Again

I found you again

In the same, trite place

Amidst the treacle of a rom com

The artificial warmth of crafted like-love

Suddenly

On another's tongue

In another's voice

I found you, again

In the language I attempted

(On hold while I tried to forget you)

The curved sounds

Of music that once moved my soul (and hips)

You were there

On the pillow

You are there

On the pillow, again

Next to mine

I see you, again

Your cheek pulled by the weight of your head on the pillow

The mess of salt-and-pepper hair across your forehead

The angles of your lips with an unspoken word frozen

Your eyes, wide, and wondering, and searching

(Searching me)

I am getting lost, again

Caught in the gravity of your gaze

We inhale

(And I don't remember us exhaling)

A single breath

Held, holding, waiting

Wondering

Watching

Then, you speak

The curved sounds of your mother tongue

As syntax and semantics elude me

Words and phrases wash me

As sound and music

Of pure emotion

Then two words leap out

And clasp me with comprehension

"Meu coração"

But I already understood

My heart responds to yours

As my voice responds

In another tongue

The most lyrical dialect I half-knew

My attempt

To match beauty with beauty

When language morphs

To pure sound

To pure soul

To pure moment

To pure movement

Something shifts

We fall in love, again

In the deep pool of a gaze

In the music of words

In the movement of a moment

You don't stay long

You never do

I don't let you, at least at the surface

I hold this moment, again

Momentarily

I swim in the warmth of my tears

For a little while

Then tuck it away

In the little shrine at the back of my soul

Where you – the you I loved – are safe

And I am safe, here at the surface

Until I find you

Again

Some People Lose You

Some people lose you

Not in the middle of the night

Never in the middle of a fight

But when day breaks the last chance

When the heat of the fight

Is nothing left but cold embers

Some people lose you

Flailing in frustration

Tearing and grasping

At the common ground you shared

That no longer exists

Some people lose you

Hanging their head down

Holding the remnants of you-two

The shreds they let slip

Through the grasp they chose to loosen

And then

Some people lose you

In the long silence

They forgot to punctuate

In the assumption

That you’d always be there

Some people lose you

And they don’t notice

The cold spot

Where you once were

The empty space

Where your heart was once a placeholder

The empty seat

They forgot to invite you back into

The now-quiet spot

They forgot to look for you in

The once-reserved place

That you departed

Tired of waiting

To be seen

To meet your gaze

To be reached out for

To brush your hand

To be heard

To answer your last call

Some people lose you

And they don’t notice

In a Name

There are few things more beautiful than the sound of your own name uttered by someone who loves you. The sibling who yells it excitedly when they spot you at the airport. The lover who whispers it in your ear as you slow dance. The friend who sighs it as they comfort you. The niece/nephew who proclaims it proudly when introducing you to their friend.

It is in their utterance of your name that you hear exactly what you mean to them. And in that moment, you are never more glad to be you.

I will not be comfortable

I think I've identified my problem with attracting people who are damaged and self-destructive.

They believe I am too much for them.

They make me feel I am too little for them.

The truth is somewhere in the middle, but it eludes them because they're too busy at either end, building walls, creating fictional tapestries, shutting the doors and windows for fear of letting air in, wrapping themselves in cocoons they refuse to emerge from and will eventually suffocate within.

And I'm left outside, wondering where the open doors of yesterday went, bruised from the offense of false accusations, cut from the defense mechanisms that I tried to navigate through because my heart went further than the rest of me could.

That's ok. I have the freedom to turn away, say a gentle goodbye that will go unheard through the walls, tapestries and cocoons, and explore the wide world, away from knocking on doors, scaling walls, tapping on cocoons, begging to be let in.

Here is the truth: I am damaged too. And in knowing I am damaged, I choose to keep my heart as open as possible, and the resulting vulnerability attracts those who are unable to open their own hearts but want to step through the looking glass. It's not their fault they were seeking their opposite and found they were unable to live with it. It's not my fault that I tried to overlook the unacceptable and give the good a chance only to have the unacceptable overtake me. It's nobody's fault - we both went against instinct and paid for it. The difference between us is I recognise the danger in running and hiding and will choose love over fear any day no matter how scary it is.

I have yet to figure out how to say no upon spotting seeds of doubt because giving people chances is part of who I am, to my detriment at times. But I am stubbornly going to stay open, because the one thing worse than getting heartbroken is staying safe, trapping oneself with false comfort that gets less comfortable with each passing day.

I will not stay safe, because only corpses stop moving.

I can't say to someone, "Don't change me" because we are all always changing and growing. What I will say to the next person is, "See me - who I am now. Walk with me - watch me evolve. Dance with me - we will move together.

"I won't be comfortable, but I will be your home."

Angry tonight

I am angry tonight. I am looking back, and I am thinking.

