My Hungry Ghost,

"Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us: it's our hour of triumph that brings the void." --W. James

That's objectively true, right? Isn't it times like the one you're describing that bring out the best in us? The times when you feel like you might stop breathing at any moment? The times when academia, friends, family, lovers, pull you apart in so many directions that it just doesn't feel like enough molecules comprise your body? The times when you feel like simultaneous implosion and explosion is imminent? Of course--it's only "the best" in retrospect. I think James probably knew that when he penned that particular quote. I don't think he was so naive as to think that "need and struggle" are actually enjoyable--but they are the times that we reflect on with pride and fondness in some strange, masochistic way.

trans⋅par⋅en⋅cy
–noun, plural -cies.

1. the quality or state of being transparent.
2. something transparent, esp. a picture, design, or the like on glass or some translucent substance, made visible by light shining through from behind.
3. Photography.
a. the proportion of the light that is passed through the emulsion on an area of a photographic image.
b. a photographic print on a clear base for viewing by transmitted light.

I feel like that sometimes--only sometimes, and with some people. Like a photographic print on a clear base, constructed specifically to be viewed by transmitted light. Like I have to be held at the correct angle with respect to the sun in order to be seen correctly and fully. Like not many people know what angle that is. Like I'm glad that they don't. Like I think maybe you do, and I can think of maybe two others (maybe. barely.). Like I think I'm glad that it's only a few that can see through these awkward mannerisms, and inappropriate facial expressions and beyond to what's creating them.

I think I have a new (or at least new to me) metaphor for you, and I think it's a little more accurate, a little more precise than the others: LOVE IS DESTRUCTION, which can translate to LOVE IS FALLING, LOVE IS INFECTION, LOVE IS INSANITY. I especially like thinking in terms of infection... Love/infatuation as an illness that needs to be cured. Like you have some infection that's making you incredibly feverish and irrational, and you just want to shake it so that you can start to see life and people through a clearer lens? Through the lens you used to use? Objectivity is such a need for me. To have my objective skills bound like this is intolerable. My pro/con lists feel useless. Everything feels like it's happening outside of me and my experience. This thing, this infection, has taken a life of its own, and I'm not sure what it's doing, where it's heading, what organs it's shut down, which tissues it's planning to invade next. I'm not sure how close I am to death.

(Have I taken the metaphor too far yet?)

It's not just "social" infatuation that does this either, I'm including "parasocial" infatuation as a possible catalyst too. It too can blind you, distort your priorities, change your self-concept in ways that are disproportionate. House made me forget that sociality is important to people for a reason. Rube (Dead Like Me) made me forget that I'm alive. Paul (In Treatment) made me forget that I rejected Freud long ago, and that I don't blame my parents for every neurosis that plagues me. Each infatuation infected me severely (I think that you, unlike some others, will not judge me for talking about television in these terms--I think you understand), and I'll never be the same because of them.

I miss you, lover. I'd like to talk soon. I'd like to take turns holding each other up to the light.

--M. Curie.