It’s 3am. I can't sleep. I shut my eyes tight and hope to drift off
into nothingness. I am in a mess. Nothing in particular - but everything in
general - is wrong with me. Tears gather in my eyes, threatening to spill over.
The lump in my throat won’t go away, no matter how hard I swallow. I am hungry,
but feel no appetite.
I miss you.
But I do not
want to see you.
No, I do not
want to see you. At least, not now - not like this.
Don’t ask why,
because I’ll tell you anyway. I do not want to see you because I am afraid that
seeing your cold beautiful eyes will push me back into the hole I am
desperately trying to escape; because if I tell you how I feel about you, you
will glare at me and say “Okay. And so?”
They say hugs
heal everything; I think yours make the world go round. My body is tense, on
the edge of a breakdown; I need a hug. But if I ask for one, your passionless
voice will reply dryly “No. I do not feel like hugging you”.
Sometimes I
think I can cope with your dry voice. But your glare? Oh no! The “I’m angry,
don’t talk to me” look chips away a part of me every time I get it. It hurts me,
deep inside. I hate to see it. I hate it even more when something I did causes
you to assume that façade.
I am no stranger
to love, but it has never felt like this. Why do you have this effect on me?
How do you have so much power over me?
No, this is not
love. This is new and different, strange even. I don’t understand it. It cannot
be love. This is an obsession after a fashion. If love were a drug, this one –
this way I feel towards you – is stronger, addictive even.
A few months
ago, your treatment of me would have pushed me away; but here I am, still here,
leaving no longer an option. Is it not strange how your hurtful actions pull me
even closer?
My friends tell me
to leave. They see that staying is killing me. They tell me that I will find
someone else; that I can start all over. Balderdash! They do not know the half
of it. They do not know how long it took me to find you; how exactly you embody
the rare, ideal woman. They know nothing.
You see, I hurt
– but I am still here. I do not want to leave. You are not perfect, after all no
one is – but you are all I want.
I am like a
moth; knowing the fire I love to encircle might eventually burn me, but lost forever
in the allure of its brightness. In the end, I guess I’ll rather burn than stay
in darkness – eternally wondering how it would have felt to bask in the warmth
of the fire.
I love you now.
I always will. Someday, I hope you will learn to love me in return.
Written by Malik Abiola (@d_malik_abiola).
Edited by Koye Gbeke (@koyegbeke). follow his blog here