I am thinking of a deceitful person.

I am thinking of deliberately inflicted hurt.

I am thinking of calculated coldness.

I am thinking of selfishness.

I am thinking of misrepresentation - to others, and to self.

I am thinking of the weight of someone else's baggage.

I am thinking of perfectly valid hope and belief - spat upon and crushed under-heel.

I am thinking of disrespect of commitment, and welcoming predation from an opportunistic and equally disrespectful creature.

I am thinking of desperate longing for shallow validation - and rejection of deeper appreciation.

I am thinking of the turning away from what is good and right.

I am thinking of denial.

I am thinking of self-destructiveness.

I am thinking of cowardice.

I am thinking of all the choices made to create a version of self that is all of the above - and this, above all else, is the unforgivable.

"It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

But, then, I look ahead, and I see.

I see kindness.

I see a gentle hand, gentle arms. 

I see loving eyes waiting and inviting.

I see affection without hope or agenda.

I see generosity of the soul.

I see openness. 

I see an open door. 

I see a place of rest and comfort, to rest, to heal, to breathe again.

And I am no longer angry.

Sleepless memory of sleeping touch

Can't sleep again. The anxiousness has diminished over the week, though, so at least it hasn't become a chronic motor habit as I previously feared. But the mind still won't shut up when it's too quiet and cool in the room.

I'm in the middle of the memory of a warm body sleeping next to me, the smell of him softly blanketing us both. He won't stop touching me in his sleep - his leg, his arm, his bottom, his shoulder, something has to be in contact with me even when he's fast asleep and unaware. I can't sleep when he does that.

Was it really less than 2 weeks ago?

And now, on a cool bed all to myself, I still can't sleep. But the memory makes my heart lukewarm at this moment, not aching anymore, not beating panic-attack fast anymore, just a little warm.

Sketches of a younger heart

I found a tiny, old sketchbook I'd had since 2000. Flipping through it, I found little poems, passages and thoughts that spanned one journey from longing to heartbreak, one rebound relationship, and stopped in 2003 at the start of the longest and most serious relationship I'd had up to recently. It describes a few dreams I'd had in the wake of heartbreak, including one which made me ache to remember - about an exorcism I was being put through, not of a spirit but of something unnamed yet necessary to exorcise.

The sketchbook was also speckled with snippets of one of my other loves at the time, astronomy. I looked to the night sky often, deeply, and lovingly at the time. (I still do, just nowhere as often.) Little stories about the constellation myths, a sketch of my favourite of them - Andromeda and others involved in her story - and a full list of all 88 constellations in alphabetical sequence.

1 April 2003, 12.08am, was my last entry in this sketchbook. I wrote about my idea of the difference between loving someone and being in love with them.

"One may use words to say how it is that they love someone, or why, or what it is they love about him/her. But being in love, that is an entirely different concept. Poets and painters have tried to embody it over the eons, but no words or images can claim to be the true expression of being in love - you just know it. It becomes you, fills you in that wordless, thoughtless enigma. How you can know something and yet not know it."

I was 24 then. That idea has changed a great deal since. I now know that being in love with someone is neither mysterious, nor thoughtless, nor unknowing. On the contrary, much like "gut instinct", it is your brain's way of streamlining a rational process so that you get the answer more quickly and with less energy spent on conscious thought. It's reasoning + bodily response + experience made efficient and quick - this is the right person for you at this point in time.

Loving, on the other hand, is a verb. It can take place with or without being in love with someone, though the former is much preferred in cases of romantic love. It is the ongoing process of caring, nurturing, expanding, complementing, negotiating, and all that hard work. Most of all, it is a choice.

Love is a choice. And it's not an easy one.

Which would you choose? To take the easy but lonely path, or the hard and reward-filled path that will expand your world and help you grow as a person? The safe but self-eroding path, or the difficult path that compels you to discover your authentic self?

Love is a choice. So let me ask you: do you love yourself?

Maslow's hierarchy of needs got it wrong. For adults, esteem and self-actualisation are greater than love needs. Without loving and discovering yourself, you cannot love others fully. However, esteem and love from others are interconnected - if you allow yourself to believe and deserve the love others share with you, loving yourself and growing as a person could be so much easier.

It's so much easier to believe the bad stuff than the good stuff, isn't it? I started believing the good things people who cared about me were telling me only after spending years beating myself up. I started trusting myself and them only after much painful experience.

Only after I started trusting did I start being able to push fear aside, and I:
- Tore down the stone walls around my heart
- Recognised who I am
- Discovered what I want
- Allowed myself to feel fear, and to give fear the finger anyway
- Started feeling true to myself
- Acknowledge that all of the above can and will change over time
- Most of all, accept that I will be hurt and that's ok 

Here is my heart, it's wide open. Feel free to step inside.