Rainbow Me

My freshmen year of college I dated a boy who was deeply attractive to me.  He was intense, hugely intelligent, handsome and deeply emotional.  I loved him.  Unfortunately, I also knew it wouldn’t work out between us.  His intensity compounded my own, so that we tended to collude towards extremes.  Either things were powerfully wonderful or desperately painful.  There was little in between, and the emotional swings exhausted me.  I told him I loved him.  It was true.  I told him it wouldn’t work out between us.  Also true.  He saw these two sentiments as being mutually exclusive, though, and asserted that in fact, I was a two faced, untrustworthy wench.  His accusations stung, and I didn’t know how to explain the possibility of what he considered an impossibility.

That year in comparative literature we were reading Anna Karenina, and as I was pondering my sanity, my ability to be or feel two things at once, the professor began his lectures on the depth and breadth of characters in Anna Karenina being a reflection of the depth and breadth of our own multifaceted selves.  The revelation was a new one for me—this ability as a person to be many persons, to have many loves, and desires and perspectives which, in fact, are conflicting and yet are all true and part of us.  I sobbed my way through his lecture, relieved beyond expression that I was, instead of insane, simply a normal human being. 

My own facets continue to surface, and to also elude me.  Understanding how I am feeling—my emotional, mental, spiritual reaction to an event or situation—is often  the work of weeks or months or years.  Similarly, my understanding of the multifaceted world has been the work of years, and is yet a work in progress.   There is constant adjustment, and consideration.  Writing has great power in its ability to help me unearth what is hidden behind my pain, or joy, anger or peace.  There are layers, and layers, and all of it is me.

Some part of me that tends toward depression also leads me to compassion and humility, as I consider my own faults, and see them in others.  Another  part of me threatens emotional breakdown because I my heart is tender and hurt at the pain and sorrow I see also around me, yet the same me can be harsh and critical of others because I see darkly and negatively.  I am patient and impatient.  I am a perfectionist and careless.  I am thoughtful and forgetful. 

The more I see all these facets working together, the more patience I tend to have with myself.  I have recognized my complexity and therefore no longer judge myself in terms of black and white.  True, I have not volunteered at the kids school, or been full of fun, creative mothering, or furthered my food storage or done a thousand other things I “should” be doing.  But I don’t beat myself up about it.  In the last two years, as I have felt my life is on hold, I have had patience, understanding that in unseen ways, my work has gone on, in unseen areas, there is part of me that is struggling more than an onlooker could understand, and it is simply asking too much to do what is obvious, as well as what is invisible. 

It is more beautiful, after all, to be made of rainbow, and only light of many colors is complete.