there is salt drying on your cheeks, a thousand thoughts - a hurricane, a storm - battling for domination in your mind; an ache, a murmur, a whisper of something you cannot understand; something you cannot even explain. an emptiness, a longing, a need; to be known, to be accepted, to be understood.
"what is wrong?"
they always ask this, undisguised fear in their eyes, caution in their voices; as if their question - or my answer - fought for, inconsequential, insufficient - will somehow make what i feel less real; as if putting it in words will somehow make it go away.
(as if i could find the words anyway.)
they don't want to know what is wrong; i have learned to recognize the charade, the polite attention, the mask that is stretched over their empty faces, the selfish search for an answer; an explanation to the way my pain is displayed.
in anger. in silence. in frustration and slammed doors and silent walls as impenetrable as steel; walls you yourself taught me to put up at such a young age; walls i have never been able to lower.
you want an answer; something you can relate to, understand, fix.
i don't have one. i don't know how to explain what i feel to you (to anyone) without breaking, without destroying the only place of safety i have ever known. my mind is a trap, a storm i cannot escape from, both a blessing and a curse; a haven and a prison.
//
do you know what it feels like to love someone with everything you are? some would, perhaps, describe it as the most invigorating sensation; a feeling of freedom and bondage at the same time; joy and pain, light and darkness.
in a way, they're right. the freedom, the joy, the light, comes from finding someone to love with that kind of devotion; a reckless abandon that few have ever known.
but they're also wrong. because loving someone like that? it feels like dying. it feels like watching something you created - something you love - destroy itself, using the very abilities you gave it, because that kind of love is rarely returned.
(it has never been returned to me. of all i have loved and who have loved me, i have loved the hardest, the longest, the most desperately, searching for someone who understands what that kind of love is.)
love itself is a blessing and a curse. the ability to love is a blessing; a thing of beauty, of life, of sacrifice and selflessness, of determination and resilience and steadfast devotion.
the choice to love, perhaps, is too often a mistake.
there are those who would argue that loving is never a mistake; that, maybe, love and loss is all a part of the beautiful pain of existence; that love can hurt, but it never means that the love you felt was a mistake.
yes. they would argue. i would let them.
i speak for me. i used to love blindly; the ones i love continue to receive the residual effects of that passionate devotion, but they do not understand - or appreciate - it.
and the truth? the truth is, people do not know how to love. it is learned over a lifetime, perhaps, and cultivated, tenderly, cautiously, a green shoot in the earth, pushing through the soil, towards sunlight, until one day, it bursts through. perhaps too early, perhaps too late, or maybe just in time. (it is rarely the latter.) but until then, the ones who are born knowing how to love are left to try and try, to wither, to die, and to try again.
and the tragedy is, when the rest of the world has finally learned what love is - and how it is grown, and what it feels like - those who have tried and tried and tried and loved and lost are too weary to try anymore, for they have been hurt to deeply to invest in anyone; they are too tired, too scarred, too fragile, to risk the possibility of more shrapnel from the fragments of a passion that once burned too brightly for the ones they loved.
//
(disclaimer : this probably doesn't make much sense; i have read it over a dozen times, trying to figure out how to make it more legible, more sensible, more organized, but nothing happened. my words are mere scrawls on paper tonight, scattered like my thoughts. this is honesty - this is how i feel most of the time, but especially right now. if it makes sense to you, good. if not, at least it is off my chest, in the open air where it cannot choke me anymore; at least, for now. my thoughts are too heavy, most of the time; too loud. i used to shy away from sharing things like this here, but this is my journal; this is how i feel, right now. read it or not, it's here for me to look back on, to remember, to feel a few of these things again. and this is what this space is for, right? ;) xo)
Mikailah, you leave me speechless with the talent you have for for using words in the best way anyone has ever used them.
ReplyDeleteYes, I understand. It makes so much sense, perhaps too much sense. I can relate. And the emotion that filled me while reading this post was almost too much to bear.
I'm in awe of how you write. I want to be able to write like that someday.
-T.
x
This. Is. Beautiful
ReplyDeletei have no words except that i have felt this time and time again. thank you for expressing so humanly the pain the struggle and the confusion in those like this.
ReplyDeletethis is so beautiful and Evelyn expressed it perfectly. your honest yet beautiful pictures of pain and struggle and confusion. so good.
ReplyDelete(also p.s. i have moved to a new space! you can now find me at WAKE ME UP )