Love, Friendships And Relationships

What my lovers left behind?

For me, love has always been subjective. It’s been defined by this unrelated series of events and people and every time, it has made me feel differently.  Through all of those people, I’ve felt everything, from raging oceans in my gut, to butterflies in my stomach. But in spite of the incomparable experiences that were unique to each of them, they all shared one thing. They made my heart glow. 

My first lover taught me how to love. I looked at him and thought he was all I ever wanted to look at. The sun pouring out through the clouds, every bit finding it’s place through, my hand finding his. Wrapped within his stories, my stories, the stories we were yet to create. His jacket, warm against my skin, his head resting on my chest. How the nights melted into sunrises, how I melted when he looked at me. Mountain tops, the grass, the world pausing for us. And then it unpaused. And the world was too loud and we couldn’t block out the noise. I needed this forever. He knew he couldn’t give that to me. There were so many nights when the only place my mind found comfort was in his phantom arms. It clung onto the air they left behind, ever so desperately hoping that they materialise wishing that he would’ve stayed. I  met him two months ago and every second before I did, I wished he would hold me one last time. But then I looked at him. And all that remained was familiarity. 

My second lover brought me fire. His hands-on my thighs, my hands in his hair. When the black would melt into hues of orange and yellow.  I’ll think of the way he looked at me and grinned, told me that he’s never seen someone as beautiful. I’ll remember the pools of honey in his eyes, the lines on his palm, the way his hair fell over his forehead. I’ll remember, clear as day, why he left, because there are things in this world that we’re all meant to stumble upon, things that are meant to be discovered by us and for him, I was never enough. I found my words in his absence. Every epithet was on the way his lips moved when he spoke or how his eyes crinkled up in the corners. I wrote novels on the colour of his eyes and came to the ultimate conclusion that they’re just brown. And nothing more. 

Loving others has always come naturally to me. 

But having been empty for so long in their absence, I’ve realised that until I purely, truly love my own self I will never be able to love with all of my heart. And if I do, it will mean giving away parts of me that are meant to stay within me. It would mean losing my own self. And that’s something, I’m not ready to give up.