***
For the first couple weeks after E was hit with the last crisis we would (try to) support each other through, I began each morning by writing these words to her: "You are strong, and you are loved." But only because there truly was nothing else I could do. I could do that, instinctively without any manual, and I could (try rather unsuccessfully to) live in a constant state of readiness should she need anything else. Any real help.
Those messages were sent from a MySpace account that I later deleted when things got really bad, and so the messages disappeared from her mailbox when my account went. And that's probably the worst thing we did to our years of friendship at the end, taking away the "I love you"s, one by one.
***
My therapist, trying to (rationally) convince me that simply giving comfort in my self-talk is at least as powerful as trying to reason with my psyche (a proposition about which I maintain a Western philosopher's skepticism), told me of a study conducted with violent offenders. He said that the men were instructed to repeat four sentences to themselves each day: I'm sorry, I forgive you, Thank you, and I love you. And those who did had a much lower rate of recidivism.
I can't substantiate the study's existence. But I like to think it's true. Saying "I love you," it seems, speaks to something in the animal brain - or at least, the "inner child." It creates something beyond reason.
***
In college, I wrote a paper about how the account of love that Hegel gives in his philosophy is logically incompatible with his account of what a person is. The girl I (thought I) loved at the time (who did not love me) found this a truly amusing state of affairs, confirming her own bleak (and disingenuous young adult posing) outlook that love was "bullshit," a tool of manipulation. She laughed and laughed.
I could do nothing but sputter about how that wasn't it, that's not what my argument proved. What followed from my paper was not that love didn't exist, only that Hegel couldn't account for it, that his account was flawed.
These days I think his account of what a person is, though incomplete, is pretty well-reasoned. Except the love part. It's the most Wizard of Oz "Don't look behind the curtain" moment in the Phenomenology. But he just had to tack on that love part because even he couldn't be condemned to the calculated cruel world to which reason seemed to lead. Hegel knew it was a mystery that human beings stop their death struggle to care for each other, ever. But he also knew it damn well happened.
He just couldn't give a complete account of Being without the magic word.
***
I've just finished reading (when I should have been doing other things, undone things that make the self-talk take a decided turn for the worse) S. Bear Bergman's Butch is a Noun, which is probably most of all a kind of love letter from one butch to the brotherhood. Near the end of the book, Bear gives us a chapter called, "When I Can't Fix It." I knew what it was about before my eyes lit on the first sentence.
We all of every gender want to fix things for our loved ones, all have to learn to hold back and let them stand on their own. I think, though, to engage in a little stereotyping, that this is especially hard for butches, in our peculiar mix of gender socialization. The masculine "doing" and the feminine "nurturing" and the queer need to prove one's worth against a world that says one has none. I don't know a single butch who isn't highly other-directed--and often to her or his or hir detriment.
Says Bear:
Some things simply cannot be fixed: loved ones cannot be made undead, lovers cannot be made trustworthy anew, and confidence cannot be bought by the three-pack at Costco. So when I come up against a problem I can't fix or can't help, I feel useless; I feel like I am not worth having around. I also get deeply afraid in the face of the badness I can't soothe. I don't know how bad it will get, and I can't protect my loved one from the effects of it. It makes me crazy. (138, Bergman's emphasis)Me too, buddy. Me too.
***
One of the earliest conversations E and I had was about whether or not "I love you" was a performative utterance. I took the con position. Love should be shown, enacted. Saying it seems like such a cop out, so meaningless. And the college girl was right in some ways; it does get used to manipulate people--through their animal inner children--into all sorts of bad things.
The conversation was ended when Sarah interjected to cite Judith Butler's Excitable Speech: "If hate speech is performative, then wouldn't love speech be performative as well?"
***
There's not a lot I can do about most of the problems that my loved ones face, and some of the things I know I can do are not my choices to make. (Frustrating and humbling, that realization always is.) So for this Hallmark holiday, I am reminding myself that what I can do--reminding you that you are strong and you are loved--is a lot more than it feels like in the doing. And that maybe I don't need to know why. Maybe I just need to remember that it works.
In the end, it may be the only way to fix things for keeps.
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