TO LOVE

Dearly Beloved,

 

Love is awful

It’s awful!

It’s painful!

It’s frightening!

Makes you doubt yourself!

Judge yourself!

Distance yourself from the other people in your life.

Makes you selfish.

Makes you creepy!

Makes you obsessed with your hair!

Makes you CRUEL!

Makes you say and do things you never thought you would do!

It’s all any of us want, and its hell when we get there!

So, no wonder...

It’s something we don’t want to do on our own.

And Love, isn’t something that weak people do.

Being a romantic takes a hell of a lot of hope.

I think what they mean is, when you find somebody that you love, it feels like hope.

So be strong, and take heart all you who hope.

 

To Love... I can take you back to the first time I had a crush on a lady. She was way older and so light skin and I thought she was white (she wasn’t). Then I was Batman for a night and injured my friend and his sister reprimanded me and God was she beautiful (My second crush). As life would have it I went to school for all the wrong reasons since my cousin would get snacks and fruits every morning as she carried her backpack to go to school and that motivated yours truly to go to school.

Six years later I met my third crush. She had the Nevus of Ota. A condition where her eyelids had a blue patch and I thought it was the cutest thing ever but it was clearly not. She left school and we met once when we walked together and got ‘ice’ before they got the name ‘ice-pops’. I was over the moon that day. Two years after that I got another one. She was clumsy and for some reason, I thought it was cute. I enjoyed helping her study but we changed classes since we had a hierarchy of sorts and I met another crush.

The year went on very fast and I was transversing counties and there I met more ladies. The pool was bigger, I’d turn my head and meet another and another and it got boring. I gave up and chose to be more charismatic. Here, I broke barriers and it had my heart racing. The adrenaline I got from being risky always had me hopping from one relationship to the next. I was a love bunny (I am cringing) and I enjoyed it.  

As I went through all these things I had never been in love. Not once. Well, there were moments where I would think that that was love but no, I was just infatuated. Then I finally met my match. She was beautiful. She was pleasing to look at. She was a yapper and had this laugh, God I loved her laugh. Miraculously, she became mine. Miraculous because apart from charisma I didn’t have anything else going for me. Everything was new and I had always struggled with change, so all these new things were getting scary.

One minute I was happy and the next I wondered how it would feel if she left. She was reassuring though. I mean she never gave me any reason to worry if she would leave but I always thought of the worst possible outcome in everything and her leaving made it seem as though my world would stop. Then she did leave, and for a few years, my world did stop. I tried tinkering with the gears that made my world turn and there I couldn't realize what being I was becoming.

I was always on edge. I got possessive, angry, cruel, and selfish and I judged myself a lot. I always wondered; did she leave because of this and that or maybe because of this and that, but I can’t change this and that, no, who said I can’t change this and that? So, I started changing again and changed again and again and again and Tinkerbell was overworked so I gave up. I could no longer recognize who I had become and thus, I had to accept who I was but chose to revert to who I knew. An adrenaline junky. But this didn't last long, it got boring again. Sighs...

Love was something I never knew I wanted or needed but, in my aim, to keep it, I became a being that didn’t even have the embers of love anymore. Accepting who I had become and re-learning love was a journey full of pain as I had to come to terms with the things I had done while seeking that which was gone, chasing the wind was draining everything from me.

Love proved just how weak I was and picking myself up was way harder than accepting the different changes I was going through. Surely love is not something someone can do alone. So, to those of us who are on a self-love journey and have been lied to that we can do it alone, I’d like to reassure you that you will fail. Take a deep breath and involve your friends, your family, and everyone in between. Loving yourself then will be easier and braver.

With Love,

 

Thairu.