Love is not one-sided. Love is a sensation, a truth, an emotion, and everything in between. It is a way of living. And you live your life in fear of it, afraid of being too close to another, because you’ve been hurt. Well, let me tell you something, dear. I’ve been hurt too. I’ve watched my demons dance on my broken body, tormented by the words of others, the words of myself. I have been shunned and bruised, my emaciated limbs too tired to take another step.
But even so, I have kept going. I am not saying it is an easy feat, because it certainly isn’t. It is one of the hardest things to do when all you want is to give up and give in to the fear bubbling over in your chest. It is heart-wrenching; I would wish it on no one. But it exists. It exists to be acknowledged and surmounted. It exists to be conquered by your inner strength. It exists so we may know its polar opposite, love. And you cannot know one without knowing the other, a harsh truth we must all discover, somehow, some way.
But you ignore it. You let it fester. You let it rot so it stinks up your senses. You have let the fear take you over, and made sure love will never have a chance. You have crippled yourself, and you know it. You know it deep inside your heart. And just because you’ve had it worse than me, worse than many, that does not make anyone else’s experiences insignificant. It does not make you any better or worse than anyone else. You must work with what you have, what you chose.
Life is not a disease, it is a condition that you willingly put on yourself to test your limits. And it is that fact that so many lose sight of. It is that fact that you have chosen to ignore, twisting it to seem as if life is horrid, that life is to blame for what you’ve done to yourself. You are lost in fear and self-deception, and I cannot help you, as badly as I wish I could; as hard as I’ve tried, this is a fruitless endeavor.
You are the only one who can change you, and you have given up hope for any positive change. Face yourself, and maybe you can break through. But at this point, I don’t think you have the will or the courage. You have given up. You are just as lost as you believe you are.
You are gone.
You are gone, and I am sorry.
I never want us to forget
the promises we made
to live life to the fullest,
even if it’s just for
the other’s sake.I want these words
to follow us forever,
keeping us in check,
attached to our love,
stapled and glued
so there are no gaps
between the two.Can we be like those promises?
Our love won’t work without them,
and this can’t work without us;
there is no other
that I love with such intensity,
and I know you feel the same,
fire burning through your veins
with every breath you take
when I’m around.Don’t worry, love,
I’m here to stay.
Just promise me
that you’ll stay too,
despite the hurricanes
that plague us;
please don’t be afraid
to face the wind and rain
head-on, chin up,
eyes focused straight ahead
to the beauty of a clear horizon.
Mike Frawley: Does Anyone Remember
Does anyone remember how to love these days
we all know how to pretend, where to spend the night
when we can’t bear to be alone with ourselves
we hurt, we make babies, use and are used
yet is there anyone who makes love from the heart
is there hope
most fear being alone more than anything
…
Hands in hair,
skin to skin
face to face,
and through all the love,
all the sparks,
surpassing electricity,
is the thunder of my fear,
the claps growing louder
as we lay.So close that you hear them, too.
So close that you will not rest
until they are quiet, finally,
so we may lie in peace.
You always loved a good storm,
a challenge, and it will be,
for nature is a powerful thing,
harboring elements
unpredictable.She is brewing, love.
If there’s a way, I hope you find her
and quell her misplaced fury
before her winds carry me
too far.
You can’t simply delete pictures from your brain.
You can burn the physical photographs,
or simply tear them up and toss them in the garbage.Memory doesn’t work that way.
I hate the way your face is burned into my thoughts.
I hate that you haunt my dreams,
causing me to wake with a start
and search my room for signs of intrusion
until I can calm myself enough to know
how far away you are from me
and that I’m safe, at least for now.I see you arise from the deepest depths,
and I cringe, your sadistic smile a tattoo,
a brand that strikes me with fear.But I’m tired of being afraid.
Your picture will always remain to remind me
of the mistake I made when I returned your gaze
that night, when I entered your bed the next,
when I drank with you, told you my deepest secrets
that you could only use against me.I cared for you once,
I did.But no more.
If you so choose to enter my life again,
I will push you out, though your face
will never disappear.I would make myself hate you,
but to do so would be to sink to your level.I can only hope that my face is burned inside you
to remind you of the feral beast
you really, truly are.
Inside of your world,
I don’t see how you can live
constantly in fear.
I’m terrified. So much so, that I’m paralyzed. I don’t know where to go. Which way is up again? Because if we could keep going there, we could fly so high, we’d leave the stars behind. We would zoom by them so quickly, they would all blur into one light, one continuous light so solid, it would appear still.
Can we float there forever? It’s rhetorical, because I know, realistically, that we can’t. But maybe we can make something of the coming ascent, even if we eventually fall flat on our faces. After that, if we could scrape ourselves from the pavement, we could take off again. At that point, up would be the only place to go.
When I gain back the movement in my limbs, maybe we can make all these speculations a reality. Maybe we can take this where we’d hope it would go all those years ago.
Maybe.
I’ve never been good with absolutes.
I give my love freely, yet I’m full of caution with every ounce, every spoonful I feed to you. I’m not afraid because I think you’ll leave; I know how deep your loyalty runs. But I know myself. My brain has all these escape plans and nowhere to use them, which is, I must admit, unusual for me. I’m so used to taking off and leaving after the magic feeling fades, because that’s the routine, that’s what I do because I’m trapped without that novelty.
The craving hasn’t started yet, but it’s sure to come with the hot summer weather. This is when I thrive, when I indulge in the sweet, ripe fruit that spring has dropped from her branches. This is when I live. I’ve tried to resist my lust for new experience, but it’s a high I can’t get enough of, so suppressing it just blows it sky high when the opportunity arises. And you are the last person that deserves to see that. I don’t want you to see how I handle monotony.
So let’s keep things new. Let’s do things we’ve only ever dreamed of. We can make every day a spontaneous adventure, not ever knowing where we’ll end up until we get there. Maybe that will be enough to quell my ravenous hunger for novelty. I guess all we can do now is try. And I’m more than willing to do that for you; for this; for us.
I want to give you my all,
but I hold my fragile heart back
from plunging too deeply
into the depths that I
so haphazardly created
from jumping in
too far and too fast
and too many times
for my own good,
each time knowing
from the beginning
that it wasn’t meant
to be.
But now the time has come
for me to dive in,
and all I can do
is shiver and shake
at the thought of the bottom,
filled with ice-cold waters,
meant to steal my breath
away, much like you have,
and to my very core,
I’m afraid.
Fears that can’t be swallowed,
too solid to break into bite-sized pieces,
and too big to even know where to begin.Throwing themselves into unwilling throats,
planting,
never leaving.Stuck.
Relentlessly choking,
blocking air from entering,
trapping carbon dioxide
too deep inside,
ultimately poisoning
any hope of living.So we merely exist,
the fear in our gullets
making it damn near impossible
to move.
