To look directly into the eclipse of love
you don’t need protection

These illustrations from Liza Donnelly’s recent post on Medium, Drawing the Eclipse, delighted me.
Speaking of eclipses, let’s take a flying leap into the closely related subject of love. I’ve been shocked to watch how easily and regularly anger eclipses gentler feelings in myself.
For more insight on love, we duly reference a line or two from Shakespeare:
“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief…”
Kill? Did he say kill? I thought we were talking about love! Now we desperately need a quote from Kurt Vonnegut. You know the one, from Slaughterhouse Five:
“So it goes.”
Here’s what I want to know, this is a quote from me:
Is good behavior a prerequisite for love?
I grew up testing the theory that good behavior was in fact required. I tried to behave in such a way as to garner the most love I possibly could. I was in direct competition with my sister who was often dismayed by my apparent success. But what I garnered was approval, and the rewards of approval, which are many, if you count good grades and blond haired dolls, and prizes of that sort.
But in my inner world, none of that counted. I did not feel loved. Hugs didn’t count, compliments didn’t count, nice birthday presents didn’t count, smiles directed my way didn’t count, no amount of approval added up to love. In my inner world I lived bereft. The bad angry girl could not be loved, but must be hidden away.
Maybe you’ve read previously about Slicer, my recently outed vault of rage. Since anger was not loveable, I stashed it out of sight. I cut myself off from it. I let it build up, unexpressed. I created an underground lake of lava, where I hid the unacceptable demon. I tried to be good. I tried to act “loving.”
Is love an act?
One time when I was a teenager I was talking to my father in his bedroom, standing next to the bookshelf with the Thomas Mann, the Magic Mountain, and Joseph the Provider. My father confessed, “I don’t seem to be capable of love.”
In a rare moment of openness, my father killed me. I took his admission 100% personally. He’d finally said out loud what I feared most, what I’d tried and tried to overcome in our relationship. I went into my room and quietly poured that exchange into my other secret reservoir, filling it to the banks with liquid grief.
Much later, when I was a parent of young children, Dad advised, “You have to make your children behave so that you can love them.”

Do you ever feel like everyone is peering at you like this, trying to see what’s really going on, without burning out their eyeballs? I often do. When I find out from one person what another person has said about me, I rediscover what I already knew — that rarely does anyone say what they actually think to the person they think it about. Of course, I don’t say those thinks either, to the people I think them about, except when Mount Slicer erupts into
bad behavior.
A friend who has read some of my blog posts brought up an early one in which I noted that I enjoyed making my therapist squirm (by talking about Bob). My friend said, “That’s not nice, you know.”
I felt stung. Bad behavior again. Am I abusing my therapist? This friend doesn’t even know about Slicer, or what Slicer has said to my therapist, he hasn’t kept up with my blog.
Part of my mind stayed on this as our conversation went to other things. Finally I got back to it. I said to him, “If I have to be polite to my therapist, how are we ever going to get to the root of the problem? She is trained to handle things like this.”
He seemed to take that in, and it satisfied me. But I do worry about alienating my therapist. I feel I have to carefully bracket the horrible disdainful Slicer with my own proclamations of appreciation.
It’s weird to see myself so split. What’s true? I really do appreciate my therapist! But Slicer isn’t lying either. She says what she thinks and doesn’t care what other people, including this therapist, think of her.
My appreciation for my therapist grows as I discover that she is able to handle my contraband emotions, when they creep out like Golum from their hidden reservoirs, fly at her like dragons from their live vocanoes. I appreciate that all of my feelings can be seen and heard and known as mine, without loss of her regard for me.
My therapist doesn’t look at me with eclipse glasses. She doesn’t protect her eyes. She isn’t afraid of my glare. I think the closest thing I have ever felt to love is just simple (not so simple to accomplish though) non-judgment. Her regard for me does not seem to be based on my performance. At first I thought it would be, and the front person put on her best show. But gradually I’m letting out the not so loveable stuff. My therapist keeps saying, “We don’t have to judge it. That’s just how it is for you right now.”
I made it through her vacation. Soon she’ll be back. I feel like a clingy toddler. We don’t have to judge that either. That’s just how it is right now.

