Dear diary,
Who knew loving could lead to such a hateful thing. After centuries of living, and evolving, I can’t believe something like love could be so hard to accept. I mean, with racism and misogyny being normalized so quickly, I just never thought something as simple as loving someone could be more troublesome than hating another for the colour of their skin.
The irony is nauseating.
It makes my heart clench and my stomach churn when I feel the stares pierce the back of my head like a hot knife twisting my insides. And though holding my lover’s hand gives me butterflies that calm my jittering nerves and aching body, the pain and anxiety are hard to pass over. Because what can you do when at the end of the day gender is completely disregarded and instead replaced with sex; what can you do when society tells you your genitals are what define your sexuality and gender? When you’re told you’ll burn in hell, though God says love is above all, yet somehow you’re in the wrong because of who you are, what hope is then left?
I mean it with all my being; What hope is then left?
And I wish I was kidding when I say I’ll one day have to tell my children how, as beautiful as romance seems in the pages of the stories I read them to sleep, what it really is, is the thorns on the beautiful rose left to wither alone in their favourite bedtime story, Beauty and The Beast. How the eye-catching, surrealistic crimson red rose is the bait that leads you to bruise your hands on the thorns its stem grows.
Remember the saying ‘your tongue has no bones yet is strong enough to break a heart’? Not only will it break you; it will shatter your soul and leave you with scars that no doctor could stitch completely. Your already shattered heart will then be trampled over by the way society and your own mind taunt you. The world will misunderstand, mishear and take you lightly. And not because you’re different, but only because the ideology of society labels you ‘abnormal’.
I wish love could stop mocking me with its superficiality. It presents itself in a beautiful manner, that only love can take, and watches as you abolish its superficial structure and uncover the agonizing truth. Only when your heart is maimed and your hands are dirtied do you realize why love is something two people do together; It’s unbearable alone.
Yet, despite the haphazard that is romance, as luck may have it, many still decide to wander its unknown territory. Bruising their hands, mangling their hearts and breaking their bones in the process. All while love mocks them from behind.