Oranges

I once had a lover who loved the color orange, but not as much as he loved storytelling. The stories he told were always compelling, and it was clear that he had a passion for writing. He even told me he wanted to be a writer. Naturally, as an artist, I had absentmindedly promised him to illustrate his books, and naturally, in the moment we had thought nothing of it. When we were together, I often painted him oranges, but upon receiving them, he wouldn’t say anything about the paintings. Back then, I would wonder about the absence of his response; the thought of doing something for someone with no feedback bothered me day and night. The feeling, seemingly equivalent to the action of someone having hit the space bar twice accidentally amidst a paragraph, and now bothering me, is the existence of a gap. However, as time persisted, so did the absence of his replies. And the more we grew apart, the more I painted those still lifes, the warm hue, the orange, splattered across canvas after canvas. As I tried to force my paintings and my act of love, it started to feel like I was pushing him away. And the thing about spaces between paragraphs is that they are meant to separate words from one another, and sometimes, when you’re too caught up in deleting the spaces you accidentally typed, you go too far and delete the words you were trying to write. I guess the gap was always meant to be there, for in the absence of words to say, within that one centimeter of white nothing, was all the love we had held on to, amidst the floods of sentences, the string of letters organized to spell out the memories, the time we spent together. And as I become another memory to him, another story to tell, a familiar reminder to never over-love something as much as I did those oranges, I remember our first conversation. He never really loved oranges; he just adored the color of them.

The Distance of Uncertainty

In an attempt to reduce the growing pains, I was sent by my parents to visit a friend who had specialized in all forms of therapy. I recall having a conversation about my feelings of uncertainty with the world:

“I think the difference between you and me is that you have the capability to maintain relationships but choose not to, and I? I’m brimming with so much love to give but lack a sense of normalcy.” The words suddenly spill out of my mouth like a broken faucet. 

“Care to elaborate? What do you mean by normalcy?” she questions 

“I was raised with the potential for everything, with the exception that this feeling that we humans decide to call “love” can only be granted with the condition that it is expressed coherently.”

“Hmm.” A beat passed

“Question.” 

“Go ahead,” I say

“Is knowledge determined by the value that information possesses or the clarity of what is being said?”

“Repeat that?” shortness of breath.

“Let me simplify this in terms you’ll understand. What determines value? To say, if we don’t understand the words being said. Does this mean that the meaning loses value?” She laughs, and oh what a wonderful laugh it was, a laughter filled with curiosity. 

“And how does this relate to anything about loving someone?” I ask again, the kind of question where it's easier to pretend there is a coherent answer than to actually give a response. 

“Look, I’m not going to hold your hand anymore. When I say this, I am not well. And my experiences have made me dull like a broken pencil when it comes to having healthy relationships. Or what we humans determine as health.” I pause, the words don’t stop coming. 

“I envy you. You wake up and deliberately make a conscious decision not to express the love you have, despite being rich with love. I can only dream of having the freedom, the privilege of making such a choice. I wake in a reality that I will always have the ability to love but never the choice to express it.” There, I’ve said it now. 

“Why do you persist in this pessimistic view? Don’t you feel ashamed of living with such self-pity?” she asks again.

“Embarrassment is a social construct made to refine the 'unruly', to define the boundaries of what limits us.” I try to make my point.

“Nonsense,” she laughs again.

“You patronize me, I’m not a kid anymore,” I say, coming off a lot meaner than I intended

“So you think you know yourself”, how condescending can she be?

“Yes,” I sneer, “I am me after all.”

Returned with a soft gaze, “You say to measure is to define, but isn’t labeling a paradox in itself?”

How peculiar…Stereotyping leads to stigma, but isn’t a lack of knowledge the same? Ignorance, I think. Our differences make us special, but if we don’t label, is the silence, the emptiness we have, undefined, a label in itself?

“Can order exist in a world without labels?” 

“See, you talk so much about who you are, this certainty that you are incapable of love, but isn’t the point of love to never limit? In some instances, some infinities are greater than others, but when we define, don’t we limit a certain attribute to our nature? I wonder what it takes to close that distance of uncertainty for you. To be loved by someone who makes you feel like, despite all possibilities, all outcomes, all probabilities. Isn’t the closeness of being here, among all things, perhaps better than the certain persisted gap of nothing?” She smiles again, this time a little laugh escapes her lips, the kind of laughter that makes you warm.

Little does she know that smile will be etched into my memories like a record on repeat for years to come. 

Razor

I accidentally cut myself with the razor while taking a shower. Like any curious soul, I studied the pattern of blood which flourished on the surface of my skin. Like most things that do bloom, it planted a question in my mind: 

Are some wounds worse than others?

As a person who doesn’t scar easily, it often makes me wonder why our bodies bother physicalizing the pain we feel. If the value of hurt was defined by how long the damage would last, are some wounds only considered deeper than others because they take longer to heal? I wonder if people are the same. 

Their value, I mean. If the value of hurt was quantified to be the duration of the cost, then would the value of people be the duration of their usefulness? Before I know it the skin on my hand has dried up, leaving something resembling an ugly red flower tattoo. Well I guess like most valuable lessons, the point of the wound is to heal. To change, to go away, isn’t that what makes it worth noting?

Wanting

Because I had lived with the tightness of 

Clenched fists

Fingers twisted—

Grappling onto false accusations about love and liberty

So now as I try to hold my hands open 

My shaken pals, upturned, facing the sun

I’ve learned to accept the heavy guilt, the burning shame

That comes with wanting, 

That comes with asking, 

Begging to be seen 

And as I try to understand and accept; 

I’ve forgotten the courage to live life with open arms.