game

or crazy to not know
we are playing a game?

If you play the game,
it shows you care—
when you first meet people
in a social situation.

I need you to play the game.

Because I’m nervous,
and the game helps me feel relaxed—
when we play along.

And it shows you care—
enough
to play along
with me—
until we know each other.

But I don’t even know you.

Wouldn’t it be fake
to act like I care about you
by playing a game
with you
in this social situation
that helps me feel more relaxed?

Don’t be so serious.

Just play the game.

They say,
if we accept our son
he will think
he is fine
just the way he is
and he will not grow.

The son
speaks of the support
he has received.

They ask:
“Are you sure
you told them
everything?”

The son is confused.

What would I leave out?
What would I hide?

How could
I change
without sharing
all of my
Self?

They say,
We only say
what we say
because we care.

If they ever stopped
criticizing,
the son would think
there is nothing
wrong with him.

Then he would stop
trying
to change.

He wonders
what he should change.

They never say.

Now in different rooms
with different people
they are asked
to avoid sharing
certain aspects
of themselves—

for the benefit
of others.

So others will be
happy,
safe,
comfortable.

To meet the needs
of others
they agree
not to share
certain aspects
of themselves.

One tells him
to change.
Then another
tells him
to change.

They refuse to tell him
what to change.

What to hide.

What to avoid.

He is mad because
she thinks
he thinks he knows
all about her
from a single
look – a single
first impression.

They try to understand
each other
by recognizing
that they do not
yet
understand
each other.

But we do not fully know
what the other
knows.

We cannot.

Not yet.

I understand
your experience
only when
you tell me
what I do not know.

Because I cannot know
as you know -
your experience.

And so, I listen.

Without assumptions.
Without interruption.
Without shaping your story
into my own.

I do not rush to understand.
I wait,
I wonder,
I will let you show me.

And somehow—
between the words,
between the silences,
between what is said
and what is left unsaid –

We never connected
at all.

I feel
I am alone
in the world.

Alone in the world
is not
a feeling.

Okay.

I feel
vulnerable.

Vulnerable
to what?

I don’t know.

Harm?
Illness?
The world?

The stillness.
The empty places.
The lack of—

It hurts.

You said
you did not feel
this fear,
this concern,
when you had someone
who loved you.

But she was a woman,
and you believed
you were less
vulnerable
when this small woman
was in your life?

I never thought
about it.

I felt
whatever I
felt.

Uh, I mean—

I believed
harm
was more likely
after I became
alone,

and pain
became
greater.

Phobias
returned.

Unspoken fears
within social
spaces
came with
the loneliness.

Maybe
alone in the world
is not a feeling.

Maybe
it is what the body
calls danger
when no one
is near enough
to help it
endure.

I can count
myself
among them—

those who
dare to share
their own
experience
of shame.

Victims.

No trigger warning
is necessary.

It’s too
unspeakable.

For the longest time
I listened
to others,
never imagining
I would ever be

a victim.

One of the first
I will call Karen
would not speak
while Mary,
the intern
who brought her to me,
remained
in the room.

I noticed,
but did not yet understand
the pattern
of shame—

how the presence
of one more person
could make speech
impossible.

I had seen it before:

the lowered face,
the closed body,
the trouble
making eye contact,
the question
beneath the story:

If I tell you,
will you abandon me?

If I become
too emotional,
will you send me away?

Only later
did I understand:

telling
is not
the same
as being free.

After the therapist,
after the few
who can listen,
there is still
the long walk home
with the shame.

Victims are asked
repeatedly
to protect
the innocent

so they can continue
to live
in the illusion
of their innocence

and their ongoing
experience
of innocence—

innocent
of exposure
to any experience
where they are victims
of forces
beyond our control.

We are survivors,
we tell ourselves,
even in our weakened
state of being.

Sometimes we smile—
pretending
we are not
bothered
by the past
in that moment.

Not noticing
my inner state,
you ask,

“Hey, how are you tonight?”

“I’m good,”
I say,
before thinking, “and you?”

You erase me
when you hear
within my words
not me but a projection
of some social phenomena.

My words, undoubtedly,
at times, without knowing
tap into a shared or partially shared
reality known to some.

I would avoid any words
that could cause some aspects
of me, to be
rejected.

