Split

Summary

The text reflects on the human experience of feeling incomplete and the desire to find a sense of wholeness, drawing on the myth from Plato's Symposium where humans were once split beings seeking their other halves.

Abstract

The author of the text delves into the metaphorical concept of being split, with parts of oneself scattered across different aspects of life such as work, sleep, creativity, and relationships. This internal division creates a yearning for unity, akin to the myth of Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, where humans were originally complete but were cleaved into two, leading to an eternal quest for one's 'other half'. The piece contemplates the idea that while the search for connection can be driven by a sense of lacking or fracture, it is also about finding a path to self-completion and healing, rather than viewing oneself as inherently incomplete. The author suggests that despite our wounds and scars, we are whole beings capable of love and connection, and that relationships should be seen as the coming together of two whole individuals rather than two halves seeking completion.

Opinions

The author challenges the notion of being 'half a person' without a partner, critiquing the romanticized idea of another person completing you.
There is a skepticism about the ease with which people attribute their sense of completeness to finding a romantic partner, potentially neglecting personal growth and self-healing.
The text implies that the pain in relationships can stem from the misconception that one needs another person to feel whole, rather than seeing oneself as already whole.
The author expresses gratitude towards the editors of Scuzzbucket, indicating a sense of community and support within the writing and publishing process.
Despite exploring the theme of being 'split', the author is not fully committed to this idea, maintaining that individuals are

Part of me

Part of me still lives way over there, in another municipality a different town, and part of me, naturally, is over here, sometimes punching three or four digits into the phone but never hitting dial, sometimes scanning what passes for a newspaper to see if they’ve perfected synthetic operations that would bring such a massive geological split together, or maybe someone found a magnet strong enough to pull inside of this orbit two halves that really do want to find the meaning of Aristophanes’ love like truly, and it’s a lot more than just fucking desire — or it is that too, but the big part of the whole project is to find what road to take to fill in this gap, even just a bit, get a bit closer to feeling whole and not only fractured, and not only parsed out into tiny lives: here’s work life, here’s where your sleep life tries out new things, and here’s the abyss created by your creative life while it tries to make a whole out of only a small part, and here’s your parenthood, your childhood, your lover-hood your priesthood, your gentrified neighbourhood — and just like when a building gets too old, too structurally unsound, and there isn’t enough drywall in the world to fill that lath and plaster belly, you just gotta tear it down and start over, so you begin to imagine that the split was made up in the first place and the next morning you wake up something apart is back together again.

I’ve always hated it when people call their partners their “other/better half”: you’re half a person? I get why Aristophanes’ myth in the Symposium is so charming, how it seems to make sense out of where sexual desire/love comes from (Aristophanes says that humans were once two-headed, four-armed, four-legged creatures split in half, destined to spend our lives seeking out the other half); I mean, it’s so fucking easy to believe that we are nothing but fractured, wounded, lonely beings; the rush when you find somebody (or some bodies) seems to smooth over that sense of incompleteness so quickly and well, that it’s difficult to realize you actually had some healing of your own to do, first.

I’ve watched so much pain caused (and caused some myself) by not realizing that a relationship is two whole people coming together, rather than two fractured halves desperately clawing at an Other for completion in the darkness of night.

The above piece is just me playing around with the idea: I’m really not committed to the idea that I’m “split.” Just because we all bear wounds and scars doesn’t mean we’re not still whole beings all to ourselves, and still can be capable of great love.

My thanks to the editors of Scuzzbucket, Franco and Amanda, for letting me hang around. Rock on, write on.