we are panicky mini creatures aching for eternal belonging. that unspoken agreement that we are in this together and yet i redirect my eyes, i lower my tone, i play it cool. i hold onto this real me, this messy apparition of vulnerability and fears until i find the one. someone who is worth it.

but axiomatically i understand that this “one” will not let me in unconditionally, i will need to coax them with something that is — not quite me, few general societally accepted qualities, good looks, pleasant talks — a worthy mask. but mustn’t we be our own before we can be another’s? is this deception? having to reveal myself later on after i have tricked them into letting me in, all for the selfish desire to be loved, to be at one with the other and so i play it cool. now i ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with such strange qualities?

what do i wish for when i wish to be loved? is it pure narcissism? — the childish daydream of limitless confirmation that some poor being will afford me the continual reassurance that for example you are permitted to be here, that your presence is tolerated if not appreciated. a conceit? this isn’t sustainable. in this self-admiration i lose the love they would give me they saw fit, i lose the love of other soul just so that i don’t have to face the truth of imperfection, the truth that i am not what i tell myself i am, that hearing what i am would make me uncomfortable, make me lose the pure love of other soul.

if i admire my own looks for example, i would wish the others would do the same but what if they find something else in me, something unaccounted for in my eyes, something also worth loving, worth cherishing. what if they have fallen for my strange thoughts, these asymmetrical chains which my mind is bound by — perhaps i wish to be loved for the things i do not even consider lovable, and the sort of love in which im just admired the way i wish to be - is just not enough.

— will devotion do the job? - to give the other all of me that i will think of you, i will spend my time with you, i will breathe you, showering them with every earthly blessing, drowning them in the sea of happiness so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen above the surface. such that they would have nothing else but to sleep, eat cakes, drink coffee and busy themselves with the continuation of his species. but this too will bring resentment — to prop up another human as a God, as the arbiter of your life choices is to sign up for disappointment, a prolonged one. they would risk these cakes and coffee and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the absurdities, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. and surely there are enough who are willing to do that for you, to take in your energy and company, and make you a tool of praise, and you will give it relentlessly, and one day you question that if giving them what they need would make them any sane than they already are? you find that these are humans too, that you do not love them, you worship them, you feed off of them. nobody live up to that.

so, what is this desire to be loved? it is not to live for someone or live below them, nor is it to live above them in constant affirmation. each leaves me incomplete, so will my desire to feel complete always leave me incomplete? is this not achievable in solitude? perhaps. but the nights grow cold and i tire myself of these inner dialogues. life feels hard on those days, which days? those days. so i just wish to make coffee for us, for us to be submerged in the night sky looking for constellations as we engulf coffee to sleep — that is if there is ever a “we”. i experience a great piece of art, something inspirational, and for a moment i see the potential within me, i find myself willing to tackle everything that has held me back but sometimes i just wish for an us, it often feels better with others than alone. often times i feel this fear, a strange desire that i secretly don’t want to live fully. i do not wish to live for someone nor do i wish for someone to live for me, both of them just add the sugar of disappointment and stagnation in our coffee.

i find some quotes to comfort for my deepest fears, such phrases drift me into a feeling of a warm coffee on a rainy day, where isolation is championed as an epitome of living. i just wish to live, simply with another side by side, to share my bittersweet coffee with someone. it is not always easy — we will misunderstand each other, we will bicker, we will overstep and miscalculate our proximity, but are moments after these not the very points where coffee tastes the best? is this not what we fight for, what we ache for, when our masks slip off and we stare each other eye to eye, two shaking bundles of desires draped in our beautiful flaws, whispering to each other “its okay, i am still here. we can make a beautiful coffee.”

“rationality fails in its analysis of something as complex and terrible as love.”