I used to think the ability to love is a learned behavior. Because it wasn’t that subtle to me that nobody in my life ever knew how to love me, I didn’t want to believe they didn’t love me, I wanted to think that they did, they just weren't sure how.
These days, I’m not so sure. I’m not sure if you can love a person the wrong way, unless, of course, you are fantasizing over the idea of loving someone under the disguise of total self-absorption. You think you love me, but you know nothing about me. You don’t listen to me, how I’m feeling, how i’m telling you i’d like to be treated, how I know what you mean, no I don’t have time for it now, no I need to do these more important things first or i’ll regret for the rest of my life. How I want to be left alone after you guys start throwing plates at each other, how I shut the door but had to lock it because I knew you’d open it, you still somehow broke the lock with a hammer. You willed that hammer onto the handle on the other side, one hit after another. How could this, be the right way, to love someone?
Would it be too cruel for me to admit that they didn’t love me? They loved themselves more, their face, their raise, their name, their legacy, their status, what they think is right, their position as the older and more authoritative. How could you say, that you love me?
You should be grateful, they say. Who has access and opportunities to all these, they say. You thought you’d have the feather bed, silk pajamas, Barbie from abroad, concert tickets, movies, drawing, dance, calligraphy, you think these are all normal?
I don’t know what’s normal. I’m not sure what’s normal, apparently I have no clue. I ask Daiga everyday, is that ok? Can I do that? Is that normal? He always say, yes, it’s ok, who cares if it’s normal. But what if people think I’m weird? What if they don’t like me? What if I won’t be loved? Fuck them, he says. Sometimes I’m not sure if he’d grown up showered with love that he didn’t care for it, or had he been yearning it for too long that he grew numb. He seemed to care a lot less about being loved. Even though, he did love me. I used to be so sure of it, now, I’m not so sure. These days, I’ve grown numb, like how I was before.
I didn’t know how to feel for a long time, which’s only normal consider the amount of verbal and physical violence that goes on in the house for quite a few years, 7th grade all the way until I left.
They’d fight about almost anything, the food, the door, the trash, the outfit, something he said, she said, you shouldn’t have said, something you did, you didn’t, I hate you, but I can’t leave you, so I will torture you, you will live in my hell with me. Maybe that was the deepest kind of love, that I didn’t understand. When you love someone, you live in hell with her. You go through hell with her. You heal with her. You care for her. You wait for her. Because you know, you’ve seen.
It’s like in Zoe Kravitz’s debut Blink Twice, which i believe depicts what happens in Hollywood all the time, a group party of rapists raping together while women are drugged or tortured. It’s the rich people party. It’s fine.
In the movie, Naomi Ackie and her friend get invited to an island for a break by billionaire Channing Tatum randomly at a banquet. They go to the island and they party and party, and drinking and smoking and happy for who knows how many days, until one day, she accidentally remembers what’s been happening at night. The raping, the shooting, the torturing, everything will be forgotten in the morning with drugs, only the good things during the day. That’s how I feel, all the time.
How can you party here, after seeing what goes on at night? How can you be happy, after knowing that you had be treated that way? Intentionally, at their pleasure? The grotesque nature of all of these makes me sick. I couldn’t get that movie out of my mind. I still can’t get that out of mind. This is not a party. This is hell, living hell, we are all burning in hell.
So let’s suffer until death do us apart, you will be here, burn with me, until the very end.