But I finally picked it up and started reading.
It's the memoir of a woman (Gilbert) who goes through a horrible divorce, a turbulent love affair, and a crippling depression, and then decides to travel. Although she played the role of SnarkEx in her divorce-- abandoning her husband and the life they made together-- I can forgive her because I absolutely love her writing persona. (And she at least had the common decency to suffer a crippling depression after she left her husband.) The book is clever, funny, insightful, and rational. She talks about spirituality in a way that doesn't turn me off. It's the kind of book I would love to write, if I were more talented.
She writes a lot about depression and loneliness, so my next few posts will deal with ideas I read in her book.
One such idea was that she discovered an inner voice, call it God or the Universe or her own subconscious, that spoke to her in times of great distress, like when she was crying on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night. I've heard other people talk of similar voices coming to them and delivering messages of great clarity. I've experienced "the voice" myself a few times, only my voices always turn out to be wrong or misguided. I'll have what I think to be an epiphany, and a few days later I'll realize it was bunk. I never know when my inner voice is offering true wisdom or when it's just spouting gibberish.
One night, when Gilbert was held hostage by the "goons of Depression and Loneliness," she called out to her inner voice for help. This was the response she got:
I'm here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you...There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love.
That line made me cry. I was eating breakfast, holding a whole wheat English muffin with cream cheese in my hand, and bawling at this declaration of unconditional love.
I've never loved myself like that.
I know the phrase "unconditional love" is thrown about a lot, usually in reference to God or mothers or faithful dogs. It's a beautiful concept, but I don't believe in it. You can't convince me that there's nothing, really nothing, you could do to lose someone's love. If you believe in a literal hell, then you couldn't possibly believe that God's love is unconditional, because he's willing to send you there based on conditions.
I've never known the love a parent has for a child, but I know that it's on a whole other level. I imagine it's 100 times greater than the love I had for SnarKitty, and I was stupidly devoted to that cat. (I can openly admit that I don't love AuxiliaryKitty as much, which is why I should never have children.) And yet I still don't believe that parental love couldn't go away if your child did unspeakable, deplorable acts. Torturing puppies, raping children, committing genocide, cutting out their own parents' eyes. Everyone must have a limit.
A few years ago I was talking with my brother and SnarkEx and the issue of God's grace came up. I said, "I don't want any more grace than what I deserve." Both my brother and SnarkEx laughed. (They are, and were, respectively, a good audience for my jokes.) The joke is that no one deserves God's grace-- that's the whole point of grace. By definition, it is undeserved.
It was only half a joke. Because I really do feel it. Any love I get I have to earn. The Universe is not going to love me just because I'm here. And it shouldn't, says my Catholic guilt. Everything has to be earned. I have to be the best person I can be so that others will accept me, include me, love me.
I criticize a lot of people and things, but I always reserve the harshest criticism for myself. I do not love myself unconditionally. Sure, there are times when I love myself, when I think I'm great. But it's all based on conditions. When I fuck up, when I fail to be the person I think I should be, I lose my love.
My inner voice tells me, "There are so many things you could do to lose my love."
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