“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”
- Franz Kafka, Letters to Melina
Wilde to Bosie, Virginia to Vita, Frida to Diego - why must love, the strongest of it, be encased, cemented in pain? Is it truly possible to love as passionately and artfully as they claimed to love one another? Or do words make things feel truer than they are?1
The persecution of love, the agony of desire. What can make something more tempting than forbidding it? What is more appealing to the artist than pain? I love you, you are not here; I love you, we cannot be together. Passion holds the pen and imagines it is being watched. Passion writes the words praying they will long outlive it. Passion seals with a kiss and hides in a waistcoat pocket and withers pathetically in the court of law2. Passion is hedonism - love is narcissistic - desire is sin. All begging ardently: "Feel." When all one endures is loneliness and sorrow how can they not grasp onto any semblance of understanding? How can they not cling to anything tangible with bloodied fingers and scream, "this is mine!"?
The pain of separation, longing, betrayal, condemnation - is it not hoarded, suckled greedily, for confirmation of a self? Does it not validate one's misery? To place pain within love is to allocate space for the hurt within the pleasure, and to take a sadistic excitement in watching oneself fall apart in the mirror. The need to be witnessed in destruction is as integral to human nature as breathing. To document is expect an amnesia. For whom do they write these letters, which speak of longing and devotion in such poetic depictions - are they for the beloved or the lover? For their forgotten wives and husbands? For the common folk, or elitist peers? Or are they, in an indirect, inarticulable way, for the voyeur? For you and I? Can recorded feeling ever be fully separated from performance?
If you love me, love me quietly. I understand God's request, now - love me when no one is looking. When neither the sun nor the moon shines upon your face. Love me without witness. Love me wordlessly, selflessly. I don't want letters.
why you should journal anyway <3
I wrote the previous passage in my own journal a few years ago, probably feeling jaded after seeing one too many quotes about the ‘agony of love’ on tumblr. I think I should clarify - it’s not that I don’t think love can be as all-consuming or painful as artists (and writers in particular) make it out to be. Of course it can. Love, I think, can be the most all-consuming and painful thing there is. I only mean to question whether, if we’re being completely honest with ourselves, how much of that obsession and pain is self-centered3. How much of it is exaggerated or romanticized or self-indulgent. How much of the pain is from the blow, and how much is created by pressing on the bruise.
I once loved an artist. They wrote me the most lovely poems and the most beautiful songs and the loveliest letters. Then, during our long and ugly separation, they admitted (perhaps in anger, but it was likely true nonetheless) that they realized they had never truly loved me at all; and I realized that I had subconsciously known that all along. Because the songs and the poems and the letters, as beautiful as they were, were never about me. They were about, essentially, the perfect and perfectly imaginary girl of their dreams, whose image happened at that time to be projected upon my body. Because I was ‘nice’ and ‘pretty’, in the songs I was an angelic being of unparalleled beauty, and so on. This is, of course, nice to hear, but as unrealistic and uncomfortable as if they had called me an incredible athlete with great self-esteem. Like, thanks, but it’s just not true.
I guess my point is that, for whatever reason, people (myself included) are prone to projection. We’re inclined to cling to people who make us feel something and convince ourselves that they make us feel everything. Most of us like to feel, even the bad feelings, and sometimes especially the bad feelings. Sometimes, we feel as though if our love or our suffering or our pain are big enough and tragic enough and profound enough that we will win Best Picture for the imaginary movie in our heads. Have you ever watched yourself sob in the mirror and pretended other people were watching you, too? If not, good for you I guess, but you’re missing out on some insanely satisfying shit.
All of this is to say that yes, sometimes I exaggerate and dramatize in my private journals to make myself sound cooler and more sophisticated to imaginary voyeurs. Sometimes I assign excessive personal meaning to others without full consideration of their holistic, autonomous personhood4. And I want, maybe more than anything, to experience the depth of love that all my favorite authors wrote about.
But I think in my obsession with pleasing the non-existent Cool Guys of the male gaze5 that watch me and judge everything I do, in wanting them to think that I feel more deeply and love more passionately than I do, I am doing myself and those I care about a disservice. Because while I am deliberately putting myself in harm’s way with the objective of gaining more Pain Points™ to make me more interesting, I am reducing other people’s entire existence to the role they are playing in my story. I am using them for character development or to further the narrative or as a plot device to justify my fears and pain and insecurities6. It’s a symptom of a hyper-individual, ego-centric Western culture in which individuals quite literally see themselves as the main character of life. Other people we interact with are interpreted through a cinematic lens - the flawless love interest, the scheming mean girl, the evil ex, the meaningless background characters. Once we cast them a part in our story, we interpret all of their words and actions through this framework. We deny them personhood by perceiving them only in relation to ourselves. We inadvertently create a life-size echo chamber in which our lives reflect and amplify our own desires, fears, and insecurities - and we blame it on everyone else.
