One of the unexpected "perks" of working at a research hospital, is that despite my job's administrative function, I am still exposed to scientific research - and most recently it was a talk given by a leading researcher. The topic was the kinds of diseases that arise from mitochondrial malfunctioning (RNA instead of DNA), and it could easily have been dry and alienating, except for the speaker's sassy and idiosyncratic delivery. Instead of filling it with jargon - he couched the theme in the concept of energy (mitochondria being the energy centers of cells), which made it relatable.
My biggest takeaway was that the millions upon millions of electrical signals generated by the mitochondria in each of our bodies is equivalent to the energy unleashed by a bolt of lightning. It was galvanizing to learn.
I often think of things in terms of energy, particularly interactions between people. It is a core value of mine to keep the energy going - to respond and follow up when people reach out, to engage and reciprocate. It bothers me when it doesn't, when the energy drops, when the potential is lost.
I have a bias, toward action. I understand all of the reasons for inaction, because I have lived it so thoroughly. The closest thing to suicide I have experienced was a phase of extreme apathy, where I could not find the motivation to do anything, where the concept of doing any in particular so evaporated from me that throwing myself over the balcony seemed just as light as well.
So I can't take for granted that I have motivations, desires, ideas for doing things. Just having an idea is enough of a reason to do it - if it has arisen in me, it is enough to be dignified with actualization, and it cannot have been truly random or insignificant.
I'm sure this disposition of mine is baffling to others, just as the disposition toward inaction is just as baffling to me, however much I might excuse it in others.
What hurts is not the mutual bafflement. It's always the lack of understanding, of where I came from that led to where I wanted to be, the long tunnel of self-censorship and neutered emotion that I traversed to be who I am. It's always as if my dominance obscures my empathy, or negates any possible coexistence.
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Of course, I am trying to bridge the gap. I don't, and can't, expect people to understand.
A simple misunderstanding with Patrick, in which I tried to be helpful, defensively - and us picking the incident apart - allowed me to see that the information that was most helpful, and should have been presented first, was that I empathized. And it is so hard, when feeling defensive, to reveal the empathy and vulnerability first.
The greatest, and most difficult, of all actions - is exactly this kind of deep change.
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The most motivating factor for this change is the idea that it could have been helpful, to the one I loved, in the relationship we'd had.
All of the love, with nowhere else to go, could only be used to make me the kind of person that would have loved better. Anything that might have contributed to us working out. If only you could see: my love for you made me.
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It is precisely because of this that my most traumatic relationship has been my most revolutionary. I will never be able to regret the trauma, because the changes have been so dramatically for the better.
I refuse to let trauma (negative) go by without a corresponding transformation (positive).
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There is a reason that I am in the most extraordinarily creative period in my life. I cook, I write, I dance, I read, I paint, I play piano.
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Not a day goes by.