Lost in translation
“Had I been given a clear definition of love earlier in my life it would not have taken me so long to become a more loving person. Had I shared with others a common understanding of what it means to love it would have been easier to create love.”
Bell Hooks
Pieces of a healed heart, fragments of a long lost diary
"Our lives got lost in a particular type of hardness we both inherited. You kept diverting whenever emotions were verbalized, I lived on the surface of your easily irritable – and so firmly soft – skin. Equally, I was buried too deep under my words, verbal ferocity alternated icy silence. You spoke aloud, I got frightened enough to eventually fight back, but actually did so from the beginning by not showing my true colors. You had such an exquisite awareness of inauthenticity. I wondered, what does this tell me about you?
This time around, I learned, it wasn’t only those painful memories which I pushed brutally to the margins, I fought with your survival force and the baggage we both came with painted our relationship sinisterly blueish black, too often at least. We tried so hard to be kind that it, at times, surely failed. I tried to polish what was rocky. Poetic descriptions nourished intense moments of melting away our resonating resistance. Often enough, though, these were almost sentimental attempts to create romance out of suffering. You ignored your inner conscience and frequently, a test to your inner strength, you failed. Seemingly bitter at the outset, internally deemed by self-rejection, or so I learned along the way. A mirror that I longed for and always was there, or so I learned. Is it unlearned, maybe?
That crushing hardness got the best of us, dissecting even our perfected defense. We never stopped trying until we learned to let go. And here we are now, my love. Finally, my love. We are chopping our heads of as one might say in tantric tradition. Al those misfitting words, egoic grasping for deeply unnourishing safety; let us forego those prevailing instincts and highly personalized yet awkwardly recognizable demons. Let’s take care of our bruised memories. Remember consciously, forgive open heartedly. Let’s heal by stroking hands, breathing in sync and let loving others enrich our shared emotional landscapes. So that we finally define, together and in utter respect for the complex inner worlds contributing to the conversation, what love is. So that both practice and critical thinking immerse themselves in the embodied world of being human in the enlightening eyes of our lover. Our lovers, those teaching us through reflection to never shy away from being the courageous beloved willing to love beyond thoughts and fulfilment.
Gosh. We never defined it, Love. We just played by the rules. Either those inherited by our fragmented body, our family or by culture. Let us define what love is and start all over from there."