Recently, over a single night, I began to unlock a new comprehension. It is difficult to express properly, and I brain-dumped in various places. First, while a loved one slept next to me, I messaged him with my thoughts as they were developing. My mind would not stop. I slept for only about 3 hours. But I wasn’t tired. At least I don’t think I was. I didn’t feel the need to sleep, but I also couldn’t keep hold of my thoughts. They slipped through my fingers and BUZZED on by.
I logged in to work, but my mind was not there. No thoughts connected, or were seen to their conclusion.
We went downstairs to get some coffee, and I took that time to allow my mind to wander, without trying to stop and focus on something else. I drank some coffee and felt more clarity.
I felt at peace, with him beside me, existing, peaceful.
For the remainder of the day, I was able to dip in between exploring my newfound understanding and getting some work done. And the work I did was a part of my job that I don’t often get a chance to focus on, and I felt that I got some very good and productive work done. Where I’ve previously been frustrated at a lack of progress and change, I refocused my approach and instead worked on a collaborative effort with another department on a shared issue, aiming to combine our understandings to find the solution we are missing, like I stopped cutting the tree and instead focused on sharpening the axe.
After work was done, I was able to return to analyzing my fleeting thoughts. I had a counseling session to get to, and on the way, I pondered these thoughts. When I got to the session, I decided to try something different and just word-vomited all my thoughts as they came to me. The councilor interjected in small amounts with good timing that did not disrupt my thought process. I explained that I was unsure if I was thinking nonsense, as my own lack of knowing how to express my thoughts TO MYSELF properly makes me doubt my own validity in a way. But at the same time, it didn’t do that, and I knew with absolute certainty that it was not nonsense at all, but that the words that I know and my understanding of those words limit my ability to express.
There’s a whole other tangent here regarding the limitations of language and how a culture forms that language with those limitations based on their ideals and values, and learning a language teaches you about that culture. And that language can evolve beyond that. However, sometimes it is better to use analogies to make up for the lack of suitable words. And I feel as though I see the struggle of the poet or the writer, who feels so deeply and surely that language and the known ways of expressing do not suffice, and do not do their meaning justice.
In one of the messages I wrote last night, I ended up putting it into a Google Word doc, as I felt that simply speaking the words would not convey my meaning, but that I may be able to use the written word in a more creative way to help me.
I realised I could use the usual known expressions, such as italics for emphasis, but wondered, what if a word had a meaning to me which I know to be very different from the way that the word is generally understood? For this, I put the word in blue. I found this to be effective for my purpose. I later used the same words again, but they were not in blue, as the meaning I wanted them to convey matched up with the meaning of that word, rather than being vaguely in line with the meaning, but not quite.
But this is a difficult concept to explain. I imagined spreading the concept far and it becoming a new thing, where someone would use a word to express something, knowing that the word does not necessarily express their intent in full. They could verbalize it by saying something like “I mean like love in blue”. In this way, the concept has taken its own shape and evolved beyond my own work of art, almost like it’s gained its own sentience, like how AI evolves in this way.
But let’s go back to the start, and what started all of this train of thought.
I have been seeing this person for a few months. I told him I love him and simultaneously wondered what that means. I felt sure of it and then questioned aspects of it and this had cycled around.
I had the realization that I don’t need him to say it back, but then wondered if that was correct, because I don’t mean by that that I don’t desire to be loved, because I do, actually. But what I realised was that what I am looking for is love, how I understand it, but that is not necessarily how he understands it. I want to feel a certain love from him, and I do feel that from him. But if he said he loves me, it would not necessarily mean the feeling that I am feeling, yearning for, and immersing in. And I think I’ve lived my life under the assumption that I just know what this means, so I’ve missed out on a deeper understanding of what a person experiences when they choose this word to express their feelings.
When I came to understand this, I realised that we have a unique bond which is only possible between these two souls. This doesn’t mean that the connections between another pair of souls are any more or less than this one. It’s just unique, and that’s beautiful.
