therefore

Because I don’t feel comfortable about expressing my displeasure.

Because I feel that the other person will reject me for complaining if I express my hurt, my disappointment, my dissatisfaction or my need.

Because I expect that the other person will push me away, or leave me, for complaining.

Therefore I leave first.

Therefore I express my dissatisfaction as my reason for leaving.

Therefore I say ‘I cannot stay here I am leaving because this situation hurts me’.

I don’t just say ‘this situation hurts me.’

Meaning ‘I don’t want to leave I want to stay but to fix it’

Because I want to make it easier on the other.

Because I expect them to not want to deal with me.

To leave.

Therefore I leave.

Therefore.

But I hope they will stop me.

And I am even more hurt that they don’t.

More disappointed.

More unloved.

Do I hurt myself, or do you hurt me by letting me go?

Did I not try first in very many ways, and clearly, to say to you what I feel?

Before it became a complaint,

Whilst it was still a concern?

Didn’t I say it?

Didn’t you hear?

Didn’t you reject me already,

Each and every time,

When I tried, and you heard, but ignored?

Didn’t you make me a moaner when you overlooked the need for communication in every relationship

And about how that takes two?

I don’t want to be a moaner and so I will let you go.

Am I being unloving in letting you go?

Am I being unkind?

Should I understand your difficulty with communication?

With intimacy?

With closeness?

Should I stay here and care for you instead of reacting?

Am I not seeking your respect when I leave?

When I say I cant be treated like this am I not doing it for the sake of both of us, for is it not as hurtful for you to treat me so as it is for me to be treated so?

No? Some would say no. Perhaps Christianity would say no

Perhaps it would say have unconditional love

Seek to love and do not seek to be loved.

Perhaps it would say ‘seek not respect for yourself but the wellbeing of the other’.

It would would it not?

But would Christianity allow me to walk away?

To say, ‘we don’t communicate well enough. Let me leave so that you will be more happy and I will be more happy, and any future kids either of us might have will be more happy’.

Is that not love?

But am I just playing with words?

Just complicating what is simple,

With words?

Do I know, do I not know?

I do.

But look.

I was hurt,

And I acted this way.

I felt eager to reach you, but you were not there and I was made ashamed.

And call it pride

And say that love cannot happen with pride

And say that I was wrong

And that I ran away

And that it is unreasonable for me to want you to run after me too.

But there it is, I do.

And I have left you.

a question i want answered

what are the ethics of making an art piece out of your life - of creating a photograph or capturing a picture with words?

on the one hand, you are sharing your love for the aesthetic. it is a voice. you are speaking and sharing an experience.
you open a moment of the world, to others.

on the other hand, you open up a moment of privacy to the public. you interfere with your personal relationship to the world and to reality. you expose what you shared. you interrupt your direct communion with the other, and you make it 'all about the what you will show later'. you destroy the personal, the private, and generally that calmness that allows for beauty to be.

if i meet a cow in the street. and it looks at me and i look at it, and we see one another. it is me and it. anything can be said. but what if i always say, 'oh cool what an object', and i photograph it because i want to take this moment and bring it into my other arena of being, the facebook one, the one where i draw out an identity.
don't i then kill the essence of my relationship to that cow?
don't i make our meeting about 'that other facebook world i have in my mind'
don't i sacrifice this new immediate spontaneous relationship i have with the cow to the 'facebook kingdom'?
don't i silence that cow?
isnt it right that that cow no longer stops to engage with me but turns away in disdain, disappointment, hurt, dislike?
wasn't it i that denigrated our relationship? our moment? our opportunity and possibility?

ok at least the cow can tell. it can turn its back from me. my rich and beautiful world will be ruined and made plain for the sake of this 'facebook common space that i hold dear to my heart despite despite'. perhaps it will. I hurt my self, i insult the cow, i hurt also the cow by leaving it with one less person to speak to.

but do i dare to do this to a child? to another person? How can i make myself so poor? how can i render myself so useless to others? what is worth this? what filth and what addiction makes me think nothing of it? of this slaughter? of this denouncing of beauty?

So what do you think? Am I wrong in the way that I see this? in the way that I feel it?
Should I just go on, until I become numb, until I feel it no more, until I forget?

so let me hear your answer.