I LOVE YOU

My blogging comes in spurts so yes, second one today. Bear with me:)

Today I read a post, well a declaration really, of this girl's love for someone. Usually I roll my eyes, call it exhibitionist and move on. But today I was struck by how brave that is. Firstly to trust someone with that information and secondly, to trust them so much with your emotions that you can say that publicly, where people can see it and judge it and wave it around if he ever hurts you.

That is brave. They don't teach us that enough; That being vulnerable is brave. In a time when people casually break each other's hearts it is brave to be honest and tender and kind.

But we have dated before. Loved. Gotten our hearts broken. Its hard to be tender when someone is saying they love you but all you can see is how long it took you to heal the last time you believed those same words.

I have been in love. The kind that burns too bright. Its a giddy thing. But I never said it, the actual words. I should have. Because, damn it, I did. Every time we lay in bed watching stupid series or playing thumb wars or piggy back rides, I knew. But we're too scared right?

I'm not saying be naive. I'm not saying believe every silly line a cute guy says to you. I'm just saying we should at least try to give ourselves a chance. If you're going to do it, do the damn thing. Or don't. I don't know. lol.

What I do know, is if you can, that is brave.

Friends are few

I haven't blogged in a while, because life, and mostly because blogging requires a kind of openness and fearlessness that I haven't had lately. That said, thank you for good people and the peace they bring.

So today we are talking about friends.

By that I mean the people who carry you when no one has even noticed that you've fallen. I have found as I grow older that good friends are hard to come by. Drinking friends? Lets paint our nails and drink wine friends? Those come very easy but those are never the people you can call when even your skin feels heavy.

I'm not a very, sit around a fire and pour my heart out kind of person, it is hard for me to be vulnerable and scared so it takes that much more effort to be a good friend to me. I know that. But I have been lucky enough to find the kind of friends who take the time to know me, to read me and to be there without my asking. The kind who will not push, but will sit there talking about everything but the issue just so I know I am not alone. The kind who listen when I am finally ready. Thank you.

My advice today, seeing as I know nothing everything about nothing, is love the crap out of the people who love you. Be kind. Be consistent. Be there. Most importantly, be incredibly grateful for the people who take the time to be in your life. It isn't always easy.

Boipelo, my nigga, this post is for you, because you are a better friend than you realise. I love you.

xoxo

Dear Ex boyfriend(s)

It turns out it wasn't you. Ok, it was you, but it was also me. For all the times i called you an asshole and agonised over all the ways that you ruined everything, its funny that I didn't once consider that i may have been wrong too.

We hurt each other. We hurt each other while we were each fumbling around trying to make it work and again when we were tallying the points of who was the bigger douchebag. What we failed to realise is that you can't win a break-up. There are not enough points in the world to rub out the enormity of having someone in your life and not having them anymore.

Whether we were serious or not, whether we whispered breathless "i love you's"or we just found each other funny and brilliant for a little while, there will always be a space in time that you occupied. That is worth missing. 

So for all the bashing and anger, its time i say thank you too, you beautiful bastard. Thank you even for the crappy times, if nothing else they teach me the kind of love i can't accept. I read somewhere that you should "forget with generosity the people who couldn't love you'- and maybe that's it, isn't it? Closing the door gently behind you.

Poetry

I don't usually re-blog other people's stuff, but when i read this piece by Andrea Gibson i realised it was too beautiful not to share.

Maybe strangers can change us too.

"I knew the sea was made of the same stuff as tears.

That meant that people were walking around

with sharks between their ears.

That meant they would hear the world "love"

and start running from the teeth"

http://andrewgibby.tumblr.com/ <----

Lets not go home together?

Its like we dont expect to be courted anymore. I know, it all sounds very 20th century France but there's got to be more to it then just: guy meets girl, guy buys girl a drink at the bar, drunk guy and girl stumble home together. Surely?

I don't know, perhaps im a little too romantic for the "your nudes are safe with me" generation, but i require a little banter, a lot of good conversation and hopefully a little exclusivity- then who knows, i mean who is to get in the way of two consenting adults? lol. But even that, who taught men to court us like they are entitled to our bodies?

We blame men, we shouldnt.what we should do is demand more, "EARN ME" shouted Olivia Pope- im screaming in unison.

Seriously though, give me a little less casual. Stop tweeting me, stop calling me and just show up at my door and ask me how the fuck I am.

In the meantime, I'm going to sleep diagonally across my double bed and buy my own damn drainks.

22

Perhaps we like pink because we wear too much black

Perhaps we like diamonds because people aren't transparent

Perhaps we dont want to grow up because we've never been children

- Forever 21

Lamentations of a (semi)reformed bad girl

We start out at 18 and we think we know it all; how to give bat to cute guys, how to make our arms look thin in pictures and we think we know the important stuff too like how to walk away or how to pass our exams. I was like that too, i was pretty fucking sure that i knew everything about pretty much everything.

