No hello or goodbye

It’s hard to go back to the days where it didn’t feel like this,

When I didn’t wish that I didn’t exist.

When the words came easier,

And I was better than this.

I’d be lying if I said,

I didn’t find the best version of me with you,

When fairy tales were true,

Where love existed in a million dimensions,

And I felt you in all of your expressions.

I don’t want to say it,

That I still love you,

Because I won’t let myself have you,

You need to find a love that isn’t beaten,

A love that isn’t broken,

Love that you deserve.

So don’t love me,

I know you wouldn’t want to,

But forget it ever was me.

Because I won’t come back,

I’ll just keep trying to fix my own cracks,

But I’ll be here,

Still broken and choking,

On discarded fragments of my own broken love.

It’s vivid,

The pain,

It feels like twenty million broken shards of glass,

Skull shattering cannons have blasted into me,

Leaving me,

Here.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say,

It is not a hello or goodbye,

It’s a fragmented version of an explanation,

Of an apology,

For not being enough for myself,

For running away from this self.

It will always be yours.

It will beat.

I will breathe.

And one day it will stop.

                                                                  But it will always be yours

Over The Love of You

I’m going to attempt to do this, so bear with me. Firstly, I’d like to say that I’m learning the notion of doing this, of speaking openly and honestly about me on a forum so open, from someone I believe to be one of the bravest people I know. You’re fearless, you’re a writer and a phenomenon, and I’m privileged to know you, to have you as a friend. 

Anyway.

I didn’t want to write about her, because to some extent I am a hypocrite, I preach you only live once, and yet I love as if I could redo this life. I want to speak about love, I always speak about love, I know, but I have this appreciation and profound befuddlement at the idea. Love. The heart wrenching ripping, tears streaming yet heart smiling, gleeful yet painful, disorganized yet perfectly clear notion. To know you’re in love, to feel it when you see someone, and know that your world has settled into a perfectly organized structure, is scary but it should be faced. Yet, I find myself unable to face the idea of being in love, not again, not when I have been certain so many times and had my heart crumble because I don’t know how to love myself, yet insist on loving others. There’s another confession, I love, but I cannot love myself.

From previous entries, you’ve read that I might love myself, that I found myself faced with the profound concept of the Almighty, and fell to my knees at the face of His love. Yet, I find myself coming back to who I truly am, a wreck. I’m bad at explaining myself, but I’m brilliant at listening. Tell me about yourself? How are you? Are you Okay? These are the questions I ask people so many times, almost demanding a straight real and honest answer, a question that I find myself so often avoiding. To a certain extent, I cannot feel wholly good about the fact that I want to listen to people, comfort and guide them, when it feels as if it is coming from a selfish place, I do it to escape myself.

Are we ever ready for Love? That’s a question I don’t have an answer to, maybe one of the many questions I’m asking myself these days, along with many others like Who are you? What are you going to do? How will you get out of this? By this, I mean my own mind; a place so infested with dark corridors, that light seems like something absurd most days. How could you be ready for love when trying to understand why anyone would love you, seems like the most ridiculous thing in the world. I am not ready to be Loved. I know that, no, I haven’t answered the question, I don’t know if I’m making excuses or if it is the answer, that I don’t know if I can accept someone loving me, if I don’t love myself.

In truth, I hope she never reads this, because I love her enough to know that she deserves to love someone who understands it, who revels in it, instead of shrinking away at the idea of the warm and fuzzy. I love her enough, to let her love someone other than me. I’ve heard that this is being selfish, that I shouldn’t make decisions for other people, but I’m making a decision for myself, that I shall not put another person through the pain of loving me, the pain of loving someone who doesn’t know it.

You should love, you have no choice, none of us do but you should also be willing to accept that someone loves you first, because without that, it is just a one sided phone call across the Atlantic with really bad cell phone reception. Painful.

Katie Melua, Malboro Red and Love

It’s difficult to write, when you have no idea what it is you want to say. It’s actually quite silly that it’s an on-going circle, you want to write to understand yourself, but can’t write because you don’t. So the key I think, is for me to stop procrastinating, and just, start. I’ve even made a writing playlist, if I’m truthful it really is only all the sad songs on my phone that will put me in the proper head space to actually explain myself. I’m going to light a cigarette now. There, now I feel like the tormented writer I am, Katie Melua and Malboro Red to get me literate.

