Fear of labels

I have noticed I am terrified of committing to anything specific lately - everything is in the state of some grey zone - not quite this, not quite that, not even in the middle, just something undefined. However, our world doesn't work that way - we do label things - when we name them and talk about them - there is no way around it. That got me thinking - why am I afraid of committing and calling things as they are? Why do I want to float in the air and pretend that nothing is anything, and everything is nothing? Maybe the naming of my ghosts in the closet was enough to make me develop an allergic reaction to it? Maybe the fact that everything I believed in - family, marriage, stability - went out the window one day - and suddenly everything became fake, corrupt, and meaningless? All words lost their splendor and I stopped believing that things can be named. The truth is, even if I refuse to label something, other people will do it for me, so no point in trying to live in the unnamed world.

I wonder why I have such affinity for words, and, at the same time, such hate. I can dance around a topic by not quite spelling it exactly, and enjoying the distance from the actual meaning, and at the same time I can be blunt to the point when people think it is TMI or take my directness wrong. I have had a very hard time to name my ordeal, particularly when people asked me - what is it that you are blogging about? What is your book about? I felt the word "incest" roll in my mouth, but I could hardly bring myself to saying it out loud. And when I did, it felt as though I spit dirt. I couldn't help but think about cleaning my mouth afterwards. But when I did have enough courage to admit that it was that label, that word - and say it - I felt relief too. So maybe this is causing me now to re-examine and re-think each word, each label. To feel how it would roll off my tongue and what it would mean for the new me, in the now. 

We like to make sense of the chaos and put things into boxes - then affix pretty stickers to them, so that we know what is where. We do the same in our brains, and once settled, it is really hard to make us change any of those stickers - we're lazy, we got used to them, we resist change because it is scary and unfamiliar, and even if we don't like the boxes, we soon forget and opt in for the convenience. It seems life is easier that way. Until something upsets the balance, and the some box falls apart, or the label is unreadable because the box has been handled so often, and we are forced to act. I guess I shook off all boxes and am trying to live without them, am trying to float from one day into another and experience it rather then label it. I am trying to do it on my own, but I can't because I am surrounded by other people and I bump into them occasionally, and they don't understand my approach - they offer me one box, then another, they try to pull it over my head, or make me sit in one. I refuse. And I feel confused. I can't float like this for long, things are happening and are becoming clear - I only don't know what they mean to me yet. Who I am becoming, who are the people that I am with, what we are doing together, what we are doing when we are apart, what is it that we feel for each other, what is it that we are willing to do for each other, when does it start, when does it end. What does friendship mean, or love, or family, or peace, or happiness. All these questions penetrate my mind, and I'm not ready yet to let them settle. I jerk around and they float up again, restless, like left-over paper shreds after a fake holiday snow show. I know soon I will stop questioning things and will simply take them as they are - words and labels and anything else. Not quite yet, but almost there.

Photo by Petras Gagilas.