For the past year, my life has been a huge mess. Totally wrecked. Upset in every way. I managed to hold it together well enough to finish projects I had started, and even graduate with a pretty decent GPA (and a growing skepticism). But even with this big accomplishment under my belt, I haven’t been able to fight off the realization that something is completely off. And after a lot of searching, I finally think I’ve landed on the reason.
I’m love sick. Completely enamored. Hopelessly head over heels. Sold out and devoted. I wonder, though, does he feel the same? I wake up in the morning with my mind fixed on him. My heart pounds against my chest and pulls me out of slumber. I can’t eat like I used to. Food that held such enjoyment before tastes empty in my mouth. Though I eat like a P.O.W. rescued from a work camp, it’s only because I know that otherwise the food would go in the landfill. And with a body recovering from a vicious five year disease, I know I need the calories. But still, meals three times a day, more, feels like betrayal. Mostly because I know he doesn’t eat that often, if even hardly at all. I know that what he tastes is hunger, because I know he hears the cries of every child who hasn’t eaten a meal in days, starving to death alone. Ten years old, five years old, infant. I know and I hear their voices too. And even the best food goes down in guilty gulps of ash flavored mush. I look for him everywhere too. I call his name under my breath and then scan around me. My heart is drawn to the front of my chest and pounds when I realize that he might be near. Sometimes I’ll go weeks without even catching a glimpse him. But he’s not far. He dances in my memories, creeping in during my daydreams and distracting me from the important business that stops being important when I remember that he is alive out there. That at one time he touched my face and called me by name. My heart aches. I want to be with him. Or do I? The fear grows again from the bottom of my stomach. And then I’ve lost track…what was I doing before? I’ll have dreams where I’m face to face with him again. Or running away from him, as the case may be. Or screaming, angry with him, or myself, because he’s the most intimate and foreign lover I’ve ever fallen for, and I the most fickle of suitors. As I’ve watched him from afar, my heart has melted. He attracts me in every single way, and repulses me at the same time. He beckons me forward with a charisma that is unmatched by the most charming of them. I respect him and trust him more than anyone else. I believe deep down that he knows all the answers, and if only I could get him to stay put and endure my interview…then I’d finally have peace. But he doesn’t like to stay put. And here he terrifies me with his untamable spirit, uncompromising strength and honesty, and his unwavering devotion to people I really can’t stand. The biggest problem with my lover is that he demands I share. Because you see, he goes where he’s called. He’s not selective. He has no type. And he has no favorites. His love is contagious and more delicious than a honeycomb covered in fine dark chocolate. And he is generous to give it. I see my lover everywhere. From my car window I see him kneeling down to kiss the bundled up pile of blankets and beaten-up human figure lying under the overpass. I see him stroking the hands of the woman dying of cancer alone in her home, left by her family. I see him dancing with tattered shirt children in the streets, whose parents are nowhere to be found. I see him weeping over the limp body of a baby whose mother was too strung out to nurse. And sitting, stroking the hair of a young boy sitting in a cell, facing 40 years more of life in jail, whispering hope for something more My lover has no attraction to shopping malls or big church buildings. He doesn’t concern himself with Netflix shows or Instagram posts. He barely notices political campaign and the loud shouts of people filled with so much hot gas from the pulpit. Not that he hates these things. No, he’s just too busy preparing gifts and food and shelter for the homeless, and the desperately poor. He’s too busy comforting the sick, those facing the grave, forced towards an early end by the consequences of modernization: pollution, chemical food, and fluorescent lighting. He’s too busy celebrating with the kids on the street, because he knows that joy and innocence and freedom from the needs and demands of adult life are the real way to experience life. He’s too busy standing with those that the world has abandoned and condemned to their mistakes, telling them that they are not their past. My lover is all about the small and quiet pursuits of the dirty, the small, the ignored, and the unprivileged. I yearn more than ever to leave behind my life and join my lover where he is. The old life I once knew feels like an empty shell to me now. Cold. Lonely. Where my lover is I see light. True, warm light, and not just the glitter to temporary glutting entertaining. Deadening stimulation. With him is joy, I know. Yet the fear of leaving behind the empty glitter and the cold ash of lonely food keeps me back. I fear so deeply that if I leave behind my shell and expose myself to his light, he will see me like no other lover has. The wrinkles and bumps and rashes and putrid sores of my naked and given self. His perfection and love are so opposite of my ugly flesh. How could he ever love me back? Oh how I fear that he will turn from me in disgust. That when he sees my selfishness, my judgement, my greed, my gluttony, my worldly desires, my lustful eyes, my murderous heart and my compulsive hands, that he won’t love me. But the more I watch him from my shell the more that I know I can’t stand to stay hidden in it any more. Risking exposure is better than being tortured by his beauty and fragrance from afar. Even being rejected is worth getting to stand near his glory, for one moment. I must go. I tiptoe out of my shelter. I feel his warmth on my exposed skin. And I whisper to him, the lover I’ve watched from afar for so long. As I call his name he turns to me, and his eyes lock onto mine. “Jesus…” I wisper. “I’m here…do you love me?”
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Author/soil science research assistant @ Rice U/ Archives
March 2017
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