When I was twenty six, I fell in love. Hopelessly. Desperately.
It was the kind of love affair one can only stomach in one’s twenties – it was dramatic and visceral and revered as something beyond lust, dopamine, oxytocin. It was the stuff of fate, telepathic connection and magical thinking.
It was recycled over many years and in many guises, always with the same, inevitable outcome. I couldn’t escape being demolished any more than I could resist the pull of the butterflies.
Decades passed. I walked the planet with uneven feet. I guarded my heart with a wild ferocity. I trained myself in the ways of renunciation, and loss. I mostly pretended it never happened.
When I woke up on Thursday morning, a text message was waiting for me. It was sent at 3:10am (for effect, no doubt). It was complete in its unexpectedness, its cunning, its familiarity. It carried with it comfort and excitement in equal measure.
I could feel the habitual responses starting to well up in me. The outrage, only just masking the giddiness; the fluttering, the relief.
And then it stopped. Abruptly.
I found myself separate from the message and it’s sender. Untangled. Singular. Awake. The habitual dialogue, fully formed and oh-so-ready to start flowing from me quietened, then stopped.
I understood clearly, perhaps for the first time, that the text came into being regardless of me. That it was someone else’s ode to their own fantasy, and that I do not have to feel persecuted by it or possessed by it or obliged to assume a role in response to it.
I understood that it existed wholly outside of myself, on the other side of my skin. From there I could step sideways into the light. I was finally free.
You rare girl, once again, you have a body that belongs to no lover, to no father, belongs to no one but you. Wear your sorrow like the lines on your palm. Like a shawl to keep you warm at night. Don’t mourn the love that is lost to you now. It is a book of poems whose meters worked their way into your pulse. Even if it has slipped from your hands, it will stay in your body.
Letter from Anais Nin to Clementine von Radics
You loved a man who treated you like absinthe, half poison and half god. He tried to sweeten you, to water you down. So you left. And now you have your heart all to yourself again. A heart like a stone cottage. Heart like a lover’s diary. Hope like an ocean.
Daily Braveries 