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A lack of purpose leads to romantic obsession
On purpose, obsession, and the morning after a bad night
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Yesterday I vented. I said things I wouldn’t say in daylight, cried myself out at some ugly hour, and woke up to find the world had rearranged itself back into something bearable. Nothing outside changed. I just slept. And now I’m a little embarrassed about the person who wrote all that at 10 pm, even though she was telling the truth as she felt it. Thank you for being kind to that version of me. I mean it. Love you for that. Now let me get back to the thing I actually wanted to think through today.
Someone said that a lack of purpose leads to romantic obsession. Well, at this point I don’t know. But the more I turn it over, the more I think there’s something real in it, and I want to work it out here in the open.
This is how I’ve come to understand it, from the inside.
I’ve noticed that my mind hates empty space. It’s like a house that refuses to sit dark. If there’s no lamp on, it’ll light a fire in the kitchen just to have something glowing. When I have something big I’m actually building toward, my attention flows outward into that thing, and there’s just less of me left over to fixate on a person. But when the purpose drains…
