I Parade Myself

What could you do with your beautiful hands, my love? 
What could you do with those lips?

Breathe me in. 

Nana: Hey Ren, if I died, would you die with me?
Ren: I would.

— NANA, Ai Yazawa

Being an idiot doesn’t go away with age, apparently, it just gets stronger.
And I wish I hadn’t learned that the hard way.  

Is it really, truly possible to be able to feel your lover’s pain? Actual, physical pain. Not only that, but to even feel it worse than you would your own?

My head feels like it’s going to explode and it’s making me nausious. Pills don’t help. My chest aches worse than it ever did. I genuinely feel your pain. And I also feel the pain of knowing you are unwell.

It’s irrelevant whether other people experience this as well, I just hope that it means you’re getting better.

“Please be okay.” - I keep repeating the same sick, useless mantra.

I’ve lost so many battles lately. In some cases I surrendered because it was the right thing to do, because it was time and I needed it, in other cases I surrendered because anything else would have meant death. And then there’s the battles I’ve simply lost, perhaps because I was not prepared. However bad or good the outcome may have been, though, defeat is still defeat. It takes a toll on us, it wears us down and tires us. It makes it hard for me to speak so many times a day.

I still expect too much, despite that being very little in the first place. Too much kindness, too much understanding, too much acceptance. I expect that people will at least appreciate my small efforts, if they have nothing suitable to offer in return. Somehow, that is never the case.

In all honesty, though, we expect too much of each other, I find. We yearn for too much and pin on each other too many hopes and dreams and wishes and desires. We promise too many things and fulfil so little. We blame each other too much and often forget about forgiveness. And I wish I knew the cure for all of that.

I’ve been so weak lately.

Despite what people think of me, I am fiercely loyal and have a strong desire to do good, to help, to see that those around me whom I cherish and love are okay and doing well and happy, if possible. And even though I have the best intentions, it all backfires on me every single time. It’s made me weak, so weak that I now surrender no matter what my chances of victory might be.

So why do I still offer myself up entirely in a fruitless attempt to comfort and soothe and be of use? Why am I still there regardless of my own needs? It’s quite possible that my long lost humanity is responsible, but I’m sure love is involved too somehow. 

I’ve no hidden agenda, or hidden thoughts any more. I say what I mean and I mean what I say because anything else would require energy I do not own. Every day has become this insane roller coaster and there’s no ground to rest my feet on and all the happy thoughts in the world can’t seem to save me.

I liked to think that I lived freely because you love me. You love me, despite my flaws, despite what I may think of myself. You love me, and it enabled me to wake up every morning and not be drowned in the grief that I have awoken to see yet another day.

But somehow that’s backfired on me as well.

And all that’s left for me to do is witness helplessly how this white confusion leaks into everything, and I genuinely wonder if we’re ever going to spend more nights together than the one’s we’ve spent apart or if you’re ever going to feel that I and what I have to offer are worth the painfully long wait. But the one thing that hurts the most every time I think of you as of late is that I wonder if I’m ever going to see you again. And that just makes me choke on all the things I wish I’d had the chance to do and all the tears that spill uncontrollably before I even manage to catch my breath again.

It will not be enough to say I love you. I know you have heard it before.

— Jeanette Winterson, Art & Lies (via youaremypelican)

And it feels like we’re already flying,
But the air is too thin and we’re dying.

I hold out my hand just to touch you
And all that I know is I love you.

When I touch her, my fingers don’t question what she is. My body knows who she is. The strange thing about strangers is that they are unknown and known. There is a pattern to her, a shape I understand, a private geometry that numbers mine. She is a maze where I got lost years ago, and now find the way out. She is the missing map. She is the place that I am. She is a stranger. She is the strange that I am beginning to love.

— The Stone Gods, Jeanette Winterson (via helplesslyamazed)

(Source: quote-book)