Where do I even begin? How do I start this without leading myself on with feelings of sanguine but not also not ending it on the finality of a goodbye? These days I find both my head and heart in constant war about the logic of these questions I even have the audacity to ask when you’re probably never going to read or hear any of my words. So this is how it feels like to be a prisoner of wistful thinking. Huh.
I suppose I should just be as honest as I can? As honest as my heart could handle, as exact as my words can describe, as true as my mind could spare. Even though none of this feels conceivable in this version of reality-- the reality that I have to come to terms with.
Here it is:
I love you. I can feel what little confidence I have in my sanity slipping silently into the dawn as I try to process what I just wrote. Yes, I do love you. As ridiculous as it may sound, I do love you--- at least in the way that I can, in the way that both time and fate permits me to. I love you during sleepless 4 AM scribbles much like this when my head feels like a bomb going off every three minutes. I love you the second I open my eyes early in weekday mornings, I love you during rainy mornings, during good mornings, during late mornings, and even during bad mornings. And I probably will love you for all of the mornings of my life. I love you during midday chores, during lazy afternoons spent tracing I love you during the afternoon hours of long commutes when my feet feel like iron weight and my eyes are heavy with sleep and your smile is the only image my consciousness is able to perceive to jolt me back into a functioning state.And I am afraid, so afraid that regardless where the world will take me, continents away, in airplane rides, in bullet trains, in taxi cabs, in lonesome city buses, it will be there--this feeling, this false sense of comfort of you woven into my seat, etched into my heart, clouding my vision. I am so afraid because it feels like coming home, it’s an incomparable rush, a crippling kind of bliss that reduces me into a body longing for a pair of arms that have never even known my grasp and will never do.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I'm hoping that if I say it repeatedly,if I let each syllable just glide through my tongue,if I don't let the words linger on my lips, it will not hold enough value. Maybe it could just be letters on a piece of paper that looked good beside each other. Maybe it just sounded right,just felt poetic enough to spare me a fleeting warmth I was yearning for in between months of cold solace. Perhaps it might even equate to a mantra, as the words "I'll be okay,I'll be okay" had been etched in my mind long enough to convince me that indeed,in time, I will be okay. Only,these three words I wanted to whisper to you in the volatile silence only meant for two people whose souls have been tangled in time , my feeble heart requires them to work in the opposite way. Regardless whether I say it in a sea of people or in a tete-a-tete that feels like a cul-de-sac in my heart, the words need to bear no meaning---nothing that could be mistaken for tenderness,nothing that could make you see the vulnerability that consumes my soul every time I hear your name. Call it cowardice, call it insane, call it every name in the book---everything else will hurt less than the truth of what I feel. To love you is a privilege that is only intended for someone who has never known pain and cruelty the way I had,to love you is a sacred promise that only the purest of hearts will be able to keep, to love you is to be fluent in kindness and forgiveness---two things that the weariness in my bones had never known.
Loving you will not be easy, loving you is not all Sunday brunches, late night drives, cozy sleepovers, or quaint dog walking Saturdays in the park. Loving you is not all I-love-you's or You-are-the-greatest-thing-that-ever-happened-to-me. Loving you goes beyond the idealized version of you they have. I know this because I had known love in it's most fragile damaged state. I had known love the same way my human vessel has grown accustomed to gravity. And love,as I had memorized it is not always pretty, love does not come in easy to swallow bite-sized truths. In fact, love will often require the art of lying through gritted teeth for the sake of the person you love. Love does not come in conveniently packaged people who will meet all of the desires of your heart. Loving you will mean sick days for two, untangling darkness that has never made its way to the surface, breaking through barriers that are holding you down. Loving you will sometimes mean lonesome days that stretch out for months, it will often mean unwarranted judgement, missed calls, and bitter insecurities. Loving you will sometimes mean accepting the ugliest parts of humanity that reside within me.Loving you is a continuous arduous task, loving you is a not a promise to you alone but to everyone else that has loved you from the people who know what you look like in PJ's to the people who constantly look at and cheer for you through rose-colored glasses. Loving you will start becoming a burden to some people after the spotlight fades and they look at you, seeing a human person instead of an idealized fictional man of their dreams. Loving you in the harsh light of reality might terrify them. See? To a certain extent,I do understand the complexity of loving a person like you, to a certain degree,I am already accustomed to it, deep down in my heart, loving you seems like the only thing in this word that is worth all the pain it might cost. I understand how hard it is to love, especially someone like you who deserves so much more than the world could spare for you, I understand that even though I could endure through the hardest parts, there is a certain kind of bliss someone soft and ethereal can only give you.
Know this,my sparrow, I have loved you even before I knew what love was, I had loved you through warm summers in my childhood home, I have loved you despite the oceans that the world never fails to put between us, I have weathered the storm of loving you despite of myself and who I am, I will love you even after I would have forgotten what love is and for these reasons, I will have to convince myself that I don't. So please forgive me, forgive me for being damaged and only human,forgive me if I must say I don't and that I can't when I already do so much,when it's the closest thing to nirvana that I will ever be. I love you. I love you. I love you. One day, even just for a glitch in time,I might not mean it and my heart will know peace.
forever yours, winona
