As I peel back the layers of my constructed self, seeking the desire that holds my personality in place, I become aware of a vague but ever-present feeling. And I know this is the mask I wear, the glue that holds my personality together.
This vague feeling doesn’t anchor me as a being; I think only God does that. If God ceased holding me as a being, I expect I would return to formlessness.
No, I’m speaking of a psychological glue, which holds my personality in place, not an existential glue.
As I “be with it,” in passive awareness, I sense an inchoate desire, a want, a wish. What is it? What is this song of my heart, my cry to the universe?
What do I want? What does my personality cry out for?
I want to be loved.
How do I know that’s true? Because when I say it, the feeling eases.
I want to be loved. Just as a plant wants water, so I want love.
Not like I realized it before. I didn’t. But if you ask me what it is I miss, I miss being loved.
And when did I lose it? Many years ago when mother died. And here the tears well up. I recall many years ago when I received the news, “Your mother is dead.” And how my world stopped, and my brother’s world, since we were there together when the news arrived.
Defining moment. My personality set in stone that day. The glue that holds my personality intact, that removes me from the flow of life.
I’ve been crying since then and what the tears say, collectively and perpetually, is, “I want to be loved.”
Like a chick with its mouth agape, cheeping, unable to think of anything else, of anyone else: I want to be loved.
Is it true? The truth will free me and I do feel free of that persistent glue. This is not a stray, haphazard thought. This is a lifelong wound, there in the background of obviousness, like a ringing in the ears, ubiquitous.
I take a breath, now free of lifelong sorrow, acknowledged, released.
The truth seen, sorrow gone, I’m left in love. Was I by wanting walled off these years? Am I deprived of love by my very wanting of it? It appears so.
What irony. That wanting should have kept me from the very thing I wanted.
I no longer rest in wanting love. I feel love. The glue melts. A layer peeled. A mask removed.
I am less of me, even as I am more. I am more of me, even as I am less.
Unmasked.