The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.
— Willa Cather, The Professor’s House
I have a desire to know, even if the knowing might hurt me. Some people would rather not know. They may be avoiding their feelings. I can’t do that. My feelings are like a flashlight in the dark. I can’t help but look to where they point, even if what they point to is unsightly.
When something triggers me, I want to know more about it, to understand its power over me. I become, admittedly, a little obsessed. Like pressing a bruise, the pain is familiar. Why must you do this to yourself? asks a mothering voice in my head. As a writer, I’m curious about people, about the treachery of relationships. Every writer has a trace of the masochist in them.
I’m better equipped for this journey through the dark forest than I used to be. My brain is less likely to jump to conclusions, to come up with theories that justify my feelings. Curiosity leaves the door open to possibility. Paranoia shuts it. Paranoia sees only what it wishes to see. Curiosity is the desire to see more and more and more. It’s the desire to understand.
I’m unafraid to look because I know that whatever I see isn’t going to kill me. It may hurt (it will hurt), but the pain is salubrious. It has an uncanny way of alchemizing into crystalline insight over time.
Those who prefer not to know may be capital A “Avoidant,” but not necessarily. Everyone chooses their own adventure. There’s no right or wrong path. When you look away, you’re choosing simplicity over complexity.
I once tweeted that I don’t want complexity in love. But it’s much more nuanced than this. Being in a stable, healthy, loving relationship is a blessing—no one should mistake anxiety and high drama for love—but at the same time, I recognize that some amount of complexity is unavoidable. I’d rather not be in a situationship. I’d rather not have to deal with betrayal or even just the conditions for it. But if I must, I would choose to face the truth—his and mine—head on. I would choose emotional complexity over “okayness” any day, even if it hurts, even if my feelings reveal something unflattering about myself: that I can be hypocritical, jealous, resentful, judgmental, petty. I’d rather see it all.
I’ve only arrived here because I’ve accepted that my virtues and flaws go hand-in-hand. The point isn’t to become shadow-less. It’s to see your shadows more clearly. Last Sunday, I attended a “rabbit hole” hosted by my friend Kasra. The idea is to pick a topic you’re curious about and dive into it via blog posts, Wikipedia, a book, chatGPT, what have you. One person rather cheekily rabbit-holed into his flaws. When he presented what he learned, we laughed. Our shortcomings make us whole. They can endear us to a room full of strangers because they are so damn relatable.
You can’t be a lover without being intensely curious about your loved ones. I don’t have to ask my partner the thorny questions whose answers might pain me, but I want to because it allows for the possibility of a deeper understanding—and understanding is everything. It’s the foundation of love and beauty and truth.
We all have our unknowable corners. The interesting thing about marriage is you commit to the idea of getting to know those corners and of really looking at them when they develop into a different thing. That, to me, is what marriage is: showing up to do the work of re-seeing someone again and again.
— Mira Jacob in Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn
To re-see the person you love again and again is to re-see yourself. Their corners are your jagged angles.
Once, I entertained a fantasy of living in a brownstone in Brooklyn with a backyard and a deck, built-in bookshelves, shuttered bay windows and wainscoting. As you can imagine, the cost of such a home is unjustifiably high, which is frustrating, and the frustration intensified my yearning. Getting dinner with my friend Crystal, talking about something else, she said, “I would rather have spiritual wealth than material wealth.”
I dropped my fork and looked up, realizing then that I had everything. I would rather be where I am today, laboring on my never-ending novel, working through difficult emotions with my friends, trying to understand a little bit more each day, than living in the brownstone of my dreams without any of it.
“Why does this hurt so much?” is a question I’ve asked myself and will probably continue asking as life offers more lemons. Often, the answer isn’t obvious. But when I do find a tiny gem of insight—and I always do—I’ve gained an understanding that’s immeasurable.
After you've peered under enough rocks, you eventually learn that it's not necessary to overturn every single one. And then you can move on to climbing the mountains...