I personally view love as an action. Some cultures are very conservative on using words to express love, and I wonder sometimes if that is more, honest, then cultures that over express and communicate love without the actions to back it up. What then, does the feeling mean that we get so caught up in, that in some cases could topple an empire? What is that feeling that has the capability to enslave us or set us free?
We are driven by personal, familia, cultural, and collective needs. Those needs can be attached to some very strong forces, depending on the sheer numbers involved. The manipulation created by those forces can be powerful. It is not if we are manipulated, but when, how, and why we are and how much control we have.
My marriage is not a cookie cutter relationship, although we are man and woman, and we did get married. My hope is by exploring the energies between my husband and myself, that it will enlighten the process of finding harmony between a couple in a world with so much diversity. We can see this same relationship deep within the individual, but God knows life is hard and its easier with a partner.
So the point I will try to make is about attraction. This force that brings two people together. Something so strong it can rearrange countries, or something that looks meaningless on the surface. How does the awareness and development of the individual affect such forces? And how does the connection to the collective affect such forces?
I will give my parents as an example, along with my subjective perspective and the mythology of stories told by my parents. I cannot confirm anything they said (because it is there memory not mine (I cannot even confirm my own memory)), other than I have a conch shell lamp that I have from my mom, with her handwriting that says 1959 and a Florida sticker on the inside. What I can confirm is how the myth affected me and the story it tells me. My dad was in the Navy and my mother was independent and working for the payroll department of a company. My mother was going on a vacation with some friends to Havana, Cuba, when they got to Florida, they found out that Havana had been taken over by Castro and they had to go to Nassau instead. My father’s ship was there, and he was on leave near the capital, when he heard gunshots as they were storming the capital. Some locals gave him civilian clothing and hid them (him and his shipmate) overnight. My dad says how they even stopped to play tennis, before getting back to the ship. They found out they were almost marked MIA and got yelled at for not returning right away back to the ship.
It is funny, but I am the only one who thought it was interesting that they might have met in Cuba at the time, my parents and sisters think nothing of it. Instead, they got back and met each other for the first time at a YWCA dance. But I guess, why would anyone, except me, be interested in what did not happen?
Now when I try to check my facts, I realize there was not a way for their paths to have crossed in Cuba at that time, and it is a mirage, a myth that my perspective cooked up just for me. I was going to erase this part, but it is maybe more honest and revealing to leave it in. Myths still convey information. It is interesting to me how when we look back at the past events overlap, truths become blurred, and patterns change all based on perspective.
My own story is quite different, then my parents. I often get pangs of envy of my parent's fairytale beginnings, their wedding photo where they are running down the stairs from the church looks so happy, it is a favorite photo of mine. She a modest and shy beauty pageant winner from a small town, who thought she would never marry, and he, a city boy, after the navy eventually became a teacher.
I was emerging from a depression when I met my husband at my new job. It was as simple as feeling like I had always known him and we couldn’t help but smile at each other whenever we passed each other by. I was to find out shortly after I met him that he had strong tides of depression in him that would haunt him most of our marriage, where as my depression was just an island of time. We were two people, dragged down by the subconscious, but as I will explain, we were and are stronger together.
So our states of depression are completely different. Whereas I fell in to a well of depression, so far down I worried I could not come back from it. I was not functioning, could not speak right, my thoughts would be too fast or not at all, and sometimes words would slip when I didn’t mean to say anything. I thought there was a possibility I would become homeless. My husband was subjected to tides of depression and of paralysis. He would think about suicide, he admitted to me, and that he would never do it because of his beliefs, but he was fascinated by it and was jealous of those who did. So, while I knew how it haunted him and he was in pain, he never used it to manipulate me or hold it over my head.
I say all this to set the stage for your understanding, of how we supported each other, how our personalities supported each other, because while I am an instinctive T for thinking, my husband is an instinctive F for feeling, and together we mastered the subconscious like Shiva standing on the demon and managed to find happiness.
