About love

Love, such a common thing, yet we tip-toe around it as if it was the end of the world -or the beginning.

I blame Disney and Hollywood, no.
I blame romance books, no.
I blame the patriarchy, I blame binary gender norms, I blame society.

You and I are the same, and the feeling of love is fundamentally the same, yet here we are, giving it a thousand different meanings:

The love you feel for your sibling is different than the one you feel for your best friend, it's different than the one you feel for your child and it is extremely different than the one you feel for your partner.
You have to wait until it is appropriate to say it, you have to be "certain" of what you feel, and you can't take it back unless things are over.

How come so little words have such an important role in this whole thing?

We are the same, I'm coming back to that part.
Him and me and you and they.
I love my sister, I love my nieces, I love my friends, some more some less, but I do feel love when I am with them, when I think of them. I feel a light warmth filling up my chest, sometimes it's big and desperate, sometimes it's calm and grounding, sometimes it's overwhelming and I feel like drowning in it. Sometimes it shows up when I don't want it to be and I need some space, some air, as I wonder why in anger.

Why would I be angry at feeling such a nice fire within?

Revolution is love too, solidarity and union bring me love, a big one, overwhelming only because of the pain of the political situation of society, but when I am in the middle of a crowd who is fighting for freedom, for equality, for dignity... I feel the fire rising from the middle of my chest, filling up my words as I sing in unison with all of you.

I just keep asking, why is love such a terrifying thing?
And I still blame Disney and Hollywood for making us believe that we are supposed to be struck by love, turning our partners into the most important being in our lives and tricking us into making them the answer to all our problems.

I still blame romance novels for presenting suffering as part of love, sacrificing yourself for love is the ultimate proof of it, being self-less is the goal and if you're not, then it isn't love.

I still blame the patriarchy for making assigned female at birth people seem mysterious and incomprehensible beings, almost alien. And for things like "you must love them not understand them", instead of saying: "talk about it, listen to them, ask questions until you understand".

I still blame binary gender ideas for creating boundaries, presenting ways in which it is appropriate to behave around love when you are a or b, for brain-washing us into feeling our feelings and doubting how to react to them, being ashamed of feeling love, bottling it up and playing cool.

I still blame society for telling us what is right and wrong when we should be deciding that on our own when it comes to our own feelings. Society should have our backs, teaching us about feelings in a non-judgmental manner, teaching us that, however we are, however we feel, we are enough, our feelings are valid and holding up space for them, and us to learn, through experiencing and mimicking healthy ways of reacting to them.


I blame us too, right now, for not talking enough about this, for not exploring and deciding for ourselves, for not daring to change the paradigm, for not deconstructing it like we are doing with so many other things.


So here, let's open the talk:
I love, do you?

Just this once.

Left, left, left, left... A familiar face.

It wasn't you, but your thought floated down to my eyes. Your gentle brown eyes, your funny nose and hair, those weird dimple-things when you smile, then I dreamed of all the exchanges that never were. Tormented by the millions of words we shared, but not one single touch, your lips were never even close to mine, your hands never caressed my naked body, and never will. Between us, only words and pictures got intertwined in the realms of a universe that is real, but not quite.

Your skinny self hasn't been within my skull in a long time, and even now, after such a long time, I wonder what could have been and tore myself between regret and not. Who can ever know if any is ever right or wrong?
I wonder how things would have been, and I still want you, only to fulfil a desire though, don't get me wrong. We had our share of tricky things, even if nothing really happened, so this new bunch of words for you, are just about sex.
Sex. On your balcony.
It's about having drunk more that day around the fancy streets that feel like it's not Berlin anymore. About having leaned a bit closer, about keeping the gaze, so much tension in such subtle moments. About having sat on the edge as you'd get closer. About having grabbed you with my legs to pull you in. About the dream of that initiating kiss that never was. About what would have started then with your arms around my waist, with mine on your neck, sitting on the edge of the roof floor balcony, quite a spectacle. About having taken your clothes off slowly, feeling each millimetre of your skin with my naked fingers, about having you leaning over to undress me and kissed my neck.
This is about what comes after, when we'd both been naked, covered in fluids, craving more, having run inside to get further on. This is about you sliding into me, and looking at me with the face they all do and having said what they all do: some version of "why does this feel so good?"

This is about having eaten that fancy soup you started to cook after, instead of having run away. About that one encounter that never was and these weird tormented memories of dissatisfaction and crave pulsating and making me wet, even now.
This is about having woken up the next morning and knowing you'd have made breakfast for us, we'd have laughed and touched and showered, and spent the day between the balcony, the kitchen and the bed, again.

This is about idealising you by now, this was only about sex.




Just that one, far away time. You and I wouldn't have worked, but men we wanted us bad. This is still just about sex, Andrew.

8.5.2020

Is this hunger or thirst?

And if I can't recognize that, how can I trust myself at all? 

It makes sense how I keep dragging around these fears and feelings, like a forgotten ghost, never certain of how to resolve them and let go.

A big "unresolved matters" sign should be planted on my head, it's part of my personality by now.

And here we go again, new feelings are coming up because "unresolved matters" is my second name: I could hear them having sex and it feels weird, not in a jealous way, I don't at all want to be either her, or there, or with him... My emotions are always complex apparently:

First of all, I feel envy: He kept saying "she can come, she can squirt" while implying, "Sorry you are broken".

But also I feel cringe about hearing her extremely high pitched voice moaning, I don't like hearing people having sex unless they are complete strangers and I won't ever meet them (and of course if I am having sex, duh).

And somehow I am angry... "fear of missing out" comes to my head, when he said she was coming over, I wanted to go be with my partners too, but what I honestly want is to be alone today, in myself, in my head. Be with the amazing company that is me.

But this heads up brought all these feelings, that restlessness that is already deeply imprinted in me.

I have nothing to envy, except the orgasms I guess... Because this "being broken" is at the core of me. It comes up all the time, it stops me from fully enjoying the pleasure... My mind is broken though, my body is just very sensitive but needs a lot of the exact right kind of stimulation in very specific places.

I don't envy her but I am angry somehow... Am I angry at myself? 

And now I am way too tired to keep going. I hope the morning brings some clarity, I hope I can sleep at all... And maybe tomorrow I can focus on the "unresolved matters" heavy sign I'm still dragging around after this text.

A love.

"Where do you think it comes from? What does it feel like?" -


You are a light of sunlight on my skin,
Warm and bright,
hope-like.

How could I not love you
in the grounding, simple love,
you show me every day?

This unwrapping of ourselves,
slowly to our guts,
feels like the moon at any phase,
like you at any day.

I didn't know how easy this can be.

You showed me that love
is not a drowning wave of darkness,
but a gentle salty lake to float on,
in peace.

In this void that holds it all,
where I don't need more
than what you wish
to give.
Instead of an endless pit,
to be filled.

Your love feels like the possibility of everything,
in the infinite nothingness within.

The source.

Like how there's no sound
without silence,
your love brings the calm,
my love brings the storm.

And so we flow gently
like waves
in the Pacific
of our souls.