When I say ‘I love you’ that means I won’t cheat on you. I won’t tell you lies. The opposite, in fact: I will be honest with you about everything, including things you might not want to hear and things I’m embarassed to admit to, things that are uncomfortable truths. ‘I love you’ also means I will support you in getting where you dream to be. It means I accept your body as it is and will never shame you for it, in fact I will tell you at every opportunity that you are exactly right as you are and tell you that I love your body the way it is.
Telling you ‘I love you’ means that when I look at you I don’t see clothes or hair cuts or jewellery or skin colour or body shape or religion or language … all of it may be a bonus, but when I say ‘I love you’ I mean I love the essence of you: the way you think, feel, make me feel, express yourself, smile and the way you are as a human being. You will never be a trophy to me, something to show off or impress others with. You are you and you complete me in ways I can’t describe. Therefor, I’ll always be happy and proud to go anywhere with you.
When I say ‘I love you’ it means I will protect you from any harm done by others – may this be actions, words or looks. I will stand up to them, defend you and stand proudly beside you. I will be a lioness protecting her cubs. You will never have to wonder about my feelings for you – they will always be clear in my eyes, my smile and my actions. They will even be visible in my anger, my disappointment and my sadness. When I say ‘I love you’ that means I love only you – as my equal, my partner, my choice. There won’t be anyone else who I feel the same way about or who I choose instead of you or in addition to you. It means I will always make you a priority, I will even put your needs ahead of mine; that’s how important you are to me.
‘I love you’ means I hear you, I support you, I want to understand you, I want you to be well, I want you to do well, I will take care of you, I am proud of you, I stand by you, I will give you 120%. ‘I love you’ means you make me happy, I want to spend time with you, it means take care of yourself, it means I miss you. When I say ‘I love you’ it means I want to grow with you, build a life together, fight and make up, be a two-some for the rest of forever. It means I would never knowingly and purposely do or say anything to make you sad, angry, disappointed, hurt, jealous or make you doubt my feelings for you, your worth or our relationship. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world – simple as that.
‘I love you’ means what’s mine is yours, make yourself at home, wear those baggy sweatpants – it’s not them but what’s underneath that matters. My hugs say ‘I love you’, my sleepy smile when you come home late, lifting the covers for you when you’re cold and sweaty from walking home. ‘I love you’ means I could be offered all the money in the world and I’d still choose you. ‘I love you’ means trust. It means I trust you with my heart, my fears, my sadness, my happiness, with my body and my secrets. I am not perfect and saying ‘I love you’ means I feel safe and comfortable making mistakes, messing up because I know you will stay and love me anyway.
But will you stay? Will you put your pride aside and listen to what I say? Will you trust me? Will I be more important to you than your appearance? Will you believe all of the above? Will you be able to set aside past experiences and trust the new union you have with me?
Maybe you don’t understand what my ‘I love you’s mean. Maybe you mix them up with an other person’s meaning of ‘I love you’. Maybe you mistake them for something else. Maybe you don’t understand ‘I love you’, maybe you never had someone love you this way, and therefor you don’t know better. Maybe I cannot begin to understand the void that’s inside you, left there by someone else. Maybe your absentee mother, bless her, maybe all the girls before me, maybe the last girlfriend who hurt you more than anything else, ripping open wounds, leaving you without trust. Or maybe not without it, but with more doubt than trust. Maybe. I don’t know.
All I know is that from the very beginning, I showed you my essence, my understanding of life and friendship and love. I showed you me at my saddest, happiest, at my worst and at my best. No filters, no lies. Never lies. I opened my heart and my home for you, shared what I had with you, never asking for anything back. Okay, maybe some flowers. Every now and then flowers would have been nice. And some hugs. But I gave. I gave and gave. You took … and at some point you asked for more than I could give without losing my self. That doesn’t mean I don’t love you. It just means I have boundaries that protect my core.
You took this to mean I didn’t love you. You took this to mean I loved someone else, I wanted someone else. You stopped seeing ME, you created a mean version of me in your head and through that filter you saw everything I did from that point onwards. You couldn’t let go and no matter what I did, how much love I showed you, how much I tried proving to you that I was still the ME that you had known for so long … I couldn’t win. The conversations and discussions always wound themselves back to this one point in time where I couldn’t accomodate your needs for fear of losing myself. By acting as you did, you washed away my love slowly but painfully. I cried more than I smiled, I worried more than I was happy, I trusted less and got frustrated more, I slept less and functioned less and at some point I even cared less. You, meanwhile, kept accusing me and then you walked away, justifying your actions with ‘You started it’ and even kicked me hard when I was already down, ‘casually cruel in the name of being honest’. (Yup, Taylor Swift – song reference right there.)
Well, I’m still down. Still battling Anxiety and Sadness and Loneliness. They made themselves at home in my apartment and even when I go outside, they follow me.
Anxiety’s favourite place is right beside my bed, so that he is the first thing I see every morning when I open my eyes. He likes to remind me of my failures and fears and makes sure that I see them in BOLD GLEAMING LETTERS and PICTURES behind which everything else fades into the background.
Loneliness likes to sit at the table with me, to stand next to me when I brush my teeth, to walk through the city, the parks, everywhere really, with me and watch other people walk together. She likes to sit next to me when I watch a movie and when I hang up the phone, she’s already waiting patiently right there.
And Sadness … well, she is like a playing toddler, jumping at me when I don’t expect it, without any regard for the circumstances. She sneaks up on me when I find some crumpled-up hearts I used for a photo album, she runs into me when I stand in line at the post office and she grabs my hand when I’m lying on the couch reading a book. Oh, and her favourite time to bother me is when I’m tired and ready to sleep – she loves jumping in bed with me, yanking the covers to her side of the bed and demanding to sleep with me that night. (As she did the last couple of nights and will do the next couple of ones, I just know it).
So, all in all, I’m not in a good place right now. But I keep reminding myself, through the sadness, the tears and the frustation, the anger and the hurt and the loneliness, that you see this version of me because of who you are yourself, not because of anything I did or anything I am. One sees what one believes in, what one has inside. This one’s on you. I am me and may have made mistakes, but I never purposefully set out to hurt you. What I have inside me, despite everything that happened, is this truth:
‘I love you’ which is also true in past tense: ‘I loved you’,
and that means: ‘I would not hurt you for the world’. Just for the record.
***** ***** ***** *****
Hallo Lebensmaler,
jetzt, am Ende des Posts kommt meine Begrüßung und eine Erklärung, quasi eine “Aus”leitung. Ich musste mir das alles von der Seele schreiben. Ich habe es auf Englisch geschrieben, weil es mir erstens immer leichter fällt, und zweitens, weil die Person, über die ich schreibe und bei der ich alle diese Gefühle lassen möchte, Englisch spricht. Mir geht es jetzt ein bißchen besser, wo es draußen ist. Dennoch denke ich, es wird nicht der letzte Text sein, den ich über meine momentane Situation schreiben werde. Die Trennung von meinem Freund nimmt mich sehr mit und das Mittel, das dagegen hilft, ist das Reden darüber und das Schreiben. Da halte ich es wie Ernest Hemingway.
Danke für’s Mitlesen.
Eine Umarmung sende ich euch.
Katha