Oxygen

chinadolli

February 20

I've always known what real love looks like from the outside looking in.
However, when it comes to myself, I often lost myself in the idea of romance, it didn't take much to impress me.
A little sweet talk always went a long way... To compensate for the years my mother couldn't say a nice thing about me.
I grew up always seeking verbal validation...

Please speak to me
Whisper those sweet nothings and airy somethings.
I want to hear it like a bird, who's a pretty bird tweet tweet tweet?
Who's a pretty girl?

Me damn it
pour that liquid gold on me to fix the crevices and cracks of my broken heart and mind that started when i was 6 years old.

I wanted to hear, I was doing a good job
Tell me you're proud of me
Tell me
Mom, are you finally satisfied with me?

I believed lies meant to seduce me like the original serpent.
Taking the fruit, let me bite into the juices and let it nourish me
Maybe if I hear it enough it will be something I believe.
Sweet talk got any guy far with me, delivery was even more important.

Now
Sometimes I feel like I'm watching myself from the past below, fall for another man hoe
Who knew all his lines, like auditioning for the role ...
I didn't want to know the truth
I wanted to hear sweet lies that made me feel alive.
Sending chills down my spine, as another one rhymed me a little tune
As if he wrote it himself and it was brand new.

I knew I was eating lies, but I was starving and ate the artificial things they said, feeling more insatiable.
It was a constant stream of disappointment that took a toll on me.
Then finally I could see the malice between the eyes to get between the legs for a night or whatever.
Just cause someone's words and promises and gazes are nice doesn't make it love.
And if I could've seen myself from the outside, I wouldn't have given any of them the time of day.
But I had to stick around and stay and learn the hard way.
Those words can be used as weapons and masks, a tool to manipulate their past history, and intentions.
Keeping me in a limbo of suspension...
Saying sticky honey phrases like, I love you, I want you, you're the only one for me, meanwhile saying the same to another 3 in the same week.
Bees aren't attracted to that honey, only nats that swarm in a group of more than a hundred dozen and die in a day.
You can have that honey, it ain't sweet to me anymore.

Funny how
Men claiming to be strong sure do act weak. Sure do know how to speak when things are going their way, then they turn around and say cruel things, out of defensiveness, turning into aggressiveness.
Yet lacking decisiveness, when their love is conditional depending if she loves him more than he loves her, cause that's a power move.

He controls her, that's not love.

I had to see it in someone else before I realized it was happening to me.

I had to get love from someone else who didn't talk the talk his words came off as awkward, but it was his actions that sang like an orchestra with a chorus that hummed into delicious Harmonies making a type of cacophony eliciting colors and shapes I've never seen before.
Is this what real love feels like? Easy? Less anxiety, leaving me feeling happy and giddy.

I used to think I was in love a few times before, but I realized maybe I'd never fallen in love with anyone before.

Love wasn't like a war, a push and pull, walking on eggshells, it wasn't doing the most for crumbs in the form of an occasional compliment.

Love wasn't treating someone like shit when they couldn't get their way, it's not putting someone down for something other than their behavior.

No...

I remember reading in the Bible the definition of love.
"Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous. It does not brag, does not get puffed up, does not behave indecently, does not look for its interests, and does not become provoked. It does not keep account of the injury. It does not rejoice over unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, . . . hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails."—1 Corinthians 13:4-8.

I didn't know what this version of love felt like romantically.

Yet, once I felt it, really felt it, I realized this was something I would do anything to protect.
Once I started, I couldn't stop, I did things because I wanted to, not out of obligation.
I wanted to do things for him, say things to him, and make sacrifices for him, and doing so made me happy.

I think now, love is such a small word for such a sentiment that could expand and change and adapt, grow, and evolve...

I could easily see how the longer you are with the right person the more that love grows and the more those people grow together like two separate vines wrapping together around a tree, becoming stronger as it experienced adversity and years together.

I didn't realize how superficial the type of love the world taught me was, until I sunk into the abyss of misery, and was forced to swim to the surface for a breath of fresh air that someone with a beautiful soul blew through my nostrils and into my lungs.

I don't think I knew how to love.

Someone taught me by loving me in a way no one else did.

I used to think love was almost like a naughty word, to be reserved, I used it sparely, afraid to use it at all, not sure if I ever actually felt it, or it was just something close.

Now love doesn't feel like a word that's strong enough for what I feel.

I live for a love like this.