A short essay by BERTY

Though I'm only half qualified on love in the twenties, the looming arms of twenty-six are slowly manifesting as a mirror replaying my affectionate delusions. Whilst my skull has acted as a safe haven for many versions of love (both destroying and deeply precious), I’ve found myself sadistically reminiscing about the warped realities of the decade so far. 

Entering the decade in the comfort of codependency had a luscious sense security. Outgrowing one another again and again always stumbled for the rare momentary syncs, reassuring you that what you’ve accepted is a safe choice. You loathe the laziness that suffocates your personality. You become a childless-parent to compensate for your upbringing, whilst another becomes a child compensating for their own. It’s a resentful fight where both parties have laid down their arms in the hopes the other will fall of their own accord. Leaving you with the privilege of walking away a victim, or at the very least, not to blame. 

You can always leave, but you never really break free until you reach the peak of standing on someone else’s two feet. Constantly turning to make sure they’re still in reach, until the fog swallows them up behind the shadow of another. You look back and there’s nothing but a valley of murky greyness making you question how it ever felt inviting in the first place.

The love that followed was a version that felt whole. A makeshift home that I would often describe as a circle. Really, it was beautiful fiction in a teased existence. One that would take an axe to brittle foundations and of course, leave too. Eventually, the open, rejected wound healed on its own and grew into a grateful scar. Raising a glass to what couldn’t be returned, you learn to celebrate the love never destined for two. 

The presence I couldn’t possibly keep faded into a past life, and I could feel real life beginning. With a clearer mirror I saw the essence of what I’ve lost rehomed in modulation, diary entries and what was mine too. I’ve rebuilt a foundation and I’ll get it right, because I’m not a child after all! Such a bold statement to make then, even now my hands hesitate over the words with doubt. 

Eventually, the fatigue accumulated through the years will catch you, softly. I would sit and listen to the next excuse. I was complacent whilst gently removing myself from any ounce of feeling. I tried for a while, but gave up on fighting the ocean in a hopeless man when I realised the underbelly of my mother was hiding in him all along. 

Though in reality, I’m not sure he ever did hide himself. He never claimed he thought he was the second coming of the messiah until the end, but I think the belief was always there. You watch a boy, a failed star, fight the moon and you learn again that it’s not love, if it’s what you know. ‘You can’t help someone if they don’t want to help themselves’, becomes more and more apparent as you grow older. Maybe the need to protect myself has morphed into a sharp blade of selfishness, but I can’t say the act of watching someone half-heartedly self-sabotage interests me anymore. I love myself too. More, even. 

Having lived more of the decade that ‘you must figure everything out in’ than I have left, I don’t have the energy to scar my chest with another ‘romantic’ brand if affection rears its needy head. I want to protect the goodness. To savour every spark of carefully choosing my next step, to stop breaking my own heart. I want to let love exist as it chooses to be.

So sometimes, let your chest remember the cosiness of autumn for someone a little more vividly than the average person. Accept you have no choice other than to float in the luck that it would never blossom, because it’s already bloomed in its fullest form. May God bless the unspoken, in-betweens that seep in through an arm around the shoulder after a joke, a candid photo, and making sure you’re comfy before you fall asleep on the couch.

I think my romance, for now, is better placed in the magic of £2.00 supermarket carnations. Late night phone calls with friends, cigarettes, cinemas, candles, foaming sea waves, stuffy museums, sculpting and singing. With Venus as my ruler, it’s in my blood to fall in love each day, to live and breathe romance. I don’t want to peel the stubborn, rosy lenses from my eyes, but I’m too tired to learn that I should have known better again. Admittedly, too selfish to give anything more than this. 

What a shame it is, to think there’s something in our nature that must change so that we can experience it for real. Though I suppose, the strange reality is that we already have - just in a form we chose not to cradle under the umbrella of ‘love’. I know there’s more than this in the end, but for now, I just want to rest. Maybe fall in love all over again with my friends instead.