To describe the difference between my husband and I, we had a conversation a couple of days ago where it occurred to me that he might be one of those people who does not think in words, I forget what triggered the thought. It had never occurred to me before because he is so articulate in his speech and has great memorization with lyrics and phenetics. I asked him, he said that might be true. I asked him what he thought about in the shower. He said nothing he just feels and tried to tell me what it was like. Like a barometer, I asked? he said yes kind of like that. I, on the other hand, think mostly in words, and how I will put things together to write about. I usually come out of the shower and jot something down, it’s kind of like there is something about the conductive nature of water that makes it easier to think and apparently feel. But that is subjective talk. More than likely he can think in words, but maybe the volume is turned down low and mine is turned up high.
I have always known, however, that he soaks in his mental food. His love of music. He has provided me the soundtrack of my life, and I will always be grateful, because I have neither the inclination nor the time, he does to suss out the quality sound like he does. In fact, that is what I would describe his filter, as quality to soak up or a quality to ignore. It doesn’t matter how intense, confusing, dark, or light, but the authenticity of the expression. Maybe that is why he was attracted to me, even though I wasn’t at my best at the moment, I was authentically me, no frills, just bare bones. Right now, his search for quality is in A24 films. While he says the movies are hit or miss, they are non-Hollywood films and have this similar feeling he cannot describe.
I suppose I should tell you what my few years of depression was like. I’m not keen on talking about it, although I’ve written and processed it over and over again. I had no real reason to be depressed, I had a wonderful and happy family and childhood, but it happened anyway. I’ll just paint a fictional picture that exemplifies a positive perspective without dwelling in the muddy waters that a selfish depression causes, because all depressions are self-centered by nature. Say I was falling, and failing into a subconscious well that had me trapped, had my attention trapped since childhood. So instead of trying to stop it, trying to climb out or slow it down, I took my Carl Jung books and let go and tried to see how fast and how far I could take it, without ruining myself. I was young so I thought I could handle anything back then. No drugs except my Adderall, I was a trip all by myself. I did not realize it would take me years to heal myself from it. Part of me wanted to learn from the extreme trip I was going on, part of me knew I was skipping steps again. Going to that extreme did help me wake up from the dream that had imprisoned me since childhood, but still not whole and not balanced.
We have spent all of our marriage, processing, and unpacking the subconscious, of ourselves in our marriage and as individuals. The roots of his family life circumstances contrasted sharply with the roots of my happy family life in a way that is difficult to describe. He has a lot of good people in his family, and they would all know what I was talking about when I say he had trouble with his family roots, and I guess that is all I will say about that. We built something together and now with children it is more about providing for them then our own selves, which was a happy change of pace for both of us, but would have been ill timed in the beginning, in fact I wasn’t sure if we would ever be ready for kids. Now though, we can fully focus on making sure our kids do not have the same difficulties we did, because we are so sick of our own thoughts, our lives are for them now.
My husband has always been supportive, in my schooling, and in my writing the past 25 years we have been together. I get a lot of value with our conversations about the hidden elements to what happens in our lives. He doesn’t have the same perspective as me, but it helps that he sees these hidden stories in what happens around us. I am very grateful for all that he hears. I would have been in a bad way without him, and I would not be who I am today. But the takeaway from this is, love is not always a fairytale, but is what you make of it, and we meet the people we need, to fill in pieces of our puzzle, not the people we want who would fail to fulfill or develop anything with in us.
Important you, as the reader, know from what perspective that I come from before I delve into aspects of energies in relationships. I have a lot of thoughts, both old and new, inspired by the book I just read, “A Strange Loop” and I feel overwhelmed with them, and I have obligations, so I am not sure if I will be on time posting next week.
1/30/25 9:40 AM I have mostly got done what I consider the second part of this, that will be posted next week. Nothing like time and pressure to ...create results I guess. I was really upset earlier this week...but I saw a cop car on my way to work...always a warning to me to slow down my thoughts. I was upset as well, because I didn't think I had the time to pull these strings in my head together...that I felt I needed too, before they slipped away. My son has been sick the last couple of days so I've been home with him, which was very helpful. He is fine, just a low fever.