Unrestrained and Loved

Chris made me a Sufjan Stevens mix CD. This music makes me ache for connections that last longer than a cup of coffee, a band's set, after the bar closes, that run deeper than an icon on a "friends page", a friendship thats still there in the morning. People who mean more to me than their credentials. To be more than entertained. Sufjan's pleading vocals and soft music makes me wish I was capable of all this.

This weekend I was torn from my world of aquaintances and five minute friendships, my jumbled, productive, lively and exciting world. I went to a town where the same five families had lived, and almost only the same five, for more than fifty years, maintaining a tiny Methodist church and nothing else. I spent 36 hours straight with my immediate family, the antithesis of my quick and bursting life. The embodiment of the ties I cannot sever and reconnect at will, the people whom are not an asset to any of my endevours. They cannot and will not help me with my business or my revolution. I cannot walk away from them when things get sticky or cruel. And I cannot stand back and look at them, examine and enjoy them from a distance, as characters and works of art at my leisure. Because by them I am expected to be something in particular, to fit somewhere. You can't have it both ways. If I must remain at their sides, if I am to be left defenseless and unaided, I cannot also fufill another's requirements.

But if there was a way for someone to see me as nothing but myself, as nothing but a beautiful piece of existence to be left to shine and grow as I might, maybe then I wouldn't cut off the phone calls, and be constantly on the look out for the person I can get the most out of. Maybe I would be able to feel something again.