Psychoanalysts say that the first trauma we all experience is the act of being pushed out of the womb without our consent. Babies cry because it’s the primal protest against separation, against exile from paradise. Being born is the myth from Genesis incarnated: one moment in an amniotic garden that answers every need, the next cast out for gaining consciousness of your own existence. God damn all I ever did was open my eyes. Since then I’ve been falling horizontally, without pause or rewind.
The default profession of a baby is philosophy. All we ever wanted was to make sense of what’s going on and understand why. We forget our first cry, but the trace of that directionless complaint—that plea for God you never experience again except during turbulent flights or food poisoning—echoes across the years, sometimes as melancholy, sometimes as exuberance, sometimes as the vague restlessness that propels us to change jobs, lovers, cities, as though each substitution might repair the initial trauma, only for its soft, haunting presence to creep barefoot into our room late at night, to sit on the edge of our bed and pet our forehead when the rest of world is asleep.
God, why have you given me the ability to learn too much of myself, to know what makes me fearful or bitter yet not how to escape it? Was this your intention—that I, gifted with thought, should endanger my own peace? And is peace even the highest good if it comes at the expense of intensity? Exuberance?
I hate that platitude about “healing yourself before…” before what? Before you start living? Who are you getting perfect for? Who are you rehearsing for? There’s no dress rehearsal, everyday is the real deal, and your entire life is made up of everyday’s—are you really going to spend it on gazing inward? There has to be something better than any kind of self-improvement or martyrdom. Does mindfulness matter to someone willing to kamikaze into their deepest, most vivid, excruciatingly genuine passion?
There comes a point you should stop explaining how you feel and just go live it out. Or let it roll off your back. Or whatever you want to do with it. Reject therapy speak, that empty signal of being an emotionally literate teetotaler who pretends to be open to talking about pain when all it does is make it easier to hide how inadequate they truly are at handling matters of the heart.