You say that you are in love.

What does love look like?

Like everything I was hiding from confronting me.

Like everything I prayed for manifesting.

Like everything I rebuked fighting me.

Like everything I asked for blessing me.

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Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.  James Baldwin. 

Help me to see the purpose in my suffering. 

|Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old...Isaiah 43:18|

I pray, wondering what I did to deserve such a severe punishment. I’d give everything to take a needle to the tapestry of my past, and unthread that moment that has led to the repercussions of today. If a decision I’ve made could be re-written, I’d sit for hours and days, without food or water and unthread that moment from time, and re-stitch it with the right action. Because being here with you is like existing in an airless space and I find myself desiring to be anywhere than here. How quickly my contempt rises even as I desperately sift it out of my body. I think bitterly to those days when I prayed and believed that I’d receive beauty for ashes, yet I’m still covered in soot. It’s so unfair. You make every hope of mine a childish fantasy. I can’t put my hope in your hands, no, not even my expectations, that trickle out of your hands so effortlessly. It is foolish of me to put my hope in man, to have faith in humans. Yes, you have shown me that it is foolhardy to have faith in you. They say weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning. But even as the darkness threatens to extend beyond its borders, I’ll sit here and wait for daybreak. 

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*SoulTea*

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I have to let you go. It’s difficult for me to sit here and realize that where I want to go you can no longer come with me. When I realized that you could not come with me, I wept. I spent most of the day pouring my grief into my pillow; I was barely able to catch my breath. I don’t know if you care to know, but the splitting headache that ensued left me bed-ridden for days. 

Please understand that I would prefer to keep things as they are, but deep down in my heart, if I am to be free, to finally walk in who I am supposed to be, we have to separate.  I have to traverse a path I haven’t seen before, one that I had never imagined for myself.  Yes, something changed in me and I realized it was you who had to go, it was you who, no matter my prayers, supplications, begging, fasting, abstaining; it is you who I must leave behind. Admittedly, the thought causes my heart to seize in fear; even my blood congeals in my feet; I feel light headed; it’s disorienting. How can I be without you, you whom I’ve known since I’ve been conscious of myself?  You were with me through every good and bad decision, through every high of good grades, thinking I’d fallen in love, winning games, and every low of heartbreak, failing grades, and the deep sadness that ensued. 

Remembering these things brings a heaviness in my chest. How did I not drown? You always stood so close by, always present, ever-close. Always a spectator. And that's the problem. You've only ever been a spectator.  All this time I convinced myself that your presence meant participation. That you'd helped me, or even encouraged me. And I got dependent on your presence because you are familiar.  You make it ok for me to lack discipline and focus. With you, I can justify every wrong thing. Nothing is either right or wrong, good or bad. Everything is whatever I want it to be. But how can I possibly live like that? How can I grow in that? To you, everything is permissible and beneficial, hence the reason I can no longer go with you. 

All this while I thought I needed you. But you've been holding me back.  And even now, I'm not sure if it's you I loved or the idea of you.

At first I felt sorry, but I am relieved. Relieved that I have a choice to walk away from you; relieved that I no longer have to blame you for what I haven't been able to do. 

I know what I want now, and you are not part of that. 

And for this revelation I am finally at ease.