touch me
on loving and being loved
i used to believe love was healing, maybe too much, maybe still a little.
i believed that the love i could give without thinking of myself would be enough for everything, and that if i waited long enough, one day it would grow so vast it couldn’t fit inside humanity.
for me it became something where everything seemed covered in rosy sparkles, and my emotions kept swelling each day.
i thought that seeing the beauty in the faces of people, or sometimes catching the fragility behind the eyes that avoided me, could bring me closer to them.
i blame it on being naive. or maybe because i never really saw a living example around me, it became something i kept creating in my head, over and over again.
my sister, waiting hopelessly for years at the top of her own tower for her prince charming, and my parents, who were more like roommates than lovers because they were matched by tradition, good partners but never intimate in front of us or anhyone. after watching them all my life, i convinced myself i was and would be different.
throughout my school years, i heard it from everyone , family, relatives, friends: “i really wonder who you’ll marry, i can’t picture it.”
for a long time i carried those words like a badge. proudly, even.
as if i had stepped out of a fairytale, i went looking for someone who would be gentle to me and tough to the world, someone i could fight through storms with.
someone who could hear me even in my silence, maybe understand me from a single drift of my eyes.
for years i accepted not being understood, even used it as something that made me different.
but each time i saw someone find their other half, a wave of longing would rise inside me.
while my mind kept circling, i lost my first love to god among the clouds, in a way that caused unbearable pain.
and my second love,
who proved everything i thought i’d learned wrong, taught me how to quietly slip away when i finally calmed down.
when i gave someone endless love, even when i didn’t let that love touch myself, i saw where it could lead.
when my tears turned into a river and even broke my mother’s heart, i knew i had to take a step back.
when the glass sphere i had built around me shattered, my eyes began to turn in a new direction.
i watched every crumbles i had mistaken for love pierce me like a knife.at some point i even thought maybe it was good that way.
the breaking of that glass globe, the way my hair flew in the wind and the sun and real life burned my skin, taught me new things.
for a while i believed i was the vulnerable one, always the victim, until i kept meeting the same kind of people again and again.
i kept crashing into walls. yes and then, this time, i became the wall.
each time i held someone close, each time i trusted, i found myself hurt even more.
i didn’t want to be touched.
my outer shell hardened but i couldn’t put out the fire inside.
no one could or should really touch me, or maybe i never let them.
when that shell finally cracked, and i saw flames rising around me, i hid even deeper inside.
then, when i had burned enough and my ashes started floating in the air, i calmed down.
i sensed that love was something beyond performance.
love wasn’t holding on tightly, it was letting go, setting free.
love wasn’t something to be earned, or a burden to carry for someone else.
maybe now, to love, is not to find someone, but to find the home inside myself.
broken, uneven, sometimes cold, but mine.
love is not a light there, but a breath flickering slowly.
i can hear it now, in the silence.
love is no longer a healing for me, but a witnessing.
nothing gets fixed, it just stays as it is.
and maybe that’s enough.
even when someone loves me, i know that love doesn’t belong to me.
everyone carries their own love, no one lightens another’s load.
heavy but familiar.
now i have no shell, only skin.
and under that skin, there’s still a small burning place,
maybe the only thing that keeps me alive.
not because someone might come and truly see me,
but so that i don’t stop seeing myself.