People try (Part two)

When you have loved and lost, you never look at love the same way again. When you have hurt someone, you never look at love the same way again. When you apologize and fix things, you realise you will never look at love the same way again.


 I have walked past people thinking about why someone did what they did and sigh loudly. I have smiled to myself in all places I feel oblivious to thinking about the scenarios I make up in my mind. How a bright red bag catches my eye and I immediately think about painters who are lovers who smear red paint over his lover's breast as he kisses her lush lips. How the sky so strangely orange one day reminds me about a friend and I imagine a conversation I would have with her. How a racing motorbike reminds me  about the incident that almost killed me and how when death looked me in the eye, I shifted from the thought of sheer terror to relief in seconds. 'I was so young, I shouldn't have thought like that' makes me panic and I quickly find something else to distract me. How when I see someone cry I always wonder what they might be going through and hope they have the strength to see through it. I have sat across so many people in airports, in buses and thought about all the sentences I would string together to make me feel love was simply the same. That love was learning to forgive people, was the desire to meet someone, was the colours that highlighted feelings, was loving yourself, was empathy. Simply the same.

There comes a point in your life where you realise everything requires courage. You need courage to love someone, courage to forget someone, courage to live, courage to die. A permanent escape for a temporary discomfort. It seems like cowardice. But the courage it takes to leave everything behind, to leave everyone behind, and to leave a fading imprint of yourself that strains the mind of everyone you love. It takes bloody courage. And it also takes courage to understand that you are wrong. When you leave your hand idle and someone holds them in yours and brings it to their chest, when you snuggle in close with your mother and she gives you a kiss on your forehead that you cry, when a friend hugs you when you look a little sad, when when..The heartbeat you feel on their chest, the softness of the kiss, the warmth of someone close, it takes courage to hold onto these 'when's.

Love makes people careful. Careful of their actions, careful of their words, careful of everything that would become an anchor that can hold someone down. But there are some moments when people break and they say things out of cowardice so that they won't be the only one left in the mess. And the feeling lingers around like a chain around their neck that tightens everytime they try to open up. It takes courage to break them loose in the beginning to apologise and even more strength to take them off and decide to never do anything that would hurt them again. And when the tears have dried and their warm embrace makes you vulnerable, you will cry and you'll know how to open up. Open up with feelings and words that you felt were locked in a version of yourself that you had lost.  Because love was never about hiding yourself, it was about being real that you saw who you were in your reflections. So you soften the edges of your words so that they hurt little, you soften the edges of your smile untill it becomes carefree, you soften the edges of 'careful' so that it looks more like 'courage'. 

People never learn how to love someone without hurting them eventually. But people fail. And people try again. Because love is the strangest feeling of them all and also the strongest and it will always win.



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