Unacknowledged longings can be destructive
You start to imagine, for example, that someone to whom you are attracted finds you equally attractive. You indulge the thought in order to please yourself.
It’s like scratching a mild itch. As you indulge in this fantasy (and whether that person is attracted to you makes no difference, really, because it’s your fantasy independent of any basis) it grows larger.
It feeds off scraps of conversation and pieces of experience; it becomes loyal. It’s there everyday, waiting to be fed and petted.
It’s a feral emotion, something you don’t let into the house to play with the other domestic emotions for the very reason that you know it’s wild and that you haven’t bothered to tame it or put it on a leash.
So it’s dangerous. And fierce.
Then in some dark part of your heart, you start to prefer it. You start feeding it from the table, giving it the best cuts, the tenderest bits. You act as if the story you’ve told yourself is true and thereby give it the power to disrupt the actual truth.
This is not the sign of a passionate personality or an emotional soul: it is an indication of weakness, an inability to accept life as it is.
