love. week thirty four.

August 5​ 

 

Sadness. As I smoke my last cigarette on the balcony.

 

Sadness. For leaving my apartment, my city.

 

All goodbyes reek of death.

 

What’s the difference between mourning and melancholy?

 

Freud says that we don’t mourn the loss of our love, but the loss of love’s object. Love cannot die. It can only transform.

 

Mourning is a form of loving. Love in exile. Wandering. Lost. Helpless.

 

 

Once again, I’m caught in love. I mourn the loss of my loved ones. The ones left behind.

 

But are they ever left behind? Can I leave anything behind?

 

I am more than this body. I am more than this moment.

 

I am a piece of this world, of all worlds. A fragment of existence.

 

 

61 Delancey, Apt 8 does not die. It lives on.

 

NYC lives on. My friends live on. This past year lives on.

 

It is a part of me, and I am a part of it.

 

This past year exists forever, a part of me.

 

There is no departure, no breaking up. How could there be? Can I depart from myself, from everything that was, is, and will be?

 

There is only a flow, a process, a narrative. An unfolding of what always is and what always will be.

 

To grow attached to this place at this time, is to forget that I am all places at all times.

 

I do not exist.

I am existence.

 

And damn, ain’t existence just gorgeous?

 

 

 

Riding along a road the other day—
    abstracted, rattled, feeling loath to go—
    I saw Love, dressed in tattered clothes as though
    a wanderer, walking toward me on the way.
    His mannerisms made him look astray, 
    his mastery gone; his countenance didn’t show,
    since he was walking with his head bent low
    to ward off glances, sighing in dismay.

When he saw me, he called my name on cue,
    and said: “I’m coming from a distant place, 
    where your heart was since it is mine by right.
    I send it now to serve a new delight.”
    And then I took so much of him in place,
    he vanished from my sight before I knew.

 

-- Dante, Vita Nuova

 

 

 

August 7

 

Can I ever love myself?

 

I don’t know. I doubt it.

 

I am ashamed of myself.

 

I can’t comprehend that shame, let alone overcome it.

 

And so, I go about my days, pretending to be someone I’m not. Living someone else’s life. Oh let’s just be honest, I’m not even living another’s life; I’m barely living any life at all.

 

But I think that I can grow to love that shame. To honor it. For at least a few courageous moments.

 

No, not to honor the shame, but rather the shameful bits. Perhaps shame and love can coexist.

 

After all, in its most basic form, love is merely the courage to live.

 

To live, in spite of everything. Love never considers itself, it sees no options. It can only move forward, or simply extinguish itself entirely. Against all odds, love always chooses life.

 

The things that make life worth living can never be created with fear. And fear knows no greater enemy than love.

 

All of which is an extremely roundabout way of admitting that I finally created an account on FetLife lol