On Control
Love as transformation
A plan can be a good roadmap. But often, it is more a vehicle to protect you from loss and uncertainty. Overthinking is another attempt at controlling the future. When you overthink, you don’t search for the truth or how the future will accurately play out but rather for a way where you won’t get hurt. So your mind races and races and races with no end in sight.
We often repeat this in romantic relationships. That’s where counting of emojis, analysing replies and tone comes from. What do you do when you don’t know whether it is you or them. “It is me, not you,” is a classic break up phrase but how often is it truly your self? Every time we talk and there is a hint of conflict or ominousity, scared we might break up. Then nothing happens. Always feeling like at the head of a cliff, always feeling like my fingertips are slightly digging into the rock while my feet are slipping, and the worst part is, you were always already on the hill. Kissing you, wanting you, not knowing how much you still want me or just tolerate me, haven’t got the heart to kick me down just yet.
Bodies pressed to each other, intertwined, in my head I want this, in my body, I’m just surprised. Surprised by you kissing me, wanting, me, your touch and how much of this comes from being bored. Toxic, spelling it out on your neck and stomach and back. Don’t know whether I’m just toxic. Radioactive neediness, careful of how you poke me or I might fall apart. You everything I am not. You everything I am not and I despise you for it. You everything I am not and kissing me, still. Narcissus seeing himself in the water and realising his reflection looks better. You take what you want, do what you want, say what you want and that is what makes you intoxicating. Most people go through life, trying to deform what they want into what is acceptable, trying to make themselves forget to desire. Seeing somebody else embody that makes you feel alive, makes you feel alive through them, makes them feel a little less bored and I think that is why everybody wants you. People are starving for desire and you aren’t afraid of it. Afraid of yourself. I keep forgetting that Aphrodite never had to be nice, that she was fiery and full of life and turbulent like the tidal wave she came from. Shouldn’t make me wonder so much that being with you feels like waves after waves after waves and trying to stay on them. I don’t know why you are my muse.
You feel like a fire when you kiss me, pushing me down on the chair, engulfing me or burning me I don’t know, flames licking at my skin. Intense, here, urgent, feels like you’ll pull me in and leave me ravished and destroyed but somehow I don’t care. Somehow I am okay with that, like that’s an experience I need to have, like if you are a mistake, you are a mistake I need to make and if you pull me down to tatarus so be it. You burn me. I am of two minds.1On my knees, praying, don’t know for what, maybe devotion isn’t healthy or maybe surrender is holy. In the crooks of your body, I find my religion2 don’t know whether I’m condemned. I wouldn’t be so stubborn if you weren’t you. If you weren’t you, I think I would have gone already. But with you I want to stay. Sometimes you are so high voltage it stings, I am masochistic for you. Or maybe I am the one giving me the energy shocks, me and my thoughts, my thoughts that are an enemy than a friend, more often than not.
Doing something scary or reckless feels the worst when your life is good. When you know doing that scary thing will make you actively happy and rewarding your cowardice gives you sadness and bad stuff then yeah, it’s easy. It’s easier to be brave when you know you get a reward. It is much harder when the place you are in is actually good and comfortable. When you got everything you so far wanted and there is still this restlessness inside you. That little thing, nagging at your mind, not the motivation or decision but rather the impulse and compulsion to do something utterly stupid and utterly worth it. What you find on the other side of fear is always worth it.
rehearsing writing text messages
i feel unloved
i don’t want this relationship anymore
let’s break up
mind going spiraling, not wanting to hit the send button but secretely hoping you would and they’d be online.
are you still in this?
do you still find me hot?
do you want this, us?
you can’t exist without your friends - you could exist without me though
I know i am not good either. I said stuff that hurt, and i did not mean to, i truly did not, it was nowhere in my radius or want and i still did. I think I will always love you. I will allways love you, even if we part our ways and I think that is because you are one of the most interesting people I have ever met. You are a mosaic I want to resdiscover and observe more every day. And I also see my inadequecy. I feel unloved and bad, but the truth is you are better than me, even now, and almost all of it comes down to me. I wonder why you even love me still, but somehow, you still do, which is astonishing. Maybe love is saying yes again and again to a person while having doubts.
I do not know your real motivations, I don’t know if you even know, and maybe I never will. I just hope that you won’t regret not letting people in, that there are people worthy of that. (Me projecting, truth or worry?) and if I am not one of these people, I understand. But I want you to experience it, at least once, and maybe you did with me, maybe I ruined it and I know that sorry will not cut it, but still I try and truthfully, I do not know what else to do other than repent.
You give me bravery to pursue my desires. I think security happens when you are in a relationship because you genuinely like the other’s company. Doing the romantic stuff because you want to. I always struggled with doing what I want, and often reacted to a person wanting me. But maybe you should do the stuff you want to more often, even if it sounds stupid. Not getting into jail for life stupid, but more this is unplanned and disrupts my routine stupid. We often get into our life, and maybe it is not great or breath-taking but it is good. Comfortable. Safe. When you have the compulsion, the restlessnes to do something in that mood, maybe that is a sign. Or maybe you have ADHD idk. All I know is I do not want to wake up in 20 years, with golden handcuffs on my hands and a life that is okay. I do not want to wake up and feel dissatisfied, not by an active problem in my life, but by the fact that it could have gone better and I didn’t do it. Of course, you never know if the stupid thing you do will actually turn out great or not. Uncertainty feels bad no matter if you made the right decision or not so you have to trust yourself and that sucks ass.
The way you made me feel with all these words and gestures and your soft voice in the dark, when we couldn’t sleep, or rather you, and I stayed up so you’re not alone. For it all coming down. Knowing the love I had makes it so much worse to see you now. I do not even think you know how much this hurts me, you being all secure, independent not needing anybody and I don’t know much of this comes from you truly being secure and how much from being afraid of depending. The most scary words you could say would be that you need somebody. I could just talk to you and swallow my pride, say all the things I can’t, that I’m writing down instead - I don’t know if I am capable of that. It makes me look so intensely needy.
I just wish you would know that you will never be too much for me. That I love you, as you are, and I also understand you want freedom and independence and new experiences. I love that version of you too. I’m not trying to chain you to a future or plan. I just want to be with you now, and for that I need to know I am still important to you.
Maybe control is you being afraid of transformation. But with each year that goes by, you have the opportunity to explore yourself more. Almost as if we discover who we always were, and when we change, we’re not becoming somebody else. We're becoming more us.
Citation from sappho’s poems
Also citation from sappho’s poems