If there's an appropriate day to write this, each second is of the essence.
It's his birthday. He would've been 25. It's been a rather trying week and I was putting some lotion on this new tattoo I got in the bathroom at work when I got the text from my aunt. It was a plea to celebrate his life.
Reading the words of the text was painful. Thinking about his face is painful. Thinking about how his departure from my life nine years ago after nine months of suffering in a hospital is painful. The burial the day before my 16th birthday. The beginning of my search for myself, which has been nothing short of an odyssey until this point, has been rather painful.
Last weekend and a dinner table full of friends, mostly new, one old that I used to fuck (yes one of the few that actually reminded in my life after) were having a discussion about love. How it was defined, how we all experienced it and what we seek from it.
Some wanted a monogamous partnership, others experienced infatuation and connection. At the end of the dinner after realizing I sounded rather bitter because I had never experienced the sort of whimsical, romantic love talked about in Nick Sparks movies, songs from the '70's and legendary novels that have stood the test of time; it hit me. What I got from love was loss.
I define love as more than attraction and partnership. Love is eternal, it engulfs you and when you share it with someone you need it like your brain needs oxygen to function. After a few moments of without oxygen, even with the constant flow of blood to the brain, as the levels drop, it decays and ceases to function.
It's a rather morbid way to view my experience right now, but I know that's what has happened. People have come into my life and brought me nothing to sustain my spirit. I look back and found myself giving to others and when it was reciprocated, I didn't know how to receive it because the loss of love has damaged me to the point where I cannot process it's return.
It's not that I don't want to accept it, I can't recognize it to see, feel or taste it anymore. Maybe it's a defense mechanism because I believe loves is something that runs so deep between two people that it kills a part of each other if the other were to ever leave. Maybe it's because no one loves like I do, so when people outside of my closest family members tell me they love me I cannot return the sentiment.
The truth is nine years I learned what it was like to have my heartbroken; my world shattered. That's a pain that has, like love, endured the test of time. If I plan on living I cannot experience that pain again.
I can accept that I'm a broken person that is doing my best to overcome my disability, but if I ever get that kind of love from someone that I didn't grow with and develop an authentic understanding with, then I'm going to be a vegetable in this game.
Until someone comes along and shows me that they are committed to breathing the life into my blood that I lost almost a decade ago, I guess I'm going to be stuck in this vegetable state for the long haul.
- CGN
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