Love is a choice

The truth is that the more intimately you know someone, the more clearly you’ll see their flaws. That’s just the way it is. This is why marriages fail, why children are abandoned, why friendships don’t last. You might think you love someone until you see the way they act when they’re out of money or under pressure, or hungry. Love is something different. Love is choosing to serve someone and be with someone in spite of their filthy, filthy heart. Love is patient and kind, love is deliberate. Love is hard. Love is pain and sacrifice, it’s seeing the darkness in another person and defying the impulse to jump ship.

Love is… feeling safe, despite having absolutely no reason to.

a girl can dream

struggling

It is terribly unsettling to find yourself sobbing your eyes out at 4am with hardly a trigger or much of a legitimate reason to be experiencing this lost-ness when I have not felt the tendrils of powerless and lack of control choking my soul in a very long while

I’m not sure why this week has been so difficult when it is of no particular significance and why I’m feeling like this all of a sudden out of nowhere but jesus, has it been hard.

Someone give me strength.

inexplicable

Every now and then I hear something that reminds me of us, and in that fraction of time I forget how exceedingly destructive we were for each other and the little scraps of me that still inexplicably belong to you misses you, so very much.

fearless, but not careless

‘I’m not afraid of losing you,’ I say. 'Sad, yes. But I don’t fear it.’

You question my indifference.

'I must not mean very much to you, then’, you say.

In the frozen fragments of time between consciousness and slumber and back again, I find myself staring unblinking at the whitewashed ceiling as I have for the last 6 hours, and the same question ticks and tocks back and forth in my head. Steady and unwavering, never stopping, keeping time with the hourglass growing heavy in my heart, gently burying us beneath the sandy call of responsibility, promise, duty and family.

And as suddenly as the dawn spills into darkness, I understand- fear is anchored by uncertainty. Fear stems from instability, it sprouts from doubt.

You and I? We don’t stand a chance in this universe. This conclusion is certain. Definite. Doubtless.

And this is why the opposite of fear isn’t courage, or bravery, or fearlessness, even.

The opposite of fear is love. Unconditional, certain, absolute love. Unmovable. Unshakeable.

'I’m not afraid of losing you,’ I say.

Perhaps in a parallel universe, the sands of time would fall differently for you and I.

“every time you
tell your daughter
you yell at her
out of love

you teach her to confuse

anger with kindness

which seems like a good idea
till she grows up to trust men who hurt her

cause they look so much
like you.”

— to fathers with daughters, rupi kaur

4am musings

Define wariness.

How do you stop your heart from thawing when you keep seeing gestures of absolute selflessness, gentleness, patience and kindness from an individual you’ve both established you can never spend your life with, and this, despite already acknowledging that there is nothing either one of you is able to do to change the situation? How do you stop the affection, the deep, warm ache from the very core of your being, determined, to find their way into your frozen heart?

How do you force yourself to swallow the bittersweet words that threaten to spill from the tip of your tongue, how do you stave away the resentment of finally finding someone who fits every fractured edge and broken fragment of your tired soul, of finding someone capable of piecing together your shattered self-esteem, and knowing you cannot have them?

I can’t decide if being human and allowing your heart to be open and allowing yourself to feel (and consequentially, to hurt) is a better form of self-preservation, or if simply closing up your heart and mind and life would be a more effortless, straightforward approach to shutting out any further damage.

I suppose it depends on what you choose to preserve. Your empty heart, or your bursting soul.