Letting Go of Logic

The sky is weeping – she has been for several days now. I watch the Earth turn pale and overcast as Summer takes her last breath and slips away blissfully to somewhere far and foreign, the details of her presence blurring away like the tail end of a hazy dream. It is the first week of autumn and the clouds have banded together in such a massive expanse that even the slightest glimmer of sunlight could not penetrate their dull, gray walls. The air is fragrant with the scent of rainfall; a chilly draft threads its way in through the air vents and the gaps in the windows to remind me that summer is over. 

It feels like just yesterday I was here, blogging about my day at the beach at the onset of the season; the air was warm and the skies looked like a watercolor painting of peach and amber hues at dusk. There was a palpable energy in the atmosphere that hummed with the promise of adventure, of new beginnings; so unlike the autumn and the winter, where the icy chill prompts a stillness in the air, as though the cold’s harshness has stopped time in its tracks.

I’ve come down with a vicious cold over the past few days and have been forcefully relocated to the margins of my living room; alas, it seems that even my immune system has gone on strike in protest of the drop in temperature. I’ve been wearing the same sweater and sweatpants combination for the greater part of seventy two hours, my hair resembles the likeness of a bird’s nest atop my head, little purple half moons have etched themselves into the hollows beneath my eyes, and I am a sniffling, congested lump of misery – theoretically, it is the perfect formula for producing a good piece of writing.

My temporary stint in solitary confinement has led to some catching up on all things sedentary – I finished the 700-page novel I’ve been reading for a month, I caught up on Netflix, I ate three or ten bowls of chicken noodle soup – and I fell down a rabbit hole browsing through old pictures. 

The pictures were saved on an old photo storage website I hadn’t logged into in years, but boredom led me to recover my login credentials and – voilà – I had struck nostalgic gold. Hundreds of pictures ranging from 6th grade to high school glimmered in front of me like digital fossils; ancient relics from the digital camera days, before the iPhone era. 

The very last picture I had saved on the account was of my first boyfriend who I’d started dating my sophomore year of high school. We were on our very first date; he is sitting across the table from me at a KFC where we shared an order of popcorn chicken. 

I stared at the picture for a while, replaying the day’s events in my head, reflecting on the innocence of it all, the simplicity of young love. And then I cried – likely a result of cabin fever combined with too much TheraFlu. 

The tears came as a bit of a surprise, but I understand why the image made me emotional. It was a sobering reminder of how much has changed across the span of my dating life – from first love to whatever era it is that I’m in now (I choose not to give it a name.) I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that dating will never be as simple as it was when we were kids and a KFC date was something to be treasured.

Since our first loves, we’ve all lived and loved and lost; scars atop of scars have formed impenetrable layers covering the parts of us that are genuine and vulnerable, the vital parts that enable us to truly understand each other. But interestingly enough, a lot of the dating advice I see circulating around the internet looks down on vulnerability, discourages revealing too much of yourself too quickly – dating becomes a battle of who’s better at acting the least interested. Do This, Not That. Say This, Not That. We must act one way, even if how we feel deep inside contradicts those actions entirely. I don’t think any of us intend to be cruel; our actions are defense mechanisms we’ve been conditioned to arm ourselves with after years and years of living though romances that have begun and ended. 

What an unnerving feeling it is to date for love, to search for reassurance in the arms of someone who has the capability to hurt you. And I must admit, all of the advice that I’ve heard regurgitated over and over again has led me to approach every encounter with logic instead of emotion; it feels like a game of chess where the mission is to keep my heart guarded at all costs. My body feels heavy, caving in under the weight of all of the things I wish I could say but have been conditioned to keep to myself, to conceal the parts of myself that are vulnerable, or weird, and therefore deemed unlovable. So how do we remain capable of love, when true love requires us to let go of logic?

I have this recurring nightmare – it’s late at night and I am taking a walk alone in a bad neighborhood (bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this.) In this nightmare, I know there is one street in particular I am supposed to avoid or someone will hurt me. Somehow, I end up on that street everytime. It’s as if, by some cruel test of fate, my subconscious can sense my fear and thrusts me into the very place I’ve meant to avoid, sabotaged by my own negative thoughts. I sense this form of self-sabotage presents itself in how many of us approach dating and relationships; we let our own trauma dictate a negative outcome, never truly opening our hearts and minds to the possibility of the good. 

The last time I had this nightmare, I woke up startled and short of breath, forgetting my surroundings. I was on vacation, 1,500 miles away from home in a villa on a remote island, the most beautiful island I’d ever been on. The sunlight spilled through the window blinds in soft golden stripes across my comforter, and the waves on the beach beyond our doorstep dipped and rose in a magnificent dance. 

And all at once I realized the bad neighborhood and the unsettling feeling was just the stuff of nightmares; nocturnal abstractions of an anxious and fearful heart. So while I admit that I am a woman who is mostly afraid, afraid of being in a bad place where someone will hurt me, afraid of vulnerability, of letting go of logic and trusting in love – I know that the fears are my own doing – that beyond the darkness, there is light; beyond the distress, there is solace. And for me, that’s a start.