Love and Scars - A battle

Maybe there is a reason to slow down when dating

How do you do that when you brain gets ahead of you?

When you heart sends signals of hope

And the gut keeps saying slow down?

What do you do then? 

I don’t know how to take things slow. 

I am either all in or nothing at all

When do you know you are loved the way you deserve to be loved?

or at least, 

Believing in the potential that you shall be loved the way you deserve to be loved?
When do the butterflies in the stomach stop fluttering?

At the mention of a name 

At the sight of pictures 

At the whiff of aroma, fragrances anywhere

At the thought of the warm body next to yours

At the memory of a kiss....

When will your gut settle?   

Does it ever?
Is this what love feels like? 

If it is, 

I want more. 

Everything. 

Every day! 

The ghosts of the past reappear

Scars get itchy

Scabs demand attention

They feel forgotten, abandoned. 

Alone. 

For a long time, they were all I had. 

With new love, they congregate

Whispering warnings. 

Pointing perceived danger signs

Red flags – 

- or so they think. 

Loves Illusion

How do you tell when you are in love with the idea of being in love with somebody and not in love with the person? 

The illusion of love. 

Energy is spent trying to make this illusion as rosy as your perception of how love should be. Of how 2 people who are in love look like, think like, act like! 

You get caught up in creating this perfect illusion only to realise that it was never the love you sought. When the person is not in love with the idea of love and perhaps is in love with you, and you realise you are not in love with them. Just the idea of them. Effort and energy had been utilized to create the perfect illusion. 

Illusions never last. 

Reality overtakes the illusion. Always

Now you have to undo everything that you have worked for years for.
Everything unravels.
Unthreads.
Unweaves itself.
Wisps of the idea drip off your fingers – like oil on a wet wooden stick.
All you are left with is stains.
Of what could have been.
What was and wasn’t.

What is Heartbreak?

I keep coming back to this space. 

To this place. 

Longing.
Yearning. 

To be fought for. 

To be earned. 

My language of love is giving. Service. Generosity. 

No lengths I will not go to, to give. Provide. Share. Embrace. 

Perhaps a misguided level of vulnerability. 

Unrequited.


I want to be loved to the core. 

I want to be imbued with your essence. 

Everything that you have and everything that you are.

I want not just a physical attraction.
I demand spiritual, emotional, psychological connection.
I want to feel your breath in the very core of me.
I want to feel your touch in my blood.
I want to be loved wholesomely.
The good, the bad, the ugly, the unthinkable.

I want to be earned.
Fight for me in the manner that fire consumes dry wood. 

Fight for me with purpose. 

Fight for my/our desires.
Fight for our aspirations. Our purpose. 

Fight for our togetherness and connectedness. 

Earn me. 

Because I am worthy.
Not just of you. 

I am worthy of me.
I am worthy of being earned. 

I have value.
For you, for me and for us. 

When you fight for me, you demonstrate to me that I am valuable.
Being by your side means every thing.
You see, feel, smell, touch the intrinsic value of my beingness.

Or else my heart will break

Heartbreak is not just a separation.
Heartbreak isn’t just ‘breaking up’ of promises, dreams and aspirations.

Heartbreak is love “unfought for!”

Heartbreak is not being fought for. Impliedly saying to me, I am not worthy. Valuable.
Heartbreak is disappointment
Heartbreak is zero returns on a very high investment.
Heartbreak is picking up the pieces, piecing them back together. As best as you can
Heartbreak is knowing your value. And knowing, it wasn't fought for!

Tell Them....

I fucking hate this country for what it does to us.
I am sitting here with a man and I can't hold his hand.
I can't get close to him and just have his essence fill my senses.
I look at him and I can tell he wants it too.
Not sex.
Just that feeling of a man sitting next to him with my hand in his or something equally intimate.
We can not do that.
I am at the point of bursting into tears.
Why is it so wrong to love, lust, flirt and be kind to the people our hearts want.
I am so tired of this shit.

I have to consider safety, security..
We have to wait till we are behind closed doors.
For us to hold each other and dance.
By the time we all get home from a club,
we are too tired and fucking drunk for that to happen.
I fucking hate this country.
At this moment, this hour, this context?
I hate this country

If someone asks what it is like to be gay in this country?

Tell them.

Tell them,
it is wanting to touch someone you love.
And can not.
Because you are in public.
Safety and security first.

Tell them,
it is exchanging cues and love looks in a restaurant,
because offering him a taste from my plate will weird people out.

Tell them,
it is feeling and wanting to be wanted by another human being,
but they can't do that for you.
And in that mini minute you are left feeling unworthy.
Unloved.
Undesirable.
It takes a specific mindset to remind you of your worth.

Tell them,
it is an invisibility that chokes air out of your soul.
Asphyxiatingly.
Killing your very essence.

Tell them,
it is spending your entire life seeking authentication.
.....affirmation.....
.....recognition....
.....benevolence....
Normality in an abnormal world.

If someone asks what it is like to be gay in this country?

Tell them,
that being a self identifying gay man is cloak and daggers here.
So many have been caught in the dagger than in the cloak.
And those who survive?
We live our life's wondering if we are next.
Regardless of our best efforts.

Tell them,
that being gay in this country is having to face your mortality,
it's fragility.
Every time I walk out the door of my house,
I PRAY I am not the next statistic.

Tell them,
it is loving and hating your country in the same equal measure that it loves and hates me,
A dual personality.

Tell them
that in nights like this,
I fucking hate this country.
But glad to be going to sleep,
hoping and praying that perhaps in the morning I will find the sliver of love,
that will sustain me for the next God knows how long