Bi-Coastal Blossoms

When I lived in New York I made a new friend through an old friend I outgrew, in a very synchronous passing of the baton. This new friend so effortlessly embodied what the old struggled to provide. He was present, he was honest, and he was warm. My old friend was a blast, he was someone you loved to bring to a party. He was smart, funny, charming, but also unreliable, one foot out the door, and a bit of a lighthouse. Filling whatever he looked on with light, but never able to focus on anything for very long, a beacon and a warning both.

My new friend was a different type of novelty in my life. He had his own issues, but he was very open with them, attentive, always working on them. He was decidedly on land. Very much of the earth. You could imagine him with seeds in his pocket and soil under his fingernails. His light was not a 10,000 watt bulb, but a fire that needed tending. That threatened to go out, occasionally burned down to embers. But it was always so inviting, so comforting. He was the first male friend I ever had who spoke the language of emotional intelligence with me. It’s a sad fact to write but a truly wonderful experience because of its rarity.

My fire friend visited this month, in town for a wedding, and very early into the conversation his eyes filled and he touched my arm as I was speaking. After making sure this wasn’t a side effect of an unrelated breakdown, he let me know that he was overwhelmed by the emotion of seeing me, of talking with me, of speaking the same language. I wanted to feel touched, but mostly after feeling gladdened that he still likes me at all, I was jealous. You see I am seldom overcome with emotion anymore, except maybe, when reading or watching a meaty narrative film, or its opposite, the semi-regular sermon my brain recites on how I am alone and will forever remain alone and it’s better this way (then I perform the sacrament of eating my feelings and scrolling cat and Arsenal FC videos).

And that’s what we talked about, being nearly 40 and for the first time getting really honest about our emotions. Naming them, facing them, and feeling them without a secondary judgement. Without a sweeping away or a proper wallowing. I seem to be quite disconnected from my emotions recently, whether from a decade of anti-depressants or trying to protect myself from the fear of not getting what I want in life. And my fire friend’s emotions are coming through loud and clear. Not just a welling appreciation for the company of a dear friend, but an anger bellowing out from a deep place, one that had never been fully accounted for.

I’ve always thought of him as an emotionally generous person. It was the thing that made me first gravitate to him. He was able to share his personal shortcomings in a way that didn’t feel overwrought, that felt fair, evenhanded, maybe even clinical. But it really helped me to try and share my flaws and worries and insecurities. Something I had just started working on at the time, (when we were 25) because I was lucky enough to have dated someone just prior who led by example and was a very honest and non-judgemental communicator.

But it just goes to show how difficult thoughts and feelings truly are. I have always been interested in different perspectives, different people’s stories. My interest born from a rebellious teenage yearning, to be someone else. Not so much in personality but in history. To be someone with culture, with family, with “real” stories, from a “real” part of the world (get me away from all these freaking SQUARES man). And where that led me was a pretty windy road of self understanding. The first steps being other people.

So when I had my first real, mature relationship, I was blown away by someone knowing how they felt, what they could handle, when they were overwhelmed. That relationship formed so much of who I became as an adult, but it was a green pasture. The years after were not full of mature, loving relationships, they were packed with the opposite. Online dating. Miscommunications, ghosting, rejection, “I’m not ready for a relationship right now”, fun dates, snap judgements, adventure, rejection, self-doubt, playfulness, fantasy, rejection, rejection, rejection.

And through the rocky road of online dating in NYC, I backslid. I intellectualized the explanations while internalizing the emotions. How could I be devastated by all these non-relationships? I moved to New York to toughen up in exactly this way. “Learn to talk to women,” or what have you. Learn to take rejection with grace because I’m secure in who I am. So I attempted to project confidence, while internally I was hurt, and not taking care of the wounds I was accumulating.

This is one reason why I have so many strong friendships. I collect people who are emotionally mature, but also people who see me for who I feel I am. Those who remind me of the parts of myself that are special and worthwhile, that make me feel intelligent without encouraging a performance that pulls me left of center. We attempt to see each other and that is a salve in a world where we are stuffed to the bottom of the bag, and encouraged to hide the rough edges that make us who we are.

My fire friend and I are both in our life’s journey’s working through a 30+ year backlog of emotions. We have both used the language of our mental health journeys (SSRIs, therapy, long walks talking about our fears) to communicate some manner of our internal life, without fully and bluntly facing the biggest emotions, the ones trying to siren out of us. In therapy I am working on the idea of these emotions as protectors. Sadness, anger, anxiety, shame, all these things trying to tell us something about some part of us that is hurt. That needs healing attention.

I’m hoping to get back to a place (because I was once often overwhelmed by the beauty of good company) where I am more in touch with my emotions, where they are not processed simply for the least friction in daily life. That means losing my temper, but it also perhaps means better seeing the beauty all around me. Maybe even enjoying the illumination of a lighthouse while fully understanding the meaning of its message. Sharp rocks ahead. But also, you have arrived. Here you are. You don’t have to stay in the water. You don’t have to live by the coast.