My Condition

The Buddhists say that wanting is a condition that has nothing to do with the object of desire.  It's not the thing- it's the feelings, the need.  They say this because of what happens immediately after we get what we want: we start wanting something else.  That's why wanting is a condition.  The same way that asthma is a condition.  An illness.  A dis-ease.

When we were together, I thought about you everyday.  Everyday.  Often with joy, sometimes excitement or anticipation.  Desire.  Guilt.  But more than anything, the condition that dominated my thoughts, the dis-ease I suffered from, was worry.  I worried all the time.  Everyday.

I worried about us, about myself as your girlfriend- feeling a million failures and fearing a billion more.  I worried about whether or not you would ever marry me.  I worried about whether or not we'd make it.  And in the end, I worried about whether or not you'd ever understand how important all these changes I was making were, and accept them.  You didn't.

I've been realizing throughout this process how much I don't know.  About relationships.  About partnerships.  About how subtle and insidious codependency can be.  And it's been making me worry. 

I still think about you everyday.  Everyday.  Often with guilt, sometimes anger or rage.  Desire, still.  Regret.  Pain.  But the condition I suffered from, I still suffer from.  I still worry.

I worry that at some point in the future, a long time from now, I will meet someone and I will desire them and grow to love them and it will happen again.  I will worry.  I will obsess.  That future lover will occupy my thoughts the same way that you did.  I will suffer from the same obsession, the same co-dependency.  The same condition.  And I worry most of all that I will lose myself again.

I've been championing the belief that this is all about me.  About finding myself.  About understanding myself.  Including all these dark parts that's I've been ignoring.  My obsessing.  My codependency.  My condition.

But I do fear that future relationship and all the possibilities it presents for me to lose what I find.  I can't imagine doing all this work- and I know I'm really only at the beginning of it- only to lose myself again.  And that's the worry 

Just like they say- different object, same condition.