the death that brought love

"I had to kill my own God to fall in love for the first time" - Andrea Gibson

the death that brought love 

LOVE:

my name literally means it

I exude it

I was born in it, raised in it

but

I had to unravel 

unlearn

deconstruct and self-destruct heaven and hell's definitions of love

all of my upbringing telling me who to love, how to love, when to love, and what a family was supposed to look like

how the flood story ended and how life began

how the heavens and earth and waters and sea came to be

... and how we fell from grace 

and oh how I fell from grace the first, the second, the hundredth, and the perfect time I fell for someone that in my whole first half of living I was told not to love

forbidden fruit

but none of them as hard as the time I knew I'd arrived

the time I knew that it was real

the time I knew that my past was dead, my god was dead, the old me was no longer me yet still me

then and only then did I fall for the first time

then and only then did I fall in love for all it was supposed to be with all who I was born to be and all that I am

so the time I thought it was perfect the first time, the second time, and even the third or more?

it wasn't

they were all forms of love

but not true love

not pure love

not a love that was all the colors of the rainbow and had been rebuilt from what I knew and what I believed then formed from the clay and ashes of a former me

when I found her?

it was my genesis

my creation

my rebirth

and loving her less "might have been the sweetest gift I could have given my own life, but how that sweetness would have rotted god's teeth" - Andrea Gibson

how? why?

because "I love her, and that is the beginning and end of everything" - F. Scott Fitzgerald

how and why do I love anyone so, so much? 

so richly? 

so deeply? 

so much that people can't even believe it's real, that I'm truly this passionate, THAT into them?

Easy.

my death

I died to myself, my old self years ago

but

I always knew what love was

I always was love

remember? I was born love

it's my name, after all...

but I was also living in spaces not meant for me--worlds of conservatism and naivety and closets

I unraveled my past

created my future

I fell in love

I fell into myself

then...

I fell into her

and she, 

if she sees it, trusts herself, trusts love, accepts the love I know she deserves, 

is and always will be the luckiest

because she, 

oh how she,

ravishes me

I never fell from grace

that, too, was a lie

however, I did fall

but only in love...

1/29/25