I am trying to think about a universe in which I can see that I am loved. And I mean really loved, you know, not just stuffed with the dog’s unwanted table scraps and the witch’s fattening-ups and then devoured and later regurgitated as some sort of wet, half-me shredded thing. Really loved, like how someone I used to know paid to have fresh flowers placed on her husband’s grave every week until she died, except in this universe I am thinking up I am not as dead as I am in the present, so maybe that isn’t a very good comparison. I am trying to imagine a universe in which I am loved in the hungry way that is good and not in the hungry way that is bad. There’s only a difference if you know there’s a difference, if the difference chooses you. I’m starting to think that universe might be this universe, or that universe will become this universe soon, like a children’s book opening itself up to alter reality into something fantastical and kind and – well. Loving. But I go back and forth, a newton’s cradle delegated and forgotten to the back of my own desk.

Now I am trying to think about a universe in which I accept that I am loved. And I mean really accept it, you know, not like how I watched everyone else’s finger placements at the fourth grade recorder recital because I never figured out how to play, not like how I refused to fight back even when I was bigger and stronger, and not like how I ran away from my solidity. I am trying to imagine this universe where I have muscles that build over muscles and I am strong enough to say, well hello universe, I’m here to exist now! I am here to be taken, and I am ready to be taken well! I am here to cough up the stillborn little infant I was before it all went south, vomit the cord up, and reanimate! Do it right this time!

I am trying to imagine this universe and I find that it is like a horror movie. What was that one my ex watched—the one where you get put in the contraption and have to fight your way out? The one he wanted me to watch despite the fact that I can’t swallow gore unless it’s happening to me? I am trying to make the point that being loved is like being chased with a knife or skinned alive into a whittled-down vulnerable alivecorpse or placed into a machine that tears your eyeballs out before you can witness what it’s like to truly be happy, to truly know joy, but that’s wrong. They all tell me that’s wrong.

I am trying to imagine a universe in which I am not afraid of being loved. I find that, despite the fact that I used to believe in the “multiverse theory”, there are a few criticisms to be made about that line of thinking:

1. If that theory is true, it means that yes, there is a universe out there in which I didn’t end up this way in the first place, and I don’t think that God is cruel enough to dangle this possibility in front of my face like bribing a dog with treats to get it back in its kennel. I just don’t. Somehow I still have faith.
2. If that theory is true, it means that every universe has a sub-universe, every possible decision branching out into another world. A road no one can walk in a city I’ll never visit, and that’s just unfair. See above.
3. Worse: If that theory is true, it means that I am capable of changing into something else, potentially without even travelling to another universe, and the concept is unfathomable. Alien. What am I when I am not a thing stuck in an unbalanced stasis of suffering? What am I when I am not this thing that desperately wants to remain a thing instead of becoming something full and complex and greater? What am I when I am not scared?

Anyway, the point is that I am loved and I just don’t know how to deal with it yet. I am trying to stop waiting for the day love flings itself in front of a train and says, I cannot belong to you anymore! I changed my mind, and I don’t know how to get out!

I am trying to let love speak for itself, instead.