Detachment and why it is OK

I have struggled with the contradiction that is me quite a lot over the last few years. When I was a teenager, a doctor suggested I may have bipolar disorder or a borderline personality. She referred me to a psychiatrist but I never went any of the appointments. Instead, I took her suggestion as a diagnosis and then used it as an excuse for any shitty behaviour. A little later, a different doctor gave me a prescription for antidepressants and anxiety meds while he sat and ate digestive biscuits. Sure, I persevered for a few weeks until I realised that my ability to orgasm was more important than feeling numb. I decided that feeling sad sometimes and feeling EVERYTHING sometimes was more important than feeling nothing all. of. the. time.

Most recently, I went to see a counsellor. Self-loathing comes very easy to me, it has a home in me where it is never a stranger. She asked me if there was anything about myself that I liked and I replied “my detachment”. I never saw her again because she didn’t think that was a positive trait and I disagreed.

Detachment is not something that is “done”, in my mind, but something we arrive at when we really understand the nature of reality. Detachment is a lofty and beautiful esoteric goal. I wouldn’t be able to do my job if I didn’t have the ability to detach and cut off emotions and not invest my whole being into someone else, I would be unable to remain equanimous in the face of loss, change, and disappointment.

My most detached moments are most easily experienced when I am feeling incredibly grounded and convinced of my divine nature. When I am not in this awareness, when I am in my ego, steeped in humanity, detachment is much harder to embody. And that, I suppose is when the idea of wanting to “adhere” to it, or effort myself into detachment, is quite hard to do. In those times, I do my best not to run from what is emerging. To instead sit in that heat. This feeling what I am afraid to feel, all the way through, becomes my orientation. Seeing where it shows up in my body, my chest, my jaw, my muscles. Usually it is a feeling of fear, of sadness, and often despair, however brief, around the severing of a very human attachment. The aspiration to not be affected by relationships, and I can see why one might want that.

True detachment and aloofness and disassociation can look very similar. However I am learning to believe in relationships, to believe in kindness. It is one of the great gifts of being human, fostering and nurturing and allowing these relationships to affect us, to move us, to heal us, to challenge us open to our wholeness, our bigness, to shake us awake and out of our sleepwalking, to correct what needs correcting, through a move of merciful interaction.

Sometimes detachment is easy. And sometimes – when I am PMSing, when I am tired, when I am overwhelmed – it is very difficult. I attempt to inquire into any given experience. And provided that I have time to process and inquire, I can usually reach a place of detachment, or neutrality.

Other times, I can be only somewhat neutral, and that has to be OK for that moment.

I’ve grown compliant. My life is easy and I sleep side by side with my best friend, sometimes we touch each other. I make promises of monogamy and those promises sometimes last three whole days. Maybe this is normal. Maybe feeling unfulfilled in a relationship of four years is normal. But I can’t stop my mind from wandering, thinking of others, lying about me, my existence, my responsibilities. Maybe it’s normal for people to fantasise about others. But maybe it’s not normal to act or pursue those fantasies.

Maybe I’m not normal.

Plenty of Fish, Tinder, HER, OK Cupid, I’ve had them all and more. I think part of me enjoys creating new profiles, creating an illusion of myself because I am a narcissist. I have a palm full of sweeties, come and take one, come and taste the mystery. You’ll assume they’re sweet but it’s only me who knows they soon grow sour…

Usually I am the pursuer. Girls want to feel special – and I am good at making girls feel special – but this time it’s not me who makes the first move. One day passes and you suggest we meet for a drink.

“Number one,” you say while pointing at the recent spilled beer mark on my thigh.
“Number two,” after I knock the tobacco out of my would be hand rolled cigarette.
“Number three,” when I trip over the last cobbled step in that eery pub.

“Are you always this clumsy?” The question hangs in the air while I blush and try to regain composure.
“Are you always this judgemental?”
“I’m never judgemental but I am always observant.”

We talk a lot, mainly about me, and you quickly discover that I don’t live alone. I quickly discover that you love games. You tell me your life is all about music, food and sex. You have a sex friend. I tell you I have more than one.

From there we started to play with each other. Not a normal game but a fucking psychological war to see who would fall first.

Later, the next evening, I’m at your apartment, “what do you eat?”
“Anything but cheese.”
“Are you allergic?”
“No, I just don’t like it.”

You order pizza topped with four cheeses and I fucking eat it. We fuck. I don’t come and you tell me it’s psychological. We’re laying together, you’re kissing my forehead, stroking my hair, tucking that one strand back behind my ear.

“Are you staying here tonight?” Tension and silence fill the gap between our entwined fingers. I can’t look at you but instead bury my head beneath your chin.

“I don’t do sleepovers,” I whisper as you climb on top of me, staring into my eyes, smirking. “But I do want you to fuck me.”
“I’m not fucking you.”
“I want you to fuck me.”
“You’re not here. I’ve lost count how many times you’ve looked up at the clock.”
“I am here. I’m here. I’m right fucking here,” guiding your hand to my cunt, “fuck me please.”

The smirk on your face quickly fades and I think I have gotten my own way but this isn’t for my benefit. This is about power. You’re bigger than me, stronger and you make me feel so small, weak even. Eventually you stop and we’re laying in a puddle of your accomplishment, my humility.

“Now fuck off back to your girlfriend.”
“I don’t -“

Later, another evening, I visit you after a night out and I get defensive when you ask if I’m an alcoholic, subtly reminding me that I had three beers that first day we met while you only had two.

“You make me feel uneasy and uncomfortable.”
“Well if it’s comfort you’re looking for…” you hold your arm out and I cry.
“I barely know you but you make me feel naked and vulnerable, but safe too.” You run me a bath, pick out some pyjamas too big for me and I stay the night. In the morning you heat up croissants and brew fresh coffee and we smoke too many cigarettes. You ask me if I would mind if you fuck someone else and I tell you I couldn’t know. I ask you the same and you say yes.

When I leave it’s more than two days before we talk again.

“How are you?” A text that I reluctantly send but less than a minute later you call me.
“I’ve booked for us to go away together next month. Don’t make plans that week. Don’t ask me where we are going. Don’t ask any questions. Just say yes.”

I want to ask questions, mainly why haven’t you contacted me, where have you been, and what the fuck? Instead, silence again.

“I’m sorry we’re just friends.” I say, attempting to fill the void.
“Did I ask you something?” You say my name as though I’m being summoned by my Head of Year all over again. Your accent think and full, and how my name rolls off your tongue gives me instant goosebumps. “We are incompatible. I’m the definition of possessive and you’re not ready for that. You’re not ready for me. But you do intrigue me. And I like you. And I like it when you come.”

We had plans to meet on Tuesday but after a horrible day I needed to be at home with my best friend.

You call me. “The problem with you and I is that I like to plan and you don’t. The difference between you and I is that I respect the people I schedule time for and you don’t.”

We erase each other’s numbers and agree that it maybe could have worked if we were both emotionally available.

Last night we matched on Tinder. I think part of me fell in love with her. And when I think about her I get sad. She probably won’t sleep alone tonight but I know she will still feel lonely.