“me + mr thornton” meta: personal / emotional

Ellie (Christine Tremarco) trapped in her doubts and the arms of John Mulligan (Richard Armitage) in Moving On: Drowning Not Waving. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

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I love to sleep; I can do it at the drop of the hat; I do it way too much. But I’ve never been a quick or self-controlled waker, a fact that’s hurt many of my close relationships. If you’re in the same bed with me, I make you sign a waiver of damages / agreement to hold harmless if you speak to me before I have my face on. Lately, I’ve been thinking: it’s the beaten dog that snarls a final defiant snarl before it makes itself cower again, waiting for the next kick.

In case it’s not entirely clear, I sleep a lot because I like it better than being awake. If I’m awake, my mind is on. If it can be in flow, great. That’s why I ended up with the work I have, I think. To occupy the restless mind.

During term, the morning wake up has to be drawn out just enough for me to organize my thoughts and cut off as soon as I notice myself sliding into meta-reflection. I have to figure out how to control the day but I can’t start thinking about the implications of everything. The thing I always used to say to myself as a teenager: take it like a man, chiquita. Or, as my father would put it, less delicately or paradoxically: get up off your goddamn ass. In the end, brutality always works. Especially on the girl desperate for approval. I just want someone to say I’m good. That’s the beginning, the middle, the end.

***

Lucas North (Richard Armitage) pulls his sidearm out from under his pillow after being wakened unexpectedly in Spooks 8.5. My cap. If I slept with firearms, this might be my reaction to waking up.

***

But if I’m not good, or if, as so often, approval is withheld, then at least I am not lazy.

And I can verify that I worked hard whether or not I am good, whether or not anyone approves. Just do the next thing.

Self-scorn: you’re not tired already, are you?

I, too, was raised to love work. First you work hard because it pleases someone, perhaps because it is the only way to please, and then the someone is gone and there is only the work and you stop thinking about the pleasure. The pleasure is assumed. Virtue is its own reward. And you associate work with love and you love it and it loves you. Americans make this work and we see that it is good. I built my own system of ethics around work.

Perfectionism doesn’t help. It makes it even easier to work more.

I read all these stories that glorify how hard work made people into the people they are and I think yes and no and everything in between and why the hell does no one ever admit that they were lucky and why the hell does everything have to involve a principle? Is the one who works the hardest really the best? Is being able to grind yourself into powder by sheer force of will really a capacity to be praised? And if work is so great, why don’t these stories ever say anything about burnout? Why don’t they ever say anything about value for time spent?

And why don’t they admit: in the end, whatever work does for you, that’s not what makes you good enough. It’s only ever the result. The work is just a way of lashing yourself into obedience to whatever’s demanding it at the moment. If I think badly enough of myself before I get out of bed, maybe I’ll be afraid enough to get those things done. If I am, I can do it the next morning and achieve the same result. If I’m not, I can do it the next morning with just that much more scornful force behind the self-abuse. What a loser you are, baby. I mean it. Whether you get something done or not. If it’ll make you do the next thing, I’ll just keep telling you that.

Or, and this is key: why don’t they ever say anything about love?

You start off loving something and then the work seems so insurmountable and you say to yourself it’s not worth it and someone says to you don’t be a quitter don’t be a quitter don’t be a quitter (I can tell you exactly where we were when my mother said this to me the first time, I was eight, the entire memory is painfully preserved in my mind as if in a wax museum) and you say right if I really love this I won’t give up yet I do love it I do love it I do love I do love it I do I do except what about the sunk cost fallacy and isn’t there some point where there is only work and pain and obligation no more love? Or how to resolve the love/pain axis? There’s a reason I’m not a romantic, after all. It’s no coincidence. All love, too, is an act of the will. I can make myself love this, I can make myself love you, I can make myself love work, I can make myself get this done. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger except when it kills us but there’s a reward for that, too.

If I could just discipline my mind about you and push you into the same box that I’ve pushed my desires into all these years. You, and that other big thing. Why shouldn’t I be able to? Such a powerful mind you have, Servetus, it’s been said to me so many times. It’s not usually a compliment when people say it to my face, it’s always a jibe. Bet you think you’re smart, but you’re not. You may be book smart but you’ve got no common sense. Wish I had your brains, I’d have made way more out of them than you have. If I were you, I’d have gone to Harvard. Lucky you have such a great brain, because you’re clumsy as fuck. Wish I had your brain, but you’re so ugly you need it. If I only had your mind, if I only had your control of your mind.

Except that I’ve never been in control of my mind, and that’s never been more clear than when I addressing my fantasies about you. Now, with no students to present obligations, and the tasks I have to complete during a day being slightly lower order, I find myself devoting most of my morning thinking phase to dreaming about you in my bed.

So the pleasure in these long mornings of fantasy, Richard Armitage, stems precisely because in your arms I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, I get enough done. For you, I am good. The deliverable is not done but still I work and still you love me.

What I didn’t think about initially, though, is what you would want out of these fantasies, or how you’d demand your own recompense for loving me.

~ by Servetus on June 4, 2012.