What is wrong with me? I cannot stop crying.
My eyes have been hazy for the past few months, and constantly covered in tears for the past three weeks. I’ve picked up calls okay — only to be asked, ‘Are you okay?’ on cue, the waterworks would begin again. Well, it’s what happens when you find yourself on the losing end of love. It’s the risk we never anticipate when we walk all in, trusting the process and believing this could be it. What is wrong with me? I cannot stop crying over an era that ended a while back.
I’m no one to claim perfection — in fact, those privileged enough to have tangoed with me would tell you what a wrecking ball I can be — when need be. However, I have always believed in loving as I would want to be loved. I love them as I would want to be loved and sacrifice for them as I would love to be sacrificed within reasonable limits. I would do my best to ensure I do not hurt them with my actions — I might be flawed when it comes to words because sometimes I speak too fast and harshly. My words may cut like a knife, even when I mean well. Even then, I would give my life in exchange for theirs.
The challenge with love, however, is reciprocity is not guaranteed. You may have the best intentions in the world, but they will always be wasted if they are spent on the wrong person. So would they? Move mountains when they become stumbling blocks? Crawl on their knees at the risk of losing you? Give you a reason to know life with them would never be death by drinking a thousand shards of glass? …
When the bible says love is patient and kind, gentle, keeps no record of wrong, delights in the truth, protects, trusts, hopes and perseveres (1st Corinthians 13), perhaps they should have specified. Maybe they meant agape, storge, or philia because there was no way the scripture applied to eros. Eros is chaotic. Eros burns your soul. Eros bends you in ways you never thought you could be bent and breaks you in the most painful ways. Eros punishes you for picking it as an option. It leaves a constant lump in your throat, an ache in your head, a haze in your brain, and constant tears in your eyes.
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The irony of living life like nothing affects you is that it tears you limb by limb internally. One day — and a day such as today, the emotions you’ve denied yourself to feel. The reality that you kept hidden in your heart. And the memories that you hoped would never resurface all come out to play. When the whiplash of pain, anger, love, bitterness, laughter, joy and tears hit you, and you have to face reality — you are left wondering — what level of cruelty would one possess to trade your love with bringing you to your knees?
If life has taught me something, being a good person is not for the weak at heart. Being a lover and genuinely desiring long-lasting companionship built on truth, grace, care, and intentionality can be a journey that goes on for life without ever being achieved. Even then, I prescribe to the philosophy that man cannot be an island, and I do not wish to be one. However, it is my season to embrace a period of eremitism — unpack the ugly and repackage the good.
I might not figure out what is wrong with me just yet — because despite how it seems, this is no loss but a win — so why am I crying? But until then, I can say that I loved, and I loved, genuinely and without malice. I can say I loved to my last breath — but that version of me — that loved — unfortunately, has to die so that I can breathe. Until then, I pray for the grace to carry the burden of losing a little bit of myself until — at the right time I wake up to no ache in my heart, no tears in my heart, and no lump in my throat.
Have I mentioned how much I love the rain? It muffles my screams …
