At some point you learn that passion isn’t your bliss. Or your bitch.

At some point you learn that passion isn’t your bliss. Or your bitch.

Passion isn’t nice.

We forget that.

We try to find “our passion” like it’s some cute and feisty pet.

At some point you learn that your passion is not your bliss. (Or your bitch.) It’s not anything so tame as what you might like or enjoy. It might bring no enjoyment at all — which doesn’t make it less compelling.

Passion is subversive.

It is your willingness to suffer for something (or someone), to risk the sacrifice: stability, peace of mind, happiness itself.

The color of passion is the color of blood. It marks the lovers and the rebels. It steps out of culture, jumps class, overturns tradition. It puts your house at risk.

It might lean in —

— to burn it down.

It strips you in winter. It picks at your scars and leaves you to shiver.

Passion won’t listen to reason. It transforms. It is hellbent.

It alienates you from those who no longer know who you think you are or where the hell you think you’re going.

(Do you know where you’re going?)

It knocks you off the path. (It was the wrong path.)

It makes you start again: the friendless city, the salary cut.

Passion has an edge of war. It points to what we want so much that we’re afraid to want it. The ambiguity of hope. The fear of not getting. The fear of getting.

It requires us to change when we’re so far from ready.

It returns you to your wounded place, the trauma you try to deny. It is the injustice that calls you to crusade. It is the loved one you lost, and now must save through saving others: from cancer or violence or addiction or corruption.

Passion lifts you high and drops you. It strands you on a rocky coastline, in a country whose name you can never pronounce.

It breaks up the stories you pretended weren’t broken.

It doesn’t care that you’re unprepared.

Passion stands behind you with a mirror. It wants to show you who you are.

All you need to do is turn around.