Please do not share more
of that material?
What material?

I don’t want to talk about it.

The boy hides from
a disapproving look
instead of taking it inside
as a directive to guide
behavior.

The boy learns of a world
that is less predictable.

Through a screening process
we remove what might
offend, upset, trigger
or make uncomfortable
anyone who could hear
something we did not intend
to conform to a socially comfortable
grammar of known subjects
suitable for different rooms
and different people.

Get to the point!
As if there was a simple point
among the diversity of possible
utterances
that could make it through
a screening process -
a censorship –
of ideas heard and
unintended…
ideas only understood
by someone who heard
something that could not have been
anticipated?

The echoes of a feeling return -
a knowing that one did something
wrong
according to someone
who in the stating of the fact
also stated a refusal to discuss
(clarify?)…
creating the double bind rule
that turns a person
into a paranoid avoider.

How do you respond
to the absurd?

How do intelligent people—
repeat,
like ditto-heads,
words they heard,
hoping to shut down
those who disagree?

They have forgotten
even the meaning of the word—
truth.

“You don’t like what he says
because you know it’s true?”

What is it?

It is a true opinion—
and so, we each have
true opinions,
containing different
ideas,
preferences,
values,
internal perceptions.

I get truth
from the weather report—
temperature,
cloudiness,
wind or calm.

And yet—

one says,
"it’s too warm."
another,
"it’s too cool."

Those are true perceptions.

But where we disagree—
there is subjectivity:
preferences,
values,
morals.

Are you saying
I am—
immoral?

My response was:

Are you saying—
"I am immoral?"

You can speak—
your beliefs,
your values,
your ideas—
all subjective.

And I can do the same.

We are both—

sharing true opinions,
true values,
true beliefs,
true perceptions.

But that doesn’t make them
Truth.

Samantha asks Darrin,
 "Are you happy?"

Darrin says,
 "I have a beautiful wife,
 a beautiful daughter,
 a nice home, a great job…
 Yes, I am happy."

Darrin believes Sam loves him.
 But is he happy because Sam loves him
 or because he loves Sam?

Earlier, he was stressed—
 a demand from work,
 pressure from his job.

So, does his job make him happy?
 Or does his job only make him happy
 because of the love of Sam,
 his love for Sam,
 and his love for Tabitha?

But Darrin doesn’t need Tabitha
 to love him.
 She is too young
 to love in a way he would notice.

---

They say you shouldn’t need a relationship
 to be happy.

They say you must first love yourself.
 That you must already be happy.
 That no relationship
 can give you
 what you don’t already have.

If that’s true,

then would Darrin still be happy
 without Sam?
 Would Sam still be happy
 without Darrin?

Could they lose each other
 and be just as fulfilled?

---

Darrin was happy before he met Sam.
 But this happiness is different.
 This happiness is more.

Darrin cannot say
 that life would be just as good
 without their love.

Would Sam say the same?

If they lost each other,
 wouldn’t they grieve?
 Wouldn’t they ache?
 Wouldn’t they know, undeniably,
 that what they had
 was greater
 than what they were alone?

---

Since Darrin loves Sam,
 and since Darrin believes
 that Sam loves him,
 and since Sam believes
 that Darrin loves her,

then neither must have needed
 to be in a relationship to be happy.

And yet—

if they lost their love,
 would they be happy?

Wouldn’t that happiness—
 the happiness they were told
 had to exist independently—
 collapse under grief?

Then was it ever separate at all?

---

What is the meaning
 of Sam’s love for Darrin?
 What is the meaning
 of Darrin’s love for Sam?

What is the meaning of each’s love
 for themselves?

What is the meaning of happiness?

What is the meaning of life?

Recently
I shared several poems

in which the pronoun
“I” appeared.

You may have assumed
those thoughts
those beliefs
those feelings -
those experiences
were mine.

But in some
of those poems

“I”

was someone
I observed
Or a collection
of observations
of others.

I listened
to what they said.

I observed
their actions
to understand
better,

I noticed the
unspoken
feelings,
perspectives,
points of view
and the tone
of their voice
the speed of their
speech.

All this was happening
within me
without my conscious
awareness.

Empathic
communication
is hard
when and if
I was expected
to use words to
present everything
that happens in the moment.

