Two weeks ago I came across this short video of @BeleafinFatherhood’s daughter Anaya asking for love. In it you see a little black girl, with a mischievous smile on her face, sticking herself through what was obviously a closed door to make her request. She says: “I’m just standing here, waiting for you to get done, so I can get wuv”. Despite the cute mispronunciation of love as ‘wuv’, the reactions under that video show that many, like me, confronted a very great lacking in themselves when watching that reel. This little girl has what so many adults, especially adult women like myself do not. The confidence and wherewithal needed to ask for love openly. She has something we have lost by growing up, by painful experiences, by never having known it was possible, by lacking the foundations to nurture it. I was, and still am, quite frankly jealous of Anaya. At Anaya’s age, I like many others grew up being told it’s wrong or girl’s to express their desires first. That they should wait to be picked by a guy… that if he doesn’t choose you in the midst of a crowded room he doesn’t love you. In fact, in my culture, we have a traditional wedding practice I always found ‘romantic’. The practice stipulates that your husband to be should be able to recognize you wrapped under sheets of clothing in a line-up of other women wrapped from head to toe as well. Simply playing to our desire to be ‘picked’ first. I like many other girls was taught that men pursue. Human males are ‘hunters’ every relationship guru claims. They should be the ones to propose, to say I love you first (after which you should say I love you more because that fierce hunter seemingly has a fragile ego eh). If there’s one thing Christianity and the secular world seem to agree on it is relationship gender roles. Like many other girls, I grew up with movies telling us to throw pens on the ground to get a guy’s attention (couldn’t we just use the pen to write notes?) or leave secret gifts on our crush’s table and watch from afar, and who to can forget the Bella’s infamous “bend and snap” … we’re to do anything but actually tell the person we need love from that we need it. I recall a particular instance when a classmate took a Polaroid picture of her body in a bikini (nudes before nudes were a thing) and put in an envelope and slipped it in her crush’s locker to ‘get his attention. Her way of saying “I want wuv”; she was barely a teenager with a warped sense of making that request because this was what she’d been told would get her the attention she desired. But it’s not just girls getting tricked. The media will have boy’s like Anaya’s brothers convinced that the way to say “I want love” is to buy a girl the most expensive gifts, drive this car, catch their attention with this sports jacket, and a host of other indirect ways. Because direct is scary for adults. But direct is what Anaya is doing. I wonder how often we have asked for love in the wrong way: by buying a gift anonymously, by giving cash because that is always welcome but the words may not be. By crying. By doing that silly block/unblock dance. By rebelling or lashing out. By lying about who we are and what we want. By sharing memes to… By accepting trash. I know for certain many of us have done everything but knock on a closed door, peek inside, and said plainly “I need wuv”. Why? Because unlike Anaya we no longer believe in fairytales, we no longer have that faith in God (if we ever did), we no longer have the people who we can be sure will respond as Anaya’s daddy did that “I’ll come give you love baby”. And in place of all these things we no longer have we now have dozens of memories of times those who we needed love from said no, or ignored us or mocked us or abused that need. We now have conditioning on how that love should look like and expectations on how it should show up. So I guess what I envy Anaya for is the innocence she has yet to lose. And as I watch that video over and over again, I pray she keeps being able to do this scary beyond-adult thing- confidently ask for love- for a long time.
5 Love Poems From Me to You
As the people all over the world muse on love (genuine of commercialized fluff) on this Valentine’s Day, permit me share with you some of my favorite original poems relating to L.O.V.E. On Self-love Ode to We This is for my sisters, whose thighs touch. Whose arms hang like armpit drapes and whose stomachs bulge… It is okay not to be O.K Okay is never enough anyway, They always want more. So lift your arms and wave them ‘round Cross your feet and pout your lips Swing your hips to your own beat And repeat: I love me On Considering Love Kintsugi I thought of you when I learned of Kintsugi; read about that Japanese art of recovering broken things with preciousness, renewing the life of fallen pieces and restoring their worth two, four…a thousand fold. I thought of you, lover-to-be, as a Kintsugi artist. A master craftsman, able to see possibilities in fragmented parts, worn and not quite whole, still useful. See, I have shards of glass placed at the top of the walls surrounding this heart like those my grandfather cemented atop the fence around our family home-To keep thieves out, to slice careless hands who come to prey… But an artist takes care, a potter’s hand is patient. So I can see you pick up these shards nimbly, one after the next, appreciating the story of each fall, respecting the painful tale of each break.I can picture you pouring precious metal- emotions rare- unto sharpened edges piecing together what some would see as mistakes to create a testimony. I thought of you when I learned of Kintsugi, and I thought of I.I thought of us all, reflections of this philosophy; believers in broken things, people who would pour gold in cracks. Card carrying members of ‘Hopefuls Anonymous’Lovers; Kintsugi artists. On Discovering Love The Heartbreak 39 days ago at 7:47pm. Your words, uncomfortably shared, speared the familiar sinking feeling of heartbreak within me I find it hard to describe this feeling. Heartbreak resulting from unrequited love is unique you see. Not quite pain, more like an ebbing ache of inadequacy. Your heart twisting as if trying to find balance or return shamefully to the cage of your ribs it should have never left. Your windpipes forcing air out as though practiced in a Lamaze class. Keep going. Don’t cry. Just breathe. I wonder at the break. Why do I feel it? When did you matter? I am reminded: It was Tuesday, I was sick and you came. I looked horrible but it didn’t matter, your eyes smiled in a way that made me feel beautiful. You stayed, made me laugh and left me feeling better than the treatment I’d been taking for days It was 6th of June, I think, you shared a post that literally took my breath