‘Imagine that, Feyi. We’re alive and I love you’ – Alim Blake*
This is a stream of consciousness, because the language of the heart isn’t linear.
I am not brave when it comes to [romantic] love. It is 2024, and I feel like a child with tools and no instructions.
Merging has felt like a threat to my freedom. In my most of my partnerships, I am one foot in and the other is dangling off the cliff. There has always been a strong enough reason to leave – even if it is not me who pulled the plug.
(‘freedom’ is a euphemism for escape).
And then there is the performance. Behind the curtain the magician is just an ordinary man. I ask myself, without the projection is there enough here? [truth]. Closeness is a threat [lie].
(‘co-dependency’ is my euphemism for ‘closeness’)
We know, we know. Love is what makes this thing spin. It is potent (and I drank from its medicine two summers ago and then again in 2023).
But with the reality of survival, how do we really let it in?
Here is the truth – for almost 2 years, someone has been trying to love and merge with me.
I try. I retract. She leaves. She returns. I’m suspicious. I push. I hurt. She hurts. I protect (disconnect). She returns. I say it is a trick.
This isn’t OK.
When you pray for love, can you nurture it? When the love returns, can you see it? Do you believe that it is the force of love (and only love) that brings you together?
Without love we join the undead – this is not hyperbole. Our lives depend on it. I believe this now. I also believe without love we can’t truly be courageous. Be afraid, that’s OK, but don’t stay there.
[when your definition of ‘safety’ isn’t actually being safe, but a euphemism for ‘imprisonment’…]
Today I pray you know, feel and honour love; and if you don’t know how to love, humbly ask it to help you.
Like I am right now.
I need it.
‘I want you – I want us to know that this is real. That it survives the mountain, that it can cross the sea and still be there, in our hearts.’ – Alim Blake*