Writing as an Excercise in Trust

A friend reached out to me recently and asked me to teach him how to write. How flattering! He said he often felt like he would try to write down how he feels but that he never seemed to be able to convey the feelings correctly. He confessed that oftentimes when he would read back what he wrote he would find himself editing down the more vulnerable things he wrote so much that there was no substance left after. I laughed and told him that this didn’t surprise me since I often felt talking to him was like walking in a maze. Or like trying to track someone’s footsteps on a snowy night. 

I said that I think his biggest hurdle is perfectionism. Perfection is a man-made concept invented by monotheists to describe a god that cannot be like man and to be a man is to be dual: both fixed and evolving. I also think believing god must not be like you is accidentally admitting to self-hatred. Also, I also think that wanting to believe there is a perfect god is really just an attempt to wholly define another being which is, I am devastated to report, impossible. I mean, it is possible to know another person but it’s impossible to know you know, do you know what I mean? Anyways, what was I talking about? Oh right, my friend who can’t write. 

We continued to talk about writing and other things and then about writing some more. I said that I think the essential characteristic of a writer was honesty. Not honesty in the moral sense, necessarily, but as a synonym for accuracy. But accurate does not necessarily mean being direct. I told my friend that I like to write in the form of fiction and myth because somehow taking the longer narrative route seems to cut closer to the bone than just trying to say the truth outright. I will take my own advice here: 

Have you heard the story of Cupid and Psyche? Psyche was a princess who was blessed with beauty but was cursed by the jealous goddess Venus to never be married - destined to be admired but never loved. Cupid, the son of Venus, accidentally fell in love with Psyche and so he whisked her away to a palace on a remote mountaintop so that he could marry her in secret. He forbid her to ever look at him and only visited her at night. 

Psyche grew to love her secretive husband but she was plagued with questions and doubts, wondering why he wouldn't let her see him. So one night, while Cupid lay sleeping next to her, Psyche got out of bed and lit an oil lamp. Her hand shook as she held the lantern high and pulled aside the veiled canopy around their marriage bed. She looked upon her husband as he slept, thereby breaking the promise she made to him. 

She had been afraid that he was a terrible monster and that that was why he had hid himself from her. But when she looked down at Cupid she was overwhelmed by his beauty. She saw him then in his entirety, the way only someone that loves another person can - in the small moments like when they’re absorbed in some menial task or talking on and on without thinking or sleeping slack-jawed and their defenses are down and for a moment you can see them all the way down to the bone. And she was filled with love for him. 

Psyche was so overcome she forgot what she was doing and from her trembling hand a drop of hot oil from the lamp fell onto Cupid’s shoulder and burned him terribly. He awoke with a cry and saw his wife looking at him in secret. Full of grief and anger at this betrayal, Cupid vanished along with the beautiful palace he had made for them. And Psyche was left alone on that desolate mountaintop calling out for her husband, trying to explain that his unposed, naked vulnerability only made her love him all the more. 

This is supposed to be a love story. I have read it many times and could never understand it. Sometimes I come across stories or concepts that lodge shallowly under my skin like a splinter and I must return to pick at it over and over again. 

I think I understand Cupid and Psyche now because I understand what it feels like to demand absolute vulnerability from someone that is simply unable to meet you there. I also understand how terrifying the idea of being truly seen by another person can be. 

I agreed to teach my friend how to write and casually mentioned reading his work. He was flustered by this and said that he didn’t know that he would have to do that. I was stunned but laughed and asked him how I was possibly going to give him advice without seeing what he wrote for myself.

I’m writing about writing but like always I inevitably find myself writing about love. Just another embarrassing way I reveal too much of myself to you all. But it’s alright. I think writing, like all artistic practices, is an exercise in trust. Show, don’t tell, and trust that your reader will understand. 

If you’re wondering, Cupid and Psyche have a happy ending. Psyche drives herself to the ends of the earth and even below it to earn Cupid’s trust back. But he finds, as is often the case with people we love, that once the apology is offered he doesn't need it anymore.