I played piano a lot as a child. I found in the world of music a way that I could express the unexpressable inside of me. No one would tell me, "Don't be sad. Don't be angry" when I played sad or angry music. Somehow, music escaped the judgments and limitations placed on other expressions of feeling in our house.
When I played piano on a summer day, a fantasy would always come to mind. Someone who knew much more about music than anyone in my family or our social circle would be walking down the street, and hear my sound drift through the windows, and would stop and listen in amazement. "Someone in that house is a genius!", they would say; "Someone doesn't know the gifts he has! They need to be discovered!". And they would come in, and whisk me away to a musical school where I would be trained, and my genius would be discovered, and I would become world-renoun, and finally recognized as having something of value inside of me.
As an adult, I have a similar alternate fantasy. There is an island I periodically swim to - it is unknown, and involves hiking to a deserted part of a river, swimming across the river, climbing up rocks and down a deep slope on the other side, and there I can lay in the sun in total isolation and peace. I would do this journey, and then imagine some beautiful woman would come along, discover me, and make love to me in the sun and the wildness.
The odd thing is that I first make myself totally unreachable, and then hope that someone will reach me.
A mother would do that. If a child was lost in the woods, she would search day and night, climb over every hill, call on everyone she could think of to help, and would not give up until all hope was gone. One of the comforts of being a child in a loving family is you can try as hard as you want to hurt your parents, or destroy your world, or isolate, or be obnoxious, or become unreachable, and the parent's love and patience will always overcome the distance you create. Love will always win out. And some of us, since we did not get that at home, are still trying to get it as adults. Unfortunately, as adults, we are far more capable of hiding and isolating ourselves, of creating barriers to intimacy, of sitting in victimhood and resentments, and we can succeed, if not in actually stopping love, in preventing ourselves from experiencing love, sometimes for the rest of our lives.
This weekend, I realized that no one is coming. I can make the difficulty of getting through my barriers so difficult that no one will ever succeed. I can create a world so full of victimization that no one could ever convince me I am loved. That I can sit as a victim forever on my isolated hilltop, waiting for someone to come along and save me from myself. And that I am now poweful enough that no one can tear me away from my own insistance.
The thought of letting go of my defenses is terrifying. I've been hurt too many times. I don't want to be fooled again. Each mere glance causes years of hurt and betrayal to flare up before my eyes, and once again, I feel betrayed, and withdraw more.
Yet no one is coming. No one can save me from myself. I will be all alone unless *I* take down the walls and do not make it so difficult.
It is my choice whether or not to know love.
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