away, something I couldn’t believe you’d get. And yet you did. You got it and you defended it when the trolls came It was the evening I left our meeting late and worry remained in your eyes as I took a cab. You took the taxi drivers details. Chatting with me all through till I arrived to be sure I didn’t fall asleep therein and get carted away… It was that dinner we shared, you remember the night you took me out for my favorite meal? Two phone addicts somehow able to not think of our phones for hours. It’s been the never-ending conversation we have. Free flowing, humorous, unrestricted, digressing and yet still mutually understood. Able to go dormant yet reawakening within days with the same feel. The familiarity it bred It was me struggling to contort this large body to somehow lay my head on your shoulder in the taxi ride home. It was in my trusting you enough to drink in your presence. Comfortable enough to hold your hand and cross the road… I see now that it was a million little things. You may have come to me by chance but you did not come all at once. You are the dripping rooftop that slowly made the whole house damp. Weathering defenses, surprising us both. And this is how I got a heartbreak never knowing there was a love Lessons in Love Learning i. They teach you to forgive your enemies but rarely do they share how you’ll need to forgive your loves.We all forget, you see, that we lift our loves on a pedestal, we raise them up like the moon does the tide of our feelings. We make them gods because they make us feel more human, more magical, loved.We raise them up involuntary and without consent. We raise them up until they fall. Humans after all. ii.So today I will forgive you for not being all I dreamed you would be. I will forgive you for inspiring me to fly when you had no wings. No wings for you, no wings for me. I will forgive you for the rides of all-night talks and ecstatic daydreams you fueled, without telling me the petrol tank was uncertain, we were just kicking it. I will forgive you because you made no promise. I forgive you because you too are broken and should not have been put in a place to fix my own cracks. I will forgive you because I am learning the ways of love. iii.Now please forgive me for the selfish love I bore and thrust on you, a crown you did not ask for. The love that demanded more of you, than you were ready to give. Forgive me the luxury of rose-colored glasses that saw your promise but not your flaws. Not the vacuum you harbored still. Forgive me the good things I hoped and dreamed. Because I have learned even good things are burdensome. I have learned hope is heavy a thing around your neck weighing you down and adorning you brightly at the same time. Forgive me because I am still learning to love like God. On Recovering
Loving your Non-Christian Friend
Capitalism has branded February the month of love, and for the past few years, I’ve played along with my musings being love-themed every February. This month, for example, I shared flash fiction I worked on for Brittle Papers’ Valentine’s Day anthology last year. Now that my Christian Musings page means blogging twice a month, I considered what love themed post to make from my Christian experience. There’s so much that faith helps us learn in love and love helps us become through faith. At its core, the gospel is essentially a dramatic love story… so it was hard picking just one thing to focus on. But I succeeded because one of the biggest lessons I feel needs to be learned by Christians is the lesson on loving your non-Christian friend. For a religion which was founded by a man known for breaking convention and loving heretics, rebels and the disliked… Christianity (or rather we Christians) fails woefully to meet that example. We seem to believe we must love those who think like us, look like us, believe as we do. And we often mistake love (philia which we are called to feel for every living thing) with like. As a result, most Christians dish out a fake kind of acceptance of those they deem not of the “yolk”. We often speak of religious tolerance, asking that people of one religion tolerate the other… as though the other person was a bad aftertaste to prescribed medication. You can love someone, as a creation of God you believe in without necessarily liking them. Love them- accepting and celebrating them for who they are, how God made them different from you. You need not be like them, nor agree with them, but you can always respect them. And that respect breeds love because it ascertains you’ll treat the other person with a due amount of consideration. And isn’t that all we need? Some consideration? I think it is. Empathy goes a long way and should be actively cultivated. My friend list spans a wide girth; atheist, agnostics, friends of different religions or different Christian denominations with contrasting doctrine etc. They are all my friends, they all have something about them I truly love and admire, they all better me in some way (even if that way is testing my patience LOL!). We are not “unequally yolked” so much as complementary. They don’t have to be equally yolked with me, they are not Christians, and I respect that. My job is to be the example of what a Christian is for them to see. And that’s it. So how do you love your Non-Christian friend? Love them by respecting them and their wishes, including the wish to not be preached to- there are other ways… Love them by listening to them, including listening to the issues they have with your faith. Believe it or not, addressing those issues will help you strengthen your own convictions. Answering hard questions always enables you to know better about yourself and what you believe. Love your non-christian friend enough to tell them if you feel they are doing what is wrong, but equally, love them as God did and let them have their free will. Love your non-christian friend enough to find out about why they believe what they do or do not believe at all. We are who we are because of our lived experiences. If you believe in a divine being you know we are not the authors and finishers of our lives, so why not find out the back story before you conclude their lack of faith is wrong. Above all, love your Non-Christian friend by being a true disciple of Christ. The one we have been called to emulate would have no problem loving anyone. Be like Jesus.
Re-Blogging: What is Love
Love is something that often defines the nature of reason. So when I was approached by Girdblog alongside five other writers from all over Africa to define love? I saw it as an intriguing challenge.Find out six writers from the continent defined and undefined Love… WHAT IS LOVE?— 6 WRITERS (UN)DEFINE LOVE Let me know what you think of the definition below!