And I realised that I have been caged by society’s own understanding of what love is and what connections are. They seem to view connections similarly to this: family, friends, lovers, all defined and separate and distinguishable and rigid. But I realize now that there is more in between all of that.
This person mentioned above, for example, would not be described as a friend, but a boyfriend also doesn’t feel quite right, for some reason. I feel like I haven’t liked that term for a long time anyway. But I don’t know what does quite fit. Instead, I came up with a couple of analogies to explain my feelings toward our connection.
He is like a flower, and I am a bee, admiring him from afar, not to distance myself but to be able to see his glory in full. Then I nuzzle into his warm center and breathe in his flowery scent and pollen, and feel bliss. And I want to see him flourish and grow.
He is also like a beautiful shining gem, and I am delighted that he wants to spend time with me and shine his brilliant warmth on me. And I want to share this warmth with others. I want his warmth to be spread far and wide.
And I realised that love is so expansive and has so many beautiful forms that I couldn’t fathom. I genuinely want him to experience as many forms of that as he can. I imagine a form of love with another soul that would never have happened between ours, and the thought of this brings me joy.
And I realize that there can still be jealousy. Complete opposite emotions can be present at the same time. I am not sure yet, but I think the type of jealousy I might expect to feel would be from a desire to want to experience that feeling myself, too. Perhaps. But I think in whatever form it takes, jealousy would have a deeper meaning and would be more complex than the simple, straightforward understanding of the word.
Connections are beautiful and evolving, and breathe a life of their own. The very concept feels as though it is its own form of art, created in collaboration between the souls involved.
I came to a realization that this is true and pure compersion. My understanding of this concept has evolved in leaps and bounds in just the past 24 hours. With this, my understanding of my own form of what polyamory means has taken shape. I realize that I truly have always felt this way, but that my comprehension of this was stunted and caged by society’s lack of awareness and understanding. Of this, I was vaguely aware, but not to what extent. Now that I have freed myself of that cage, I can recognize the complexities of love in its various forms, and I can recognize that compersion does not need to be only between lovers.
For example, I feel joy when my sister-in-law feels joy. She feels it so intensely, and it radiates out from her. We bonded over a shared love for music, specifically Yungblud, and we hype each other up in our excitement to enjoy his music and his art.
After my counseling session, I felt light and happy, and my thought was to call another soul from whom I had felt a genuine outpouring of compersion. I felt that I understood this better now, and saw the beauty of our connection better, and I wanted to share my happy feeling with him. So I called him and just said my thoughts as they came to my head. And he understood, and just as I expected, he related to what I shared and felt happy for it.
As I started to think about this, I looked at all of my interactions through new eyes. I saw souls with more clarity as I embraced the notion of sharing in their excitement over something that had not necessarily previously interested me. I felt that I wanted to see them reach their goals, even if those goals take that person far away from me, so long as it makes them feel joy, I want to see them reach that place of joy. I think I started to understand this notion a bit earlier, on the previous day, when I was listening to a podcast in which they discussed the difficulties of fostering relationships when you are a traveling performer. It’s still difficult to express how I felt at this particular moment, but I understood what they meant regarding their struggle. But I also feel like I understood how it could be possible to foster such connections under those conditions, if the souls connect, and how compersion would help.
So today had a few stand-out overarching topics that kind of seemed like they were different topics and trains of thought, but they connected in the end into a beautiful collaborative knowledge.
One topic is collaboration. Collaboration of departments to reach a common objective, of souls to form a unique bond, of language and art to give form to an expression.
Another topic is the complexities of emotions. Love is so vast and complex that the mere word does not do /it justice, but I feel like even through my limited understanding of French culture, when I have seen media of the French expressing love, I think it has more depth and complexity than it does in other cultures that I am at least familiar with.
The final main topic is expression. And with this, I can see how the topics have worked together. This very body of text is its own form of expression, and can be taken as a whole. If it were to take its own shape, it would tell a story of the complexities of emotions and a collaboration of language and passion.
