The Dilemma Of It All

journal entry — Friday, April 18th 2025

I want to find another word for the beauty of life, because I think that that phrasing has the wrong connotation. Beauty is something that you appreciate from the outside, you like it for how it looks, and maybe what it means, but not for its autonomy.

The “beauty” of life is not remarkable because we get to see pretty things all the time, like dogwood trees & bright green grass in the springtime, and artists in concert, and beautiful people — people with nice bone structure or people whose soft blonde hair matches their cherubic smile, or people who wear jeans that are just the right fit. A rock could appreciate those things. A rock could basically also appreciate the interpersonal beautiful things of life, like texting your girl friends because you care about them, or a barista smiling at you for a second extra, like they approve of your choice of latte.

I don’t mean to disregard these privileges in our lives, because they have their place and they act as little reminders, impersonal in the way that a sticker saying “smile” is impersonal; little reminders that you shouldn’t let yourself get too down for too long. But to me, at least, they don’t have an intrinsic deeper meaning. Such is reserved for the “beauty” in life that demands effort, disbelief and the suspension thereof. That which inspires faith, then jeopardizes it, and shrinks at its own mention — this type of beauty does not want to be described, and that is how I know that I trust it.

It’s not that I cannot find words sacred and beautiful enough to do the concept justice, and it’s also not that the concept doesn’t deserve my most beautiful words, no. I think what the problem is here is an incompatibility between essences: a blank page waiting for words is an empty space, and the awe-inspiring, gratitude-demanding hardships of life are a formless shape (oh, how true this is), and no amount of strawberry wine will save you from the fact that those two simply do not and can never fit.

Call it a mountaintop moment of faith, but really, if you don’t cry and hug yourself because that’s where god is and that’s where the good is and that’s the body and the mind and the heart that carried you up these mountains just for this view, then what was it all for?

I don’t actually want to be mistreated or subjugated. I don’t actually think there’s anything beautiful about that sort of submission. But there are two reasons I think I’ve been inclined in such an odd direction for a few years:

1. If you’re begging for something, you want it. And if you want something, surely, then you feel human. And
2. If I’m so fully convinced that the person I love is above me (your integrity makes me seem small) then I will never have to worry I made the wrong choice and won’t get what I need out of this life.

But it’s probably also Freudian and internalized misogyny-based, and contributing to some superiority-inferiority duplex I have.

But I think being weak has made me strong. I am so, so grateful that I can say this so truthfully, without any forced excitement or any egotism…I am so proud of my strength. I am proud of every day that I got out of bed and made it through the microcosm du jour, the unique slice of life which happened to be on my plate.

I don’t need to perseverate on my pain of the past, because the me who made it through that didn’t do so just for me to spend the rest of my life thinking about it. But I remember, and I may never forget, how hard it was those many months. It still is now, in many regards, which I need to add so I don’t feel like a phony for having written this, when I read it back as soon as a bad feeling starts to creep in again. I digress.

It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I know the proper me knew all along it would never be fatal, but the real me, that felt every second of years of pain, she had no idea. No safety net. It was scary for her, and it’s scary to me, how swiftly and surely my stability of mind slipped away, and I’ve wondered whether that was incidental or a long time coming.

…

I’ve been torn lately between existentialism and essentialism; both are so tempting, but a priori, they are mutually exclusive, irreconcilable. A posteriori, in my opinion, certainly allows their coexistence, but I find that the inability to even humor the idea of committing to one side or the other of such an issue is a hallmark of metacognitive inferiority.