I’ve heard over and over again, how people only call upon God in their hour of need, I feel like I am completely opposite to that, both in prayer and in terms of writing. In my hour of need, usually it isn’t just an hour, rather it’s a long period of time that feels like a life time, I find myself shying away from things that make me face myself. I’m more likely to face myself when I’m happy, when there are good things to trip on. I’ve been drinking a lot, dancing a lot and kissing a lot, in order to rid myself of myself, but here’s what I’m trying to do, what we all should, just like Dain told me tonight, accept who I am.

You know about me, you’ve read my stuff, but there’s another component to me, one that I shy away from people because the idea of them seeing me, truly seeing me, frightens me so much. I spend a lot of my time, trying to figure this life out, what I’m doing here in fact. I’m very dark a lot of the time, but that part of me is hard to explain, you see – I have no intention of making it out to be that because I have God in my life, everything is fine and dandy, maybe subconsciously this is what I was doing by shying away from this for so long. But it is that, the fact that I have God in my life, that it is time for me to understand what I am and the fact that I, perceive myself to be someone broken and tormented by the people I’ve scared, the hearts I’ve broken and the minds I’ve poisoned.

You wouldn’t see it as poisoning minds, in fact I dare to say that those I have poisoned don’t think so either, but I feel like I have. I have given people, this notion of love that is never ending and everlasting, perfect and blissful and then taken it away, because in the end I realize how much I don't feel loved myself. That never was their fault though, I couldn't feel what I couldn't understand. I showed them this perfect love and romance, but in fact, even though I believe it exists out there, it wasn't real with us. I’m sorry to say that now, especially if one of them were to read that, but to me, I was giving them the love I thought they deserved, that everyone deserved but in fact I was robbing them, robbing them of what was real.

I have lived my life for a long time as if I was a character in a book, saying the right thing, doing the right thing, making the right gestures, and kissing the right way. I don’t even mean it metaphorically, I literally sit and plan out and write in my head, or tell myself the story as I say what I say, or do what I do. I was a liar and I hate liars. The thing about losing yourself to so many characters, is that along the way, you lose yourself completely. I no longer know who I actually am, whether what I feel or say is real, or if I’ve said something just because it is precisely what has to be said. You’d think it were absurd for someone to be so sure of themselves, but you’ve never been with me, or had a conversation with me, I’m just that good; that good at manipulation and that good of a writer and actress.

I don’t mean to say I don’t care for them; the people I have been with, that I’ve told I love you too. They know that I carry the guilt of their pain I caused with me for the rest of my life, that now I am connected to them and would do anything for them because I’ve done something so inconceivable, and they all deserved better. One of my exes once told me that I sold her a fairy tale, that that’s what I did, I sold a fairy tale that didn’t exist. And that hit me, because yes I do sell a fairy tale, but I’d left her not believing in its existence. And it does exist.

All in all, I am sorry to all those I’ve poisoned, and I pray they will find love, real true and honest love.

Please sign your name on the dotted line

Please print your name on the dotted line.

Which name?
The one you've given me.
Or the one I feel in my soul.
The name that escapes my lips when I'm touched,
or the one I yell out when I'm scared.
The name I want to be known as,
or the name the fans are screaming.
The names of my ancestors,
or the names of my children.
The names of the people I've walked passed on the way to school,
or the name of the man who raped that little girl.
The names of the ones I've watch dance,
or the ones that I've lost.
The names of the brothers,
mothers,
sisters and sons who have fought for my freedom
but whose legacy has been tainted by an the importance of economy.
The name of the kid who died because didn't have enough to eat,
or the name of the old man who sold me a spliff.
The names of soldiers who have died,
or the names of their mothers who cried.
The names of the presidents,
or the names of the freedom fighters.
The names of those who ridiculed me,
or the teachers whose eyes condescended upon me.
The name of that guy who killed himself,
or of the girl who cut herself.
The name of the angel who saved me,
or of the demon who kept inviting me.

Because I am all of these names,
each one has been imprinted in me,
both breaking and taking,
but replacing bits of me.
These are the names I carry with me,
that I feel all around me.
Smothering me.

So which is it then?