My internal voices are rarely aligned, the soul, spirit, desire, ego, reason, and rationality are contradicting each other for what I want. And I, I’m stuck between incompatible imperatives. That’s the pit. And it’s inside me.

My table is very messy. I often leave to have more space for myself after interactions that are potentially activating wounds and insecurity. Often it’s a matter of the peaceful solitude I get, The question “should you stay”? defines the hardest part of accepting relationships as determining whether the people should stay or not. And the truth is, I don’t know. Part of me is refusing, the other part wants to have a fixed set of people that never change. The regret minimization framework is telling me I will regret swimming alone. my self is telling me it’s better to grow, experiment, and through knives at yourself instead of others. My spirit wants people who keep it busy outside the hindrance of questions I bombard it with.

However, there is kind stuff I want to get from this world, the first thing is I’m ok with whatever will decrease my suffering, whatever will make tomorrow a better day. Secondly, there are also a kind of virtues I want to learn and embrace, that require the existence of people around me.

I love the time I spend with people who tend to detach me from my own life. I once talked about a glimpse of this here https://a7med7x7.github.io/a7.github.io/posts/helping_as_escape/, and you seem to help me in this; you seem to decrease my suffering. It’s hard, logically, to think of a world that does not include you. The kind of virtues I’m seeking, are no where to be found in myself, but in the interactions I make with pure souls, I see you as a pure soul, natural, moral, honest, compassionate, clean, true, and hence unique, looking and comparing to myself, what I’m missing, what I should learn is important to me.

This is not to objectify you into being a tool or instrument for my own pursuit, but to tell you, you’re useful to me.

I was trying to buy myself some time to think, that maybe in the future I will be more confident in my answer, and I won’t hesitate to answer, and you won’t have to listen to my explanations and unnecessary philosophical thoughts. It’s definitely a yes to the question, but do I mean what I say? My messy table says otherwise. I don’t want to hurt you in any way. Even if that implies not being there. Although my life is relatively simple and I seem to manage it well, but definitely not the social side. You know for sure how I can hurt people without noticing. I might have signaled some healing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I will change at the same pace I’m recognizing my pattern. Changing behavior is very difficult. I know that a yes is not an enough answer, especially not with me with all this skepticism, but is to tell you I’m yet to free myself.

This simple act of saying Oh, yes, absolutely, I’m accepting this without grains and worries“ is something I was never trained to do. I was trained to do quite the opposite. I hope this doesn’t complicate the situation, but to tell you, I have grains in this acceptance, I’m afraid, of the reassurance of my old patterns. I know that healing is not a linear process.

but now I know that you’re just like Anne, you love promises of friendships and signing up to the terms and conditions before diving, which is quite the opposite of what I’m doing. Poor you, you must have suffered a lot and hated me for having this attribute of not having terms and conditions and not issuing any promises at all. But here is my first promise, I will make it up to you, by telling you when I’m going to leave.

When a tender affection has been itself in us, through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it, seems to be a cheaping of our lives, and we can set a watch over our affections, and our constancy as we can over other treasures 

• Anne