In each person's heart, there is a hole. There is a black hole in the part of his heart that he does not tend to, the part that he avoids. We never really know exactly when it comes to take up a space in our hearts, but big or small, it's there. Look away long enough, and it starts to grow, pulling bits and pieces of your confidence and sanity into it with an inescapable gravitational force.
Every tangible thing inside you starts to get sucked into that black hole, making you feel emptier and emptier each day. And inside you, there's silence and a threatening disquiet. But this silence has a voice. It speaks. It asks you questions. It asks you if people are talking behind your back, if they're slowly excluding you from everything they do, if they can even be trusted at all. It asks you if your girlfriend really loves you or not, if there is really such a thing as love, if it's worth it even if it does exist. It asks you what life is, and if it is worth living.
The list grows longer. If you start to voice those questions out loud, if you start to give a voice to those questions... The best case scenario is that somebody with an enormous capacity for love will somehow fill that void for you, for awhile. The worst case scenario is that you won't have that person, and questions will be met with more questions.
At the end, there'll be nothing left but a vacuum with a hyper-dense ball of paranoia and anxiety in the center.
Science does not know much how to deal with black holes, but those who've lived with them for a long time do know a little. They know not to answer the questions that the silence poses, because the questions will never stop. They know that sometimes, the love of others isn't enough, because a black hole can suck in anything.
They know that dealing with it means seeing. Seeing that beyond all the haunting echoes of doubt and questioning in that seemingly endless void, there is something at the center, something real and tangible.
That tangible thing is, oddly enough, a question. A real question. And maybe in all those hearts that I have no insight into, the question is different for each of them. But for me, it's always been the same question... ... And my answer to it is yes. Or at least, it will be.
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"Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic." -Anias Nin
I once had a problem I could not resolve: If you are having doubts or resentments in a friendship/relationship, does speaking to the person about it constitute trust or doubt?
On one hand, it could be said that telling that person how you feel means that you trust that person enough to be honest... However, it could also be said that by telling that person your feelings, you do not trust that person because 1) You don't trust that the he/she knows you well enough or cares enough to figure it out on their own. (Or perhaps you have simply been too sensitive, despite their care) 2) You don't trust that ultimately, they are completely well-intentioned regardless of the fact that they unknowingly hurt you.
Or 3) A part of you no longer trusts them to care, and you want them to feel hurt when you tell them how you feel. You want to hurt them as much as they hurt you.
At the end of the day, I felt that regardless of whether you share or withhold your feelings, it all comes down to whether or not you do what you do in faith or faithlessness. If you believe in that person and the friendship you share, then you will ask with an open heart that will accept any answer, whether or not it heals or it hurts. If you don't believe in that person, nothing they say will truly touch your heart or mend your spirit.
But recently, it has occurred to me that merely asking a questions and sharing feelings implies some sense of doubt: "Why did you do this? How could you hurt me this way? Do you even care?".
I thought about for awhile, and I figured that ultimately, this works on two levels: Trust regarding the problem in question, and trust regarding the relationship itself.
Assuming that one acts in faith, then not talking to the person means having a strong belief that they have never had ill intentions towards you. However, this logically means that in approaching the person with your concerns, you admit that you doubt their intentions and that you do not understand their actions.
I think that doubt in this case is at least an honest doubt. And it is ultimately a reflection of trust on another level: Trust in that person's honesty and the foundations of the friendship you share.
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It's scary, once you realize that sometimes, who you are just might not cut it. It's scary once you realize that there's always a chance, even if it's just a slight chance, that people will suddenly turn their face from you and walk away.
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As I heard the various singers coming out on stage and singing to his words, his music... I thought then that it hadn't been a complete waste, that all the time he'd sacrificed had not simply been a desperate attempt to escape from reality; there had been meaning to it. It wasn't much, but it was something.
And I started thinking to myself that perhaps, because of my lack of forgiveness, I was missing out on something. I started thinking that maybe I would like to become the person that he never became... Perhaps because he never got the opportunity to become that person.
And I started thinking to myself that when it comes to other people, we should perhaps give them the benefit of the doubt when we can. Add in a good measure of determinism when evaluating their flaws. Because we can't judge fairly, neither were we called to judge them. The only thing we have been called to do is to forgive.
As for ourselves, we should cut out the determinism as much as possible, except when it comes to evaluating our weaknesses and coming up with ways to solve them. We shouldn't 'use our character flaws as an excuse', as a friend once said, because those of us who know we have a choice also know that we make choices deep in our heart, all the time, whether or not we're completely conscious of every choice we make. Ultimately, God is watching us make all these choices before him.
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I just had an epiphany.
Perfumes and colognes are for making other people aware of your presence. They enlarge that presence.
All this while, I thought they just smelled nice. It makes sense now that people pay hundreds of dollars to buy them.
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