Love: approaching my 30s

30th Nov 2017

If we desire something so much we are attached to the shadow desire too, not having it.

So we don’t get it - desire without attachment.

16th January 2018

I’m slowly killing my insides. I think I have to acknowledge the severity of emotions.

29th January 2018

It is relentless this life thing.

Relentless.

But we are made of steel and rubber.

And we shall grow new armour.

24th June 2018

I’m here and hormonal like some kind of super fan.

Sitting at front knees up. Lipstick and sunglasses.

My tinder date came and left a gift for me in a bush across from my window. Sumac and lavendar.

I should be in a noir film or a sitcom.

I need laudanum and a talcum powdered bottom.

My friend’s mother once thought I’d been hexed by a Turkish woman.

I’m eating falafel and drinking Turkish coffee to the sad wail of primitive harps. It’s the sound of my soul.

My relationship with Turkish culture has always been tinged with heartbreak. The bitter olives of the dish we shared on Hoe street. You paid the cheque with guilt and I tried to keep my heart as open as the flat bread.

30th June

I am learning to be the man. I leaned in. Unheard of.

And it occurred to me that we don’t have to fall into bed with each other like we are rushing to the inevitable pain of an ending.

No one told me that growing older was about learning how to miss people. Everyone that you had to part with prematurely because if you didn’t, you’d slowly kill each other.

He said: The ego wants to kill you.

He said: People need reassurance. I don’t. I had constant reassurance. I had so much (he said).

And in the absence following those words, he said: You don’t have as much as I do. He said: You are worth less. You’re worthless.

Careless whispers cut deep.

They become real.

I know you didn’t mean it like that.

But with care I hung on your every word and put myself in every absence until I became it.

Every beautiful stone I pulled out and dusted to give to you was promptly dropped into the pool in the well in the absence of your words.

I became that pool in the well. I hid myself as a ghost in the peripheries. And everything I made was to prove that I should be allowed to be present. And I loved and cared for those so tenderly that I felt were as unloved as me.

All that mattered was the absence of the words, I was the ripples and echoes in the pools that sprung from the mirror of the image of you.

I made art and beautiful things, lovingly tended ideas, became my best self to the world to prove that I could be more than the ripples in the pool of the mirror image. And for that I give thanks. Because when I had to work out that I was indeed worthless – I realised that we are all worthless. And the only thing that makes us worth something is consciousness; care; codes; attention, love.

And all these I will pour into those things and people I love; the those not loved yet, and the bright souls I've not yet met.

In not loving me, you taught me how to love myself again. It is sad when those you so deeply admire turn out only to be a reflection of your journey into adult life.

Jewels: so beautiful while they last, but so soon gone.