I need to be better...

“I didn’t know I was lonely ‘til I saw your face. I didn’t know I was broken ‘til I wanted to change. I wanna get better.”

Two weeks ago, I lay in bed deflated. For a month, I had placed comfortably all of my emotional eggs in a basket known as the Los Angeles Dodgers. I do this every year to some extent, but this year, the weight of those eggs felt tenfold. What else is there to do in 2017 when everything feels as though it’s falling apart, besides grasp onto tiny — and yes, perhaps in the grand scheme of all that matters right now, otherwise meaningless — threads that may lead us to some semblance of fulfillment?

I lay in bed on the verge of tears.

Let me take a step back for a second.

I don’t cry much. I can count on two hands the amount of times I’ve cried in the last ten years. I can perhaps even list them here. The deterioration of a relationship with the person I thought I’d be with for, at the time, the next ten-fifteen-twenty years of my life. A fight with my closest family member. Figuring out the deep wounds I still had from my relationship, and lack thereof, with my father. Seeing my first godson for the first time since a sudden break-up of a relationship that I thought at the time was relatively healthy.

There have been close ones, but they’re often unpredictable and about seemingly innocuous situations. A few years ago, on a train to Bronxville to visit our old campus, two of my best friends mentioned that this person I had a passive thing for at Sarah Lawrence *may* have dated someone that I had a mild distaste for. I nearly broke down in tears, while laughing. If pressured for reasoning today, I still couldn’t tell you why. I think Melanie and Stacey’s approximate words were, “You’re in a fucked up place if you’re crying over someone you were never going to date anyway.”

Last weekend, I nearly broke down crying in a bar when someone I love deeply texted me, and it dawned on me that I had been unreasonably dismissive towards her.

I think my Comadre has described it best: “For someone who’s always talking about emotions and how people should feel them, you don’t really seem to let yourself feel them all that much. I’ve read about people who don’t cry. It’s not good.”

And it’s true. In a lot of ways, I’ve molded a perfect facade that allows me to present the *illusion of feeling* without ever really fully feeling. It goes without saying that I am a deeply, emotionally erratic, often dramatic person, but there are times when I’m still unclear about what my most genuine feelings are and which are the feelings I present merely for the reaction of others. And the line between the two is a dangerous one. It’s the difference between processing my existence in order to get to a better mental place and psychologically manipulating the people that I love. Even as I write this, I wonder if it’s for my own processing or for *your* response. It’s often hard for me to tell.

We often refer to our “monkey brains” as the innate and unchecked actions we carry out or just fathom despite logically knowing better. I think my monkey brain is directly connected to my feelings. As a child, I learned quickly how to use my emotions to get what I wanted. I knew every way around my mother’s emotions. I knew that silent treatments worked. I knew that pouting worked. I didn’t have to cry. I didn’t have to yell. All I had to do was shutdown, and this triggered her loneliness, her disconnection, and it caused her to respond in a manner that would appease me and bring me back to life. I learned this too hard. I took this skill into my teen years. My early adult years. Shit, I took it into my late twenties. Scraps of it are still inside of me right now.

I’ve spent the last five or so years of my life trying to get to a better place mentally. The start of the journey was to face some real fears I had about who I was and how I connected to people and how I cope with those fears:

1. My fear that one day every one I love will abandon me.

2. My fear that I will never matter to someone as much as they matter to me.

3. My fear that I will never fully understand and truly know the people I love.

The real trick to it all has been coming to an understanding that these things could all very well be true. And that I have to be good *anyway*. I have to be a good friend. I have to be a good brother. Son. Partner. Teacher. Human. *Anyway*. I have to do it for myself and my own stability, not as a means of avoiding the quicksand of my fears. Nothing will save me from them. And I have to be better in spite of that. I *need* to be better.

It turns out that people will leave. It turns out that I will never know how anyone feels until they work through their own shit enough to be able to tell me. Hell, most of the time it’s not even necessary for me to know. Whether it’s because it’s not my right to know or because words are not necessary. Love isn’t only shown in words. And, most of all, love is not quantifiable. It is not my love versus your love. There is no scale for love. No Lady Justice. I can only love my best and hope to fill my life with people who love their best.

I’ve spent the better part of my life in search of the perfect words for imperfect feelings. But something as complex, as ever-evolving as what we feel can have nothing so concrete as words assigned to it .

And I need to go about life knowing all of this.

I need to feel. More genuinely.

I need to cry more.

I need to tell people I love them because it’s the right thing to do, not because I expect to hear it back.

So I lay in bed, on the verge of tears two weeks ago. The Dodgers just pummeled after holding their own for six games. And, as I described it to friends, it was like having the dam that held my emotions needle-pinned with tiny holes. Over and over again. Such a small, inconsequential thing. But everything came pouring out bit by bit. And I took it out on the people I loved, the ones closest in proximity. Because, as it turns out, I’ve worked so much to manipulate my own feelings that I still have a hard time knowing what to do with the real ones. So many things I truly feel are held up by a wall of things I *think* I feel.

I need to be better than this. I need to be better in two ways: 1. In that I need to improve every day, forgive myself when I don’t and move forward. I need to constantly do the work. But, more importantly, 2. I need to be a more healthy person. And even when it’s hard, even when I need to push away a flood of shit to get to it, I need to wake up in the morning, and I need to make my bed. I need to cook some food. I need to wash my dishes. I need to take a walk outside. I need to call my friends. I need to drink less, even when I feel like I’m already drinking less. I need to eat better. I need to be a productive human. I need to respond to the family group text more often. I need to say *I love you* more often. I need to take more pictures. I need to shave more often. I need to say nice things. I need to do better work. I need to be better. I need to feel more.

I need to do all of these things, even when it’s hard. Even if the world feels like it’s falling apart. Even when there isn’t a sign of light. Even though every day we’re all dying. Because doing all of these tiny things is a small way to keep me — to keep us all — alive.