Perhaps, you are
denying that you
share an experience
of being confused
within social
situations?

Perhaps
and I don’t deny
ever feeling
confused.

I also
write creative
non-fiction where
I tell stories
about lived events
and experiences.

All the facts
and experiences
were true
with understanding
of the fact that memory
is imperfect.

I have avoided
including or filling in
details – events
conversations
that might improve
a story -
that is fiction
based on a true story.

In my stories
I present my experiences
with others.

I present others
experiencing me
but I cannot
experience
what they are experiencing.

I can present
my experience
of them
experiencing me.

With imagination
and empathy,
I can imagine
what I believe
to be
their experience.

So,
when you used
the pronoun
“I”
as you mentioned,

you were deceiving me
if you were
not describing
your own experience.

Now I see
why you would be
confused.

You want to know

when “I”
was my experience

and when “I”
was my understanding
of another
or the combined
experience with
others.

Sometimes
to know that
you may have
to ask me.

At times
you have
inferred that I was
presenting
my own experience
because you were able
to intuitively know
when I was describing
lived experiences.

Perhaps you noticed
common themes and
emotional
reactions.

I have appreciated
your desire to understand
me and my experiences.

It shows
I have been
witnessed
held and accepted.

I was not real
until I was 23.
I started to take form
with Celta,
and then
I
faded,
with her
death.

At 26, I arrived in Wilmington.
After a few months,
I met, you,
Lynn
without thoughts of
prior loss.

By 27—unambiguously,
by our first anniversary—
I declared
I love you.
And you declared,
to me,
I love you.

I love you loving me -
I mean I have feelings of
joy
knowing you
are
having feelings of
love
for me.

You love me loving you -
Or (more correctly)
you have told me
verbally and nonverbally,
about your joy
that comes from
signs
of me loving you.

At 28,
I saw love take a new
form.
 A clerk in a jewelry store
looked at us
or you,
 and said,
“Your fiancé
can pick this up on
Monday.”

She said
fiancé!

That was my
first moment
of joy
that surpassed
prior
experiences.

I have seen
and been filled with
astonishment
at the sight of your tears
of joy
at the sight of
the ring -
the ring we
chose
together.

Your tears
your joy
created reciprocally
expanding
mutual experienced
joy…

Initially,
I was baffled -
where is the drama?
Where is the surprise
that could elicit
this reaction
now.

I felt this growing
singular
joy
because I believed
your reaction
was a sign
of your joy
or your love?
Or a sign of
our love?

I experienced what I believed
to be your experience —
and that believing
co-created something
neither of us could have
reached
alone.

A singular awe.
Made of two.

I would be unhappy
if I did not have your love.
I know this because
I was once unhappy and unloved.
There was a time
when I did not know this feeling—
this way of existing,
and experiencing existence.

Years later,
I am told what this must mean.
That I should say
I did not need
this.
That I must have
loved myself
first.

At this time,
Much later in my life,
I let the truth slip out—
that when I am loved,
I feel different.
I act differently.
I am more myself.

Common wisdom insists
that I was wrong and
I was made to feel embarrassed
for needing to be accepted as I am.

I would have to go back to
way back when—
when we loved each other—
and discover a different
understanding
a different explanation…
Instead of the truth
that at that time
without our knowing
there was something else
besides the truth that
without our love
something essential would have been missing.
Not desired.
Needed.

Never assume.

I do not want you to "get me."
 That would mean
 you have already decided
 who I am.

I love that
 you do not understand me.
 And I do not understand you.

We discovered each other—
 not through knowing,
 but through not knowing.

We understood
 because we did not
 assume.

Person 1:
 "You cannot possibly
 understand me—
 or what I have experienced."

Person 2:
 "You cannot possibly
 understand me—
 or what I have experienced."

And yet—

Together,
 we understand.

"My job is not
 to make you happy,"
 says Leticia, the therapist
 whose name means
 full of joy.

I don’t understand.

Then what is your job?
 What are we working toward?
 What is therapy for
 if not to create something
 other than depression?

Feelings change.
 Be mindful.
 Observe.
 Describe.
 Participate.

Move away
 from thinking about what is happening.
 Be present.

But—

I notice sadness.
 I want to notice happiness.

Is that not a goal?

