He's hot and happy and I am neither right now

I watched Twilight for the first time last week. I am 31. I had no context for what girls in their teen years have been lusting over, but here I am, 31, lusting over a vampire with emo hair. Terrible acting, strange story, horrible CGI. But here's the problem: I have developed an unhealthy crush on Robert. I know how this goes because I had a similar crush when I was 18. Sherlock. Benedict. I was the exact audience their PR team intended for. I've had a few here and there over the years. Mads Mikkelsen. Ishaan Khatter. Hugh Grant. The cast from Off Campus. And now — Robert. I've watched multiple interviews of him cracking silly jokes and being deranged and weird, exactly how I like my men. I am currently in a phase where I am jealous of every woman he has ever dated, and I absolutely wish the worst for his fiancée. Suki, if you're reading this: I absolutely do not care.

This does draw my attention to something deeper, because having a simple celebrity crush is for complete greenhorns. I am older and wiser and much weirder. I need to psychoanalyse everything.

This deep sense of chase and ambition has been inside me since a very, very young age. It started with producing magic shows and dance competitions when I was 8-ish. I do not use the term "producing" lightly here. I was an entrepreneur, and I was unstoppable. I was popular and a young leader. Everybody listened to me and trusted me to make wise decisions. In school, I was sharp and sincere. I was also very hard to discipline. I used to get into fights if I had to, but always for justice and fairness. I didn't like boys and their entitlement. I was a loyal friend. I was talented and a really fast runner. My school principal did not like me. I always wondered if anybody liked me, at all.

What's common between me and Robert is that we're both always questioning our potential. What's absolutely uncommon between us is that he is very popular and sexy. Also white. And born in London. Also related to the royal family? That just makes me feel worse, actually. But this sense of self-doubt and "shame" that I have always carried — for not being better than I already am, and then even better than that — is now most certainly a pathological concern. It's obsessive. I can make anything about my lack of recognition and access. And it's also true, in a lot of ways. I am angry at the undue advantage the West has over us. Undue is an understatement. It's cruel. I can't let that go. It pisses me off every day. I am not a very nice person either. But what it really is, more than rage, is a strange sadness — of my reality, and of the cryptic, incomprehensible messages from a past I have no memory of. It feels like this endless battle of solving mysteries and puzzles, and it keeps growing stranger.

I really thought I could solve shame by dating hotter men. I didn't even know what I felt all these years was actually shame. Shame of being ordinary and unremarkable. I have tried motivating myself by constantly reading about what true happiness is actually about, and this is what makes me even more furious — even if I were to magically become the most famous and revered person in the world, and my husband is Robert, I am still not sure that would be the end of this internal conflict. What I have understood, from obsessively watching his interviews and his gorgeous, gorgeous face, is how much he reminds me of my sense of inadequacy and mediocrity.

Historically, artists and poets have tried breaking the narrative of shame around "an ordinary life." Vermeer painted it. Robin Williams wrote it. Mary Oliver lived it. But I can't get past their greatness either. And the fact that their geography and language and access helped them shape that narrative too. It is easier for people in power to dismiss the lore around the social strength of power, especially in front of a world that doesn't have access to half the things they do. And it breaks my heart that we never will. I will never be a white person winning an Oscar, and that is not to throw shade at my race but rather a commentary on how, historically, the narrative has been written by those in power — how they get to extract the benefits of it and then preach about how it actually isn't that great. That seems like absolute bullshit. This doesn't mean I justify fame, because it does, scientifically, arise from a deep sense of shame and lack of self-worth. But I would still like to taste it, just to dismiss it.

This is all internal dialogue. It will pass. But Ram Dass said the real work is in the silence of my heart. Even as I write it, it feels like complete bullshit, but I have to believe it. Because otherwise I will be miserable. There is a sense of embarrassment I feel here. Self-awareness, sometimes, feels like a humiliation ritual. A substitute for the glory of success. Maybe it has something to do with my father not loving me right. That's what I've been told. And let's not even get into the lack of romance and trust in the world. The illusion of romance as an end-all solution.

“You love me, and I find you still

A spirit beautiful and bright,

Yet I am I, who long to be

Lost as a light is lost in light.”

- Sara Teasdale

We are all going through some very tough times. Times, however, were always tough. The 3rd person in the world most likely killed the 4th person in the world, and before we knew it, 1 out of 4 people in the world was a murderer, and now we have net-worth to deal with. It never ends.

I don't know what to do with this rant. Do I have to? But what I do want is a witness to my life. No matter how much I reject the idea of modern romance, I'd very much like to be in love. I have a fantastic best friend who is truly the best person in my life. But the yearning for romance, especially touch and exploration, is something I cannot seem to fill with anything else. It's a shame-shaped heart. A void-shaped heart. And I am carrying it with a sense of fear and a lot of confusion.

Having said all of that, it would have been really nice if Robert was, indeed, madly in love with me — and instead of a rant, this was a marriage announcement.

Love,

K