Vulnerability and love

One of the reasons I don’t try to write fiction is that I am more comfortable writing about things instead of feelings. And a writer can’t create great characters without feeling.

Robert, my husband, sees the world and all relationships through a filter of intuition. In his universe, there is no intellect without emotion. Over years, he has gradually helped me find and nurture my own feelings. This has not been easy.

Maybe I don’t really have feelings? No, that’s not it. When I allow myself to feel, it can be so painful, so overwhelming. So very early on I learned to hold back. Shortly after we moved from International Falls to Minneapolis (I was 6), I tried to hug some other girls I had met. They spurned me. The lesson was brutal and effective. Don’t try that again.

I didn’t hug anyone else till adulthood.

Recently, I’ve been listening to the several books of Robert Caro’s massive biography of LBJ. Johnson, with his bull-in-a-china-shop persona, was so supremely sensitive that many of his acquaintances felt sorry for his hurts and his loneliness. He had such great needs.

What are my great needs? Connection, love, integrity, authenticity. Creativity and nurturing. Cooking is a nurturing act, but I don’t have much chance to cook in assisted living, and I don’t much miss it. It seems like so much effort, and not long ago it wasn’t. I think that perhaps working on recipes—I’m struggling to transcribe all the handwritten notes of dishes I’ve created over the last several decades—will help. Yet that writing of bare facts is a move away from feelings, a return to things.

What feelings did I have yesterday, besides the gratitude that I remember to give thanks for on rising and while falling asleep? Some  frustration when quilting didn’t go quite right. Edginess at the state of the stock market. Elation at being able to nail some harmony on the violin. Quiet enjoyment when I found pictures of Robert to use as my cell phone wallpaper.

What emotions do I want to foster? Deeper love, more connection, yearning to abide with Spirit, relying, trusting. Trust, yes. Serenity. Acceptance. Big-heartedness: I suppose that’s compassion. The will to do rather than just feel bad about injustice.

And finally, I am becoming sensitive to the lack of feeling in our culture in general. I am so saddened by the colorless, cold kitchens and other living space I see in magazine ads or on TV shows, the unhappy young men in suits on downtown streets, the suburban women whose priorities I think are out of whack. Yes, that’s judgmental, but an empty life is not worth living.

Neither is an unfeeling life. It’s so hard to walk around with these emotional scars showing, scratching at the scabs of memory. But what alternative is there?