Smitten
Infused with stale breath.
The cause of my inner death and revival after ruins and chaotic devastations,
The hope I became.
I thought love had to be like theology.
Complete faith that would have a final destination.
I thought I was learning a new language—
But, soon it became a language of silent bruises and wounds of a woman shrinking into repressed shadows acceptable under his pride.
I walked on his shown path,
I stomped upon those rocky trails,
My legs bled with unseen bruises and scratches.
They could not walk long.
I was thirsty.
Thirsty and hungry for love,
But emotional hunger grew more and more for his tactics,
Became a victim and survivor of his emotional games.
I was smitten, not merely with his face,
But, his rescuer personality,
I thought he would save me from drowning.
I was drowning heedlessly.
But, because of him, I drowned more
until I completely submerged in the pitfalls.
Oh, how carefully he studied my fractures to break me more.
He called it love.
And, I, hungry for shelter of love and thirsty for tenderness, believed him.
The way abandoned cities yearn for relief,
I had been looking for salvation since.
The lack of love in my life was exactly what a perpetrator like him needed.
I was targeted for shooting,
Like a bird with broken wings always gets marked.
Manipulators are the magicians of longing,
They know when to arrive and when to leave.
They calculate emotions to maximize codependency.
One day he felt like a scripture,
The other day, a verdict for my lifelong sufferings.
One day I was rare,
He turned my inner turmoil into a courtroom,
I kept always judging and scrutinizing.
Where I always felt guilty for loving this devotedly.
I was never at ease.
I remember how my body used to tremble in fear,
How my soul began to apologize for the things I never did,
How my mind used to scream for redemption like ancient prophesies.
How my nervous system became a warzone always to be negotiated, decorated with anxiety.
And, yet......
The dangerous form of love is creating illusionary hopes where the victim is seated in tables where poison is served in crystal glasses.
I drank it once and slowly died twice.
I kept sipping the poison until it ran out and my body couldn’t take it anymore.
I died thrice....
In love,
In agony,
And, in betrayal.
But, something changed one summer night.
No thunder, no cinematic ending, just awakening of the exhausted soul.
The kind that touches the bones and whispers:
"You cannot keep abandoning yourself to keep someone close,
"You cannot abandon your dreams and live in a pseudo identity confined in someone else's cage who has given you the bare minimum."
That day,
I gathered fragments of my persona and like sacred relics after a fire burn.
I blew away....far away, and moved on further,
On the South.
Blindly, I was running away.
I stopped translating the language of cruelty and revise it as mystical metaphor.
And, slowly.....
Like a black widow spider rebuilding her web after storms, I returned to myself building my abode.
Now, I walk differently,
Talk differently.
With fire in my soul.
With grace and purpose that I embody in my look.
I have built a spine of Irons,
And, iron gates around my persona....
They say I am too cold now.
But, I do open myself with a few,
Those who have passed the examination of truth and grief, those whose wounds are raw.
Distance and silence became my survival instinct, they cannot fathom though.
I can giggle in jokes now, converse and dress better........
I can even admire people from afar.
But, intimacy?!
Still, it feels standing barefoot and unarmed in the same battlefield that I left long ago,
Where once I lost my name, my identity and purpose.
Every kindness now appears suspicious,
Every compliments rehearsed.
As if every sympathizing look carries that one old tactic wearing new perfume.
I long for connection sometimes though,
Not him, never anyone like him.
But, I miss the version of me who could love without doubts,
Who could trust without interrogation and who would stay without any irritation in scorching heat and over poured rain for her loved ones.
Still,
I would rather wear a shroud of cautious solitude than to return to the form of love that conditioned self-erasure to be loved.
Still,
I would always chose me rather than be chosen by someone else who don't know the meaning of companionship and comfort.
Because, healing is not becoming untouchable, unapproachable or unattainable but wise enough to protect the sacred parts of yourself without apologizing for it.
Healing is being unapologetically your truer self without any regrets and forming genuine bonds with authentic intentions and appearances.
And, still I hope that one day,
Someone gentle, calm and composed will arrive
like entering to the dark corner of the room,
Without strategies,
Without emotional chess games,
Without conditions by not teaching my heart to fear to be vulnerable.
Until then,
I remain here in the form of mountain,
Hard to climb on.
I have built a fortress inside me.
A fortress of fortune.
Where, still I am learning that survival is also a form of beauty.
A beauty that makes us worthy in manifolds.
©® Farheen Akter Bhuian Nancy
Timeframe: 8.25 pm, Tagar
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