Walking away…

And he said, “I am fond of you”, just that.
Not “I love you”, or “I like you”, He just felt a fondness for me. Something to say he enjoyed being in my company but, He wouldn’t take it any further.
For a while, it was enough for me. I couldn’t get the entire cake, so I settled for that little slice, enough to leave a sweet taste in my mouth for a while.

But as all things come crashing down eventually, my fantasy did. I realized when you love someone, “fondness” just couldn’t cut it. There’s a little bitterness that begins to form in the throat when you tell someone “I love you”, and they smile and utter, “I’m fond of you too”.

The bitterness spread in my mouth and I knew I had to make a choice. It was either him or me. If I choose him, I lose myself. So before my heart could convince me to do otherwise, I ran. Not literally. In the span of a few moments, I deleted his contacts, his pictures, his physicalities, leaving only his memories. His memories… Science had taught me a time will come when they will begin to fade too.

Sometimes, you have to love yourself enough to walk away from things and people who put a dent around your heart.

Rejection-

The rejections pile up,
First The boy,
Then the emails
And now rejections, in the form
Of sealed papers,
Arrive at my doorstep.
Like I need,
A physical reminder to
“I don’t want- you, yours”.

“It’s not you, it’s me”
He said.
“Your work is great, just
Not for us”
They said.
Neither of them having
The courtesy,
The guts,
To speak the truth we both know:
“The problem is with me”.

But that’s fine.
Really, that’s okay.
I’ve done the calculation:
6 months of rejected writing,
Requires 1 week of grieving.
5 rejections,
ergo 5 weeks.
Then its back to pen and paper.

The world has told me
Too many Nos,
It has rejected me,
Too many times,
For me to reject myself.
Me myself and I,
We gon’ keep at it,
We gon’ be alright.

Call me Beautiful-

Some like ‘em skinny.
Some like ‘em thickum.
But until you find it within yourself to love you as you are,

You’re going to spend the rest of your life holding on to friendships which should long have been allowed to wither away, simply because they find you “beautiful”.
You are going to spend the rest of your life  crawling through moments, searching, chasing, someone to call you beautiful.

And until you learn to love yourself, “beautiful” to you would always, always mean something that is skin deep.
But my dear… Beautiful is so much more than that. Beautiful is not skin deep, it is soul deep.

The Love we withhold-

I kept waiting for the world to hand over to me, that which I withheld from myself. I sought for it, chased it, demanded it. That fuzzy feeling which one gets from being appreciated or loved or cherished.

I stood on tiptoes awaiting that one person who would make my world all sunny again, that one person who would make me feel like my presence is needed and my absence dreaded, that one person who would make me feel good about myself.

And what I got, was a ball of spitfire. From afar, it looked like a beautiful powerful light, just the kind to elicit the feeling of stardom, but up close… It burned. And I learnt, the world is a reflection of the image I view myself in. (I saw charred skin in the mirror, and the world gave me one).

-We cannot expect love from the world until we are willing to give that love to ourselves. And when we get to know who we are, we accept who we are, we love who we are, the world as we see it would be different.

Self-Love

“But I love…”

Of course, we all love someone- mothers love their children, husbands love their wives, sisters love their brothers, some love their friends.

And how many of those love last when self love is not in the picture. You can love someone else true; but when you love all that is within yourself- the good, the flawed, the quirkiness; when you know what you’re worth, passing it on to someone else becomes so much more easier.

Once you accept your flaws, accepting that of others becomes a piece of cake….                 easier said than done- that, I also know.

Chasing Love…

I think, the more you chase love, the more it gains energy and eludes you. The more you want it, the more it runs off. Love becomes this person who seems to enjoy the thrill of the chase more so than being caught; its mastered the art of evasion and just when you think, maybe, this is it- love has a way of getting one over you, it does so skillfully, taking with it pieces of you and leaving several irregular gaping holes.

And despite, despite the tumultuous ride and the many bumps on the road, we still chase love. We still get on the ride, despite knowing we may be left with even less pieces of ourselves than when we started. What does that say about love? What does that say about us? That we need it, maybe not as much as the oxygen we breathe, but still, as a necessity if we want to “live” not simply “exist”. And sometimes, this love that we’re chasing, isn’t hiding out with someone else; sometimes, this love is within ourselves and we’re simply driving through the wrong paths. I mean, how else can we fill the hole in someone else’s heart when ours is half filled yearning for us to fill it. And maybe, these are the lessons that love teaches us through its eventful journey.

The above image is courtesy of OrdinaryGirl