So maybe journaling just makes us conscious of a process of interpretation that we undertake even when we’re not writing it down. Maybe we’re trying to be unique and profound and main-character-in-an-indie-bildungsroman, like, all the time, and only become aware of it then. I don’t know. Maybe it’s not that deep, or you’re thinking, “who’s we?!” and I’m not making any sense at all.
My point is, I think until we become self-critical about the framing through which we interpret our lives and the ways they intersect with the lives of others, journaling is always going to feel cringey and uncomfortable, because in our mind’s eye every time we pick up the pen there’s a wide shot of our bedroom, pensive instrumentals, and a voice-over like it’s the end of an episode of Moesha. Dear Diary, I guess I was wrong about life being a fruitless and maddening endeavor in which we subject ourselves to constant agony for the small consolation of a delusion of understanding. Turns out she just didn’t see my text, and I had PMS! xoxo, Me.
I don’t know how to get rid of the voyeurs or insecurity or the male gaze or whatever it is that makes private writings feel like a group activity. My strategy, though, is to write for them anyway, and then roll my eyes at myself and write it again, but honestly this time. Am I really forsaken by God and man alike or am I just depressed? Is that guy really a dream come alive, the key to my future, and the antidote to my isolation, or am I just lonely and projecting? There’s nothing wrong with writing about how things make you feel. There’s nothing wrong with being a little self-pitying and dramatic. But with the enormous caveat that we can distinguish our interpretation of our lives from the reality of our lived experiences7. This is no easy task, nor is it a one-and-done type thing. It takes monumental conscious effort to forgo our perceived monopolies on narrative and truth. But it truly is a valuable skill, one worth practicing for more reasons than just avoiding sounding corny while journaling.
Plus, I think that even if you do sound corny, even if you are constantly self-indulging and melodramatic, you’ll eventually reach a point where your processes and arsenal of reactions become so standardized that you begin to learn from them. Like, okay, every time I experience rejection, I decide there’s no point in ever trying to build a relationship with anyone ever again. And every time I have a good day with people I love, I decide that connection and emotional intimacy are the only reason for existence. So maybe this says something about me; maybe I can learn from this.
The thing is, pushing through the original discomfort of self-awareness is what’s going to actually allow that self-awareness to go anywhere. And, let’s be honest, most of us probably won’t have people lining up to read our journals when we’re dead. I’m not Kafka or Plath and you’re probably not either. It’s okay to be ordinary, and have ordinary emotions and an ordinary life. There’s something brave in that, I think. Something much braver in honesty than performance. Some days you will be tired and your tummy will hurt and you will have no offhand esoteric musings to offer. That’s okay. It’s okay for love to be unassuming and quiet, and for pain to be genuine but not extraordinary. It doesn’t make you less intelligent or emotionally mature or interesting. It makes you human. That, too, is enough. I promise.
I would love to hear your thoughts, comments, concerns, vehement objections, etc! Thank you for reading <3
I apologize in advance for the excessive question marks and pretentious style. I was eighteen :/
Oh Oscar…
Here meaning ‘centered around the self’ as opposed to ‘selfish’; not denoting negative connotations.
Had a genuine breakdown because I convinced myself someone I had spoken to twice in the past ten years was the predestined Love of My Life and I had missed my chance to be with them and would now be alone forever. So.
Everyone say “thank you, Laura Mulvey, for giving us a name for our collective female delusion that we all individually thought was personal psychosis.”
I’ve seen some of this narrative play out on TikTok as rebranded girl-boss feminism; “every guy who screws you over only exists to help your character development, girls who don’t like you are only side-characters who are jealous of you, etc.”. Also the recent rise in referring to people who do normal things as NPCs and implying they are soulless/inhuman/inferior… as though your humanity is diminished by reacting in an average way to a prank Youtuber in public or wearing boring clothes…
i.e., The feelings of “everyone leaves me, nobody ever wants to put up with me, etc.” (self-centered thinking) are totally valid, but so too might the thought that “this person separated themself from me to protect their own mental health and well-being, which is justified and likely not done with malicious intent” (taking other perspectives into account).