Unrequited love?
Some things in life feel deliberate and some things happen by chance and circumstance. What do you do when you love someone but they don't love you back? What do you do when you find yourself on the receiving end of someone's intentions but their intentions are temporary in nature and you can feel that at the time but you know that you will carry the feelings you have forever? Do you deserve this because you have been the one who once viewed someone else as temporary who professed their undying love for you? At best you now have both perspectives in mind. How do you tame it so that it doesn't drive you mad?
What happens when you love someone for who you thought they were on the inside and they after investing it all in them and with them, you discover that they aren't who you professed them to be in your mind. How is it that love for one accepts all insult and rejection and love for another comes undone over a few loose words and one incident of bad behavior? What happens when you feel it's over but you know it never will be over because you changed your whole life and lost everything for a few months of someone else's time?
How do you come to a place where acceptance envelops you and your mind settles itself and tells you that all of it is okay?
It is one thing to be in that place when you are young and time whispers "better luck next time," but it is another when you find yourself in that place and you know that time is no longer on your side. As for me, I look back and try to analyze how I got here in this time and place and I know that right now is good enough, that I am blessed despite so many who long to see me cursed. It is a humbling thing to be living under the carnage of someone else's ill wishes and know that God has blessed you all the same. "He prepares a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." I never thought that person would be me. To keep hate out of your heart you have to clear your mind of your personal feelings and try to understand the other perspective.
Everyone you open your heart to eventually teaches you something about love or hate, it is the brave person who opens their heart anyway. That's what keeps us human. Love blesses me, hate confuses me and indifference is the worst, it is dehumanizing entirely. And I ask myself, considering my history, do I deserve this? Perhaps I do.
I laid beside him and cried because I knew I was temporary, that I was likely a small conquest in a line of other small conquests that have come before and others that will come after. That this was an intersection in life that would be an important part of my life when it would just be a footnote in his. I cried quietly so he would not hear when I deeply needed him to wrap me in the safety of his arms and assure me that it was okay, but he gave me no such assurance and I loved him all the more for his honesty. Why couldn't someone else love me for mine?
Peace to you who have never loved me, to you who have wished me ill, to you who suffered some mental disturbance when you saw me happy. Be satisfied that my heart is scarred and discontented though my life is settled and mundane. Peace to you all the same.
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