I want to care
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I want to care.
When I say this, I mean: I want to be here. I want to listen. I want to tell you what matters to me, and for you to tell me too.
I want to build a place where communicating isn’t at risk of meaning hurting without meaning to. An interface.
It is silly, of course. Idealist, at best. I cannot possibly anticipate all the ways in which I may hurt you, and prevent them. I cannot possibly file all the fangs and the scales of me, either. The result would not be me. It would be a hypervigilant creature in a box, trying very hard not to let anything of it displease anyone.
I am trying not to be that anymore.
I am trying, notably, to fight back. To hiss, and claw, and burn, and glow. To reclaim the space I need to live, because a surprising amount of people won’t let me.
I am trying, sometimes, not to care.
It is incredibly hard. It has been what I have done for a very long time, but I have shed that skin, and I cannot go back. I will not go back.
So maybe I want to care because it is the only option I have left.
Still, I do.
I want to care.
And I want to accept that hurting others in the process is sometimes inevitable.
It is hard. It is absurdly hard. I do not want to hurt you.
I will say it again, because I mean it: I do not want to hurt you.
(This does not apply to everyone. There are people out there I want to hurt. They are probably people you want to hurt too. Because we want to be able to live. Because we have clawed through too many things to stop here.
But that is a separate matter. That is not about you.)
I want to care about you. I want to be a person you can tell about the things you love and about the places you like. About the people that are important to you, and about the fictions that changed you.
I am not always good at doing that. I am a bundle of triggers in a fox-themed trenchcoat. I am a ball of seemingly insignificant oddities that can coalesce into the biggest panic firework at the worst moment.
Heck, minus the fox coating, maybe you are too.
You would probably say that you cannot anticipate all the ways in which you may hurt me either. Which is true.
Some past me would have told you that this is the negligible part of the equation. I am unlearning that. I do not know if it will ever go away entirely, but as with everything else: I am trying.
So, yes. You may hurt me. Let us accept that we may hurt each other sometimes, then.
After all, we cannot always communicate on the same channel. We may inadvertently offend each other, scare each other, wound each other.
It happens. It’s ok. We learn from all that.
And if it is not ok, well. It may mean not talking for a while. It may mean not talking at all, because ultimately we don’t mesh. It may mean changing the way we relationship entirely.
It is scary. It is.
But it is alright, too. Really. It is alright.
Even at a distance, and as long as you want me to communicate about it, we can figure this out together, whatever form it takes.
We do not need to be close for me to care.
There is one last thing I need to tell you.
Sometimes, I will care too much. (“Too much” is the wrong term. It is a loaded term, based on some objective measurement that doesn’t exist. What I mean is this: I will care in ways that will overwhelm you.)
Sometimes, I will want to care so much, but I won’t be able to. (It is not “not caring”. It is a different sensation altogether. It is being placed in a state where I am unable to care.)
This happens. It passes.
I will say clumsy things, sometimes. Hurtful things, sometimes. Plain wrong things, probably. I hope you can tell me how you feel, then. Because...
Because I want it to matter.
Because I want it to matter!!
Because I want to be kind.
Not necessarily nice. I cannot always be nice.
I cannot always be kind either, but the difference matters. I want to be caring. I want to listen.
These are the same verbs as the beginning because what I want to tell is limited by these verbs. Because what I want to tell feels enormous, impossible. Weakened when it is spoken.
And I am here, on the verge of tears, in front of these words, this impossible feeling stuck in the back of my throat. And in this frenzied state that feels like the truth, the truth you obtain when you peel away the outer layers, when the only thing left is what remains when I bloom, I can only hope--
I can only hope that you understand these words:
I
want
to care.