All That is Lost in the Vague...

“I am having a hard time”

“I am having a hard week”

“Things are hard”

What do these sentences even mean?

So much is lost in the ambiguity.

I want color and texture and flavor and details.  Lots and lots of details.  These will be the things I ruminate upon later.  You perhaps long gone from my life but the purple socks you described that you bought for your grandmother on her birthday will remain with me forever.  Why?  Because it was a memorable loving act...that was not vague. There were specifics that allowed me to feel the connection.

I have played in the vague myself.  Giving you slight indications of how I feel and what I want and what is going on.  Leaving more out than I put in.  It is all designed for safety. Don’t let you get too close.  Don’t give you too many details so that you are concerned or worried or overly involved in my life.  I seem to use the vague as a ready exit when I need it.

And this would be my main problem in relationships.  All of them.  I do not want to give you all of me.  I want to give you some, or a little or perhaps just this tiny piece because I am terrified to give it all to you.  Abjectly worried and preoccupied that you will overtake me and in so doing, I will cease to exist.  This isn’t an irrational fear...unfortunately, there is historical basis for it.

So I have used the vague as this common friend.  Or at least that is what I thought it was.  I thought it was this subtle ally.  But am coming to see that it was just another way to not be present.  To dance in the vagaries of life so that no one gets too close. No one knows too much.

In this charming grayness, anything is possible but so much is not.  I always thought the vague gave me more options...but I am seeing this differently now.  Concrete requests and asks and questions do perhaps eliminate options faster than a three year old being asked what they want for dinner.  But perhaps that is how it should be?  Relationships need the concrete.  The absolutes.  The truth.  Perhaps what kills all relationships is this ever present and attendant vagueness that allows us all to feel like we are part of something though we are not sure what. The definition of anything meaningful lost for all.

It isn’t the love we really want but it isn’t not that.  So much is left unsaid.  So much is left unexpressed and felt in our worship of vague.  

Are we dating?

Do you like me?

Do you want to fuck me or date me?

Do you like it when I do this or that?

Do you feel safe in my presence?

What do you need from me?

What do you want?

These are the questions I never ask.  I allow them to be swallowed by the vague...things that I always think I will ask later on.  But I never really do.  Because the vague provides an open door, an exit for when all those questions I didn’t ask in a timely manner pile up and now feel insurmountable.  And instead of tackling this, it is just easier to leave, so I do.

Perhaps what is lost most in the vague is intimacy.  I lose the plot in the evolution of us.  Whether we be friends or lovers or something in between.  I don’t ask, so you don’t tell and so our connection remains ever vague and out of reach.  We call it a connection but in reality, we are more proximal than we are connected.

I am seeing that in order to experience a better intimacy, I am going to have to lose my love and deployment of the vague.  I am going to have to be braver to ask the hard questions that I find so terrifying to ask...stupid shit really:

“Is this a date?”

“Do you hate cats?”

“Where do you see this going?”

“How many other people are you fucking currently?”

"Can I trust you?"

And I guess I have to own that I really don’t ask because I don’t want to know...but more honestly, I don’t want you to ask me the same thing.  If I get real and concrete and solid, then that invites you to do the same and that is something that terrifies me.  It is something I crave and fear in equal parts.  However, I guess that isn’t true because then I would be at a stand still not asking the questions of clarity but not exploiting the vague either.  And we all know, that I exploit the vague every chance I get.

Perhaps I will always be the lover of vague.  Vagueness’ muse and concubine.  Perhaps this is just how it will always be for me.  Or perhaps with each passing day I can increase the honesty or the details of my life and living so that you can actually come to know me better and I, you. Perhaps one day I will become convinced that all that is lost in the vague is actually worth more than what I gain in my supplication to it.

Again...still.