Life, as it does, went on to break down every single one of the things I thought I knew about people, about friendship, about love and even about myself. I’ve chronicled most of these things on this blog- These things I lost in the fire- but now at the end of my third year, waiting on my results, I find myself looking back at all of that and wondering about the person who came out on the other side.

I think a lot about the friends I loved and lost. I wonder if I made the right decisions and cringe at the times I know I didn’t and then I remember that I am young. I have the luxury of mistakes because I still have the luxury of time. I can afford to get my heart broken and to flirt with cute assholes but what I cannot afford is to fail at life.

So while I am young in so many ways, I am also old. Old enough to expect more, old enough to accept when I have failed, to learn the lessons and fight to make sure I never have to learn them again. Growing up is a pain in the ass.

But there is something beautiful about looking back at that sassy, opinionated, headstrong 18 year old that walked into university and the person who types this today. A little more confused, a little more wary but a little wiser too.

As for the lessons, as for the bad friends, as for *strohrum, *tequila, *jaggermeister and whoever the fuck else, in the words of a visionary “AINT NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!!!”

So fuck it, I’m happy. That’s enough.

I’ll see you guys on the other side.

Incisors and molars

Lately it feels as though i carry poetry between my teeth,
Like there are stanza's nestled between molars and pain,
Like the silver of my filling is filled with the scarlet of my naivety.

Lately it feels as though i carry poetry between my teeth.

I am not of those who are grammatically correct, how can I be when when the words seem to outrun the speed of my pen?
No, my pain does not rhyme; it does not fit neatly into stanza's and punctuation marks,
It does not wait for comma's and oxymoron's,
My pain is inelegant.. but it is mine.

It comes wrapped in an indian girls hair and squeezed into an asian sweat shop workers anguish,
It is borrowed, but it is mine.

They teach us to pretend, they do.
They teach us to smile, and bitch and laugh loudly.
When will they teach us the honour of tears?
When will they teach us the sanctity of honesty?
No. We are taught to smile.
So my pain runs to my room and hides.

Lately, without consent, it is as though my body offers sacrifices to my soul,
As though "they" have abandoned me and this faulty heart must choose.
As though I need not smile unless I am happy.
As though they will not judge.

Lately it feels as though my pain is running towards honesty.

So i know i am not poet; because these words seem to write themselves.

I write because I cannot scream.
I write because you cannot listen.

Buttercup naivety

There is something about not quite being in love,
Something about a rosying of the cheeks and giggling like your heart will never break again,
There is something about not yet having fought for your love;
An easiness, an innocence, a naivety about simply enjoying someone who is enjoying you.

Perhaps hard love is truer, deeper,
But there is something complex about that old, creased, made it through the fire kind of love,
Something perhaps reserved for those stupid enough or smart enough or strong enough,
But there is something painful about that hard fought, hard won, kind of love,
But then- the beauty of love is so often wrapped in the pain of love.

But me? I want me some buttercup naivety.
I want me some easy, throw my head back and laugh kind of love!!
So that when pain settles in the wrinkles on my heart and our love is soaked in hardship i will remember that i once laughed.

So i laugh, i smile and i giggle.
Be it for a day or a lifetime, i throw my head back and I laugh,
I laugh and the gods dance.
I laugh until tomorrow when laughter fades.

I never thought i would be the blogging type (whatever that even means) but im not really the diary type, or the random DMC type (except when im sipped and shaming my family) but it turns out that i am. It also turns out that its a little harder than i thought, because writing, truly writing, requires baring parts of yourself that make you vulnerable.

So the other day i wrote, truly wrote. From a place partly of experience, partly of hurt and partly of other people's pain. It turns out that those who cannot scream, write.

Lace Curtains

Listening to the sounds of memories lost in the diaspora of hating you,
Hating the thought of unravelled hopes and dishevelled futures as you forge your future with her,
Her cries and anguish only a confirmation that my laughter must too have been hollow,
Yet these hallowed halls of our love and lust and lie haunt my happiness.

Happily hampering the illusion of progress,
Progressively, agressively i concede that yes: i am only as much yours as you allow me, and you are as much mine as i deprive you.

Listening to the sounds of laughter smothered by a torrent of confusion,
Confused by the thought of the love laced with hate, or hate laced with love..
Or perhaps light little lulling's of a lust that is neither hate nor love.

Perhaps we are lace;
White but not pure- pierced intricately enough to be not quite blemish but not quite whole.
Too beautiful to wear, too beautiful not to.

Adorning my heart with the distant sounds of memories laced in love and lust and hate,
I must finally concede and rescind every forehead kiss, every stroke of the cheek, every moment of bliss,
Sublime in our complexity- Perhaps we are lace.