"You were held back
 by thoughts about the situation."

But what if I am held back
 by the situation itself?

---

Consider this.

I once assessed
 why a woman needed
 a psych evaluation.

"I am here because
 I am too happy," she said.

"That is strange, isn’t it?" I asked.

Surely, there was more
 to her story.

Or consider Lucia.
 Lucia is 14.

Asked when she remembers
 being happy,
 she cannot remember
 such a time.

I suspect Major Depression.
 I suggest therapy,
 so she can feel happy.

What is your role, Leticia?
 Let’s talk about goals.

Because if I asked you—
 "Are you happy?"
 your answer would
 forever change,
 according to your philosophy.

But I—

I have known a time
 when I was happy.

A time when
 happiness lived in me—
 not fleeting,
 not conditional,
 not something to simply observe
 and let pass.

A time when,
 despite transient moments of sadness,
 I was still happy at my core.

And yet—

Even then,
 out of habit,
 I told the person I loved,
 "I am depressed."

Words that no longer fit me.
 Words that once defined me.
 Words that could hurt her—
 make her believe
 she brought me no happiness.

But happiness had changed me.
 It lived inside me.
 It did not deny sadness.
 It did not erase struggle.

And yet,
 it remained.

I am thinking
 about what I am feeling.

These feelings—
 intense, passionate,
 real.

I need to get in touch
 with my feelings.
 Be in the moment.

But my mind—
 always analyzing,
 always thinking
 about feeling,
 instead of just feeling.

Let me think about
 how I can stop thinking
 about how to get
 out of my head
 and into the moment.

I keep thinking.
 And thinking.

About why
 I can’t just be—
 spontaneous,
 emotional,
 filled with awe.

I remember—
 I was in awe.

It feels like
 it just happened.

I remember
 the feeling
 of being in awe.

But remembering
 isn’t the same
 as being.

You say
 you understand me.

But how can you?

I barely understand myself.

And yet,
 I want you to understand me.

But if you do,
 does that mean
 you’ve already decided
 who I am?

Or are you still listening?

I say,
 "You don’t understand."

You say,
 "I do."

I say,
 "Then tell me what I mean."

You do.

And I say,
 "No, that’s not it."

You say,
 "Then tell me."

I try.

But words shift,
 meaning bends,
 and what I thought I knew
 is now uncertain.

So, I say—
 "You don’t understand."

And maybe,
that’s the only way
to truly understand.

I think about experiences
 that are impossible for me
 to experience.

I understand
 what you said
 you understand.

You understand
what you heard me say—
when I told you
what I understand.

We misunderstand each other
often.

I like it when we misunderstand.
When we talk about it.
When misunderstanding
becomes a way
to understand.

"How dare you say,
 ‘I understand.’"

"Isn’t that what you wanted?"

You confuse me.

I want you to know
 that you don’t understand me.

I want you to ask me
to explain
what I understand—
so I can understand
what I understand,
so you can hear me
tell you
what I understand,
so you can understand
what I understand.

Do you understand?

Yes.
Wait, no.

You understand
yourself
better
when I tell you
to explain
what you understand
about yourself?

That’s right.
It’s only when
I try to explain
what I understand
that I understand
myself.

That doesn’t happen
to me, she says.
“I understand exactly
what I mean
when I speak”

I wonder in my mind
how to respond.

What does she think
of me
when I don’t
always understand
myself?
When the urge to speak
gets away from
clarity.

I want you.

My feelings are natural.
 They grew on their own,
 without intention.

And naturally—
I want you
to feel the same.

To want me,
as I want you.

To feel it evolve,
without effort,
without force,
without doubt.

I hunger for you
to want me—
naturally.

Everything in the way
you look at me,
the way your body leans closer,
the way your breath slows—
says it’s natural.

And yet—

you wait.

I don't think you want me
and I stop wanting you.

You just say that
to not admit you want me
more than I want you...

No, I have explained that
my love, desire, interest
is recursive, mutually reinforced
and fed by
your feelings for me.

My perception of your lack
of feelings creates similar
lack of feelings within me
fed by, reinforced by
my perception of
your lack of
feelings for me
which occurs without
effort, is not willed
nor is it simply a reaction to a negative
feeling within me
because it is fed by not a feeling
but a lack of feeling.