Dickinson and Me: Longing and the Terror of Exposure
What I’ve learned of self-disclosure and loving beyond hope
I hide myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too —
And angels know the rest.
I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.
Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.
As an undiagnosed autistic child, it’s not terribly surprising that my childhood was a lonely one. Because real closeness was often withheld, I used imaginary intimacy as a coping mechanism: it filled the cold, dark places in me with something akin to warmth.
I found a certain comfort in the solitary martyrdom of unrequited affection. As Heather Havrilesky so plainly put it, “returning to a state of longing was like returning home to me.” I knew nothing else. If my friendships were one-sided, I embraced it, building narratives out of every scrap of affection and intimacy I could hoard.
It was lonely, but safe. Reaching out to the world is a scary business, more so when it continuously turns its face away. To this day I still battle the twin impulses to give myself away and hold myself back. It’s a struggle to find a healthy balance between concealment and exposure.
So when I started reading Emily Dickinson’s poetry (and later a biography), her voice called to me like a siren song. It’s playful and seductive, but what I find most compelling is the opaque earnestness she displays. After all: “tell all the truth, but tell it slant,” said the poet herself in what became one of my favorite poems.
Emily Dickinson the poet resonates with me because Emily Dickinson the woman knew of longing, and the terrors of self-disclosure.
From the days of her “lil’ girlhood”, as she would put it, Dickinson attached herself to those around her with passionate abandon. Her spirit was that of a vine, quick to grasp and fiercely resistant to letting go. The pathos of her poetry comes from the fact that she failed to find another person who would clutch back as firmly; a hand that similarly refused to let go.
The fledgling poet acknowledged this chasm when she wrote to her friend Sue: “Do not fear to leave me lest I should be alone, for I often part with things I fancy I have loved, — sometimes to the grave, and sometimes to an oblivion rather bitterer than death.” Much of her life was spent searching for attachments that lacked the permanence she craved.
Emily-the-sparrow longed to build her nest in the hearts of her loved ones. Denied entrance, she turned isolation into craft, wrote of yearning with a restless, wild spirit. In a 1864 poem, she writes:
“The Service without Hope —
Is tenderest, I think —
Because ’tis unsustained…” Fr880
After all, what is longing but endless reaching beyond hope of reward?
How could I not relate? This ardent surrender to the loved object is, at least for me, very much a part of the neurodivergent package. Contrary to popular misconceptions, it’s easy for autistic people to develop strong emotional attachments. Unfortunately, this bond can often be a one-way street.
Sometimes reading her poetry is like gazing into a mirror. I’m left thinking: I know you, Bee! I recognize you, Lark!
“God made a little Gentian — ” says one of her poems. “It tried — to be a Rose / And failed — and all the Summer laughed — ” Don’t I know you, little Gentian? Were we not born side by side, purple bruises among a sea of rose petals? Did we not extend soft branches out into the world, eager to be touched by a single drop of dew?
I think Dickinson speaks for the Gentians of the world: the misfits, the longing junkies, the sensitive souls with too much love to give and no idea where to channel it, or whether it will be welcomed. Hers is a powerful duality, simultaneously transparent and wary of being seen.
“The world looks staringly,” she once wrote, “and I find I need more vail.” Don’t we all, at some point?
Sometimes I lay in bed and feel this fierce hunger to be known, to be around people and allow them to read the topography of my soul. I want to give too much of myself away, stand straight under the sun and bask in its unblinking gaze. But once there, the brightness has me hunting for cover, craving the anonymity of shade.
Maybe the answer lies in-between. According to Dickinson, disclosing ourselves is an act of peeling back layers, our own version of a flower’s slow blossoming. After all: “The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind —”
Does Dickinson’s poetry speak to you in the same way? Is there something else about it that speaks to your soul? I’d love to know!
If you’d like to support my writing, you can buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/lauraiswriting
