Solicitation of the Mind

Posted on October 12, 2018 by Apparently Catherine

Do you ever have a conversation with someone and they point something out and you think they’re nuts and then BAM! A while later you have one of those epiphanies that was actually in front of your face the whole time but you were somehow blind to it?

We bitched about one HERE and all I can say is that it has snowballed. Considerably.

Some background…

I fall hard for writers, not just any writers though, I only find myself becoming seduced by authentic wordsmiths who can articulate the inner workings of my mind through their own. The honest ones, the ones that validate me by letting me finally find acceptance of my own life and feelings, acceptance that I have craved from childhood. Those words…

Oh God. They stir my soul like nothing else ever has, they fill my heart with purpose and motivate me to want to change the world!

They make me feel this way because they are exactly who I want to be, who I authentically am.

So, I guess this is essentially my fucked up way of trying to love myself. The technical term is probably projection.

I desperately want to talk to my psychiatrist about it and yet I can’t.

You see… there’s an issue with that. Not just that I can’t come forward enough to speak out loud because I know I could write to her. The big problem is that…

I have gone and fucking fallen in love with her.

She isn’t even a writer! Well she could be, she has a way with words but I wouldn’t actually know, she’s extremely good at keeping her private life private and she’s very professional.

The technical term for my feelings here is transference. I am aware of that, I mean, I do all the talking in the relationship, I know absolutely nothing about her really. Yes, she is very beautiful and incredibly kind, but mostly she gives me the same validation I feel from those captivating wordsmiths, and (for a meagre $350 an hour) she listens to the authentic ‘us’, acknowledges me and appears to believe in me.

Perhaps pychology is just a seductive solicitation of the mind, in a way.

I can intellectually understand exactly why these feelings are emerging inside me, and I can equally comprehend that they have no real substance or potential to lead to anything more than feelings.

Nor would I expect otherwise. Even if it was an option persuing a relationship would be ridiculous.

What I don’t know is how to stop the subconscious feelings, the fantasies. Perhaps that is why I’m writing this now, maybe even publishing it in the hope that I will gain some clarity or closure about this uncomfortable situation, after all a problem shared is a problem halved. Or is it just a new problem beginning because the internet is forever and infatuation is fleeting…

Saying this out loud feels like such a big risk yet perhaps it’s yet another hippo in denial that I must acknowledge. I suppose I’m terrified that she’ll somehow read this, that I will make her uncomfortable and I will lose her. I’ve long stated only half jokingly that if she moved to the other side of the country I’d have to move too. Not because I’m in love with her, but because I couldn’t possibly start telling my story all over again to someone new.

The other issue that complicated things is that, as you know, I’m kind of part of a collective here in my head, body, life…

I/we have conflicting opinions about all sorts of things especially ourself/selves, questioning each other’s existence, comparing reality to perception to try and find a reason that we write and talk to ourselves. I have spent far to long trying to figure out what/who/why we are this way. It leads to so much confusion, so much conflict.

But ultimately, we are ‘Me’ these feelings we have, although seemingly individually, still affect all of us.

Marriage, children, businesses, sexuality, friendships, you know, all the big commitments in life.

We have always collectively considered ourselves straight and yet only I seem to remember our first consensual sexual experiences; and they were with other girls.

Then there have been various crushes I have had on women over the years that seem mostly forgotten or remained quietly unacknowledged by the others, maybe even by me, yet right now when I think of them I feel that familiar collection of anticipatory butterflies building in my throat.

I can imagine actresses like Nicole DaSilva and I get all hot and tingly at the thought of caressing her body, her breasts. Yet I don’t, can’t, make myself feel that same way about men. There was only ever one man I personally could think of in this way, and my heart broke a million times in the process, but he was a writer – and upon reflection, that too, was quite clearly transference.

And yet, despite my realisations in this area I know that the other parts of me are the complete opposite. They can’t relate to my feelings just as I can’t relate to theirs, emotional amnesia. So where does that leave me? Where does that leave us?

I/We, are happily married to a man. This is a man that they’re all attracted to even that part that seems to feel strangely masculine… My husband is a man who’s flaws are masked by a million reason why they are all head over heels in love with him, he’s the yin to their yang and there’s no doubt that they are perfect for each other.

I however, am not; and I don’t know how to pretend to be.

We are at a loss for how to sexually identify, neither gay nor straight, nor bi – because we are all different. Non binary perhaps? But not in the conventional way. It shouldn’t matter anyway, I intellectually champion the ‘love is love’ movement and yet emotionally I’m lost and unable to feel like myself because I’m body sharing, mind sharing.

I suppose in this self-governed mind-democracy, majority rules.

Lake.