Love me, Loudly

by Jess Kolbe

  I want more of her, to know her.

  We seek out the privacy of the beach again.

  My mind is racing. I feel excited and want more of her, I want to know her. The way she watches me is so intoxicating. I want to take my time with her. It is clear to me now I like her and find her truly captivating. Everything is building, the intensity alongside my realisation has me both wanting to experience her while feeling daunted.

  We sit and I tell her, it just falls out of me. I have this need to be straight up with her. To my shock I actually tell her I am mesmerised by her. Fuck, words are cascading out of my mouth and I have no ability to stop. What a dick. This is not me. I’ve never been so forthright before and it feels very fucking uncomfortable. Her closeness, being in my space, every breath. I breathe her in, she smells like a mixture of beach and, sweat, with our chemistry filling the air. I could touch her, she is so close, I could hold those hips while pressing her entire body against me, in one swoop, I’m sure of it.

  Evie breathes a long slow breath, looks at me and utters the sexiest response. It curls my insides. ‘Please.’ Simply exquisite, I can’t hide my desire. She tells me we clearly both are coming from the same place, except she is talking about attraction developing. Okay, fuck, listen. The way she moves her mouth, as her tongue curls, I’m brought back to her immediately when her body shifts. I scare the shit out of her, fuck, out of her...? Jesus, I don’t want to be hurt either, I interject, I am here genuinely too. I like her honesty, she is keeping me on my toes. I hope, I can keep up. She’s overwhelming, her fears, her expectations, fuck this is too much, wait is this what I want? How did we get here?

  I trace the curve of her neck to the rise of her breast, I can’t stop myself, golden tan. I move closer, wondering how far that tan goes, I glance up to her eyes and back to her breast, wanting to wrap my lips around her nipples, tugging slightly. I want to tell her how I need to taste her, those lips, dive into her and feel all of her from the inside, it is thrilling. Watching her feel my words, space freezing around us as she moves closer. I want to keep this going, I move closer and force my cock down, grabbing her hand, pausing. Attempting to compose myself, controlled, standing up and pulling up her up close to me. The anticipation is written all over her face, she touches my heart uncontrollably beating, fuck, I turn us both to survive the moment, head spinning, heart thumbing, sweating and dizzy. I think I just learnt what bewildered feels like.

  What the fuck! I want more of this. Not wanting this to end, I suggest dinner the following night. That was amazing. I’m hoping it’s not too soon, that I’m not too eager. She agrees and just like that, my head stops spinning. I’m not sure what has happened, I can’t get the feel of her body out of my head. I’m pumped and shitting myself at the same time and happy, for the first time in a long time, happy, even before Dad.

  The pang of shame rises in me. I didn’t tell her. I pretended Dad’s still here. I get a flash of Dad, the smell of diesel, the stench of sweat, that sickly smell, the dogs fearful barking, his anguish and my clear realisation of what I had to do for Dad, rapidly bringing the cold sweat of despair. The dread in knowing what was needed, I can’t do the right thing, is bouncing around my thoughts. Another punch of emotion, the stinging of pain, trying to pour out of me, what the fuck, this is fucked, desperately trying to push it away, fucking pull it together, saying it out loud to myself, through gritted teeth, strained muscles, all of that pain swallowed down deep. I literally drag myself back to reality, what the fuck was that? This mass of emotion, forcibly telling myself to leave it in the past, let it go, it’s time to move forward. Move on, move on dickhead, I repeat aloud.

  After getting home, Harold is barking and jumping around like a crazy person. Harold doesn’t know he is a dog, mostly human, that dog. He needs exercise, so we go for a run and it helps me to pull my shit together and plan how the date will go tomorrow. I am surprised by how much I like Evie, while reminding myself that I am not looking for anything serious, despite her being utterly alluring.

  HER | Seven

  I think you need some background. You see, although I’ve loved in life, I’ve not loved loudly. I have never explored the love in my heart, this gift that exists within me. I was limited by self-preservation and the belief that love did not exist for me. I have felt a tender hand and not so; trauma locked away my heart and me with it, caged. My love life since then has been something of a silent war zone with a dictator in charge. I’ve had myself on the bench when it comes to love, basically. My history has meant that I had to learn to stand up for myself; fight in ways that are smart and that keep me safe, that meant I never put myself out there to be in a vulnerable position, basically keeping me benched. It was safer that way and I didn’t have to be confronted by my horror story. I let hurt win, I let the pain of what happened to me dictate my life, I did my best to get through. Even though then I didn’t even know what my best could look like! You see, surviving the unthinkable means letting pain and fear control me in every way, ruling my world without consciously knowing it. Truly I was just surviving. I knew there was something wrong with me, and because everyone kept telling me, I knew it must be true.

  I closed myself off to all the possibilities of life, including that I was worthy of being loved. In order to block my pain, I inadvertently blocked out every emotion and everyone. I spent so long trying to not be too damaged that I became damaged, by believing there was something wrong with me. Somewhere in my healing, I unwittingly decided that I was too damaged to be loved, that I couldn’t put anyone through my shit. My traumas have meant I had to learn to survive and predict my world, and even though I crave intimacy, I am petrified of it at the same time. No-one was ever going to get close to me. This was my survival tactic, my way to cope in the world. Trying to predict people’s behaviour and not putting myself into situations that I couldn’t control is how I survived. To achieve this, I learnt about people to better manage my interactions. I became hard and cold towards the world as I needed to be someone people couldn’t mess with anymore. I had to turn and face the danger, fight, walk straight towards it and get my power back which has helped me get out of some scary situations while aiding in healing my horrors. This also meant I discovered how lost I had become, how scared I was, and that I as a person am fluid, not rigid, that life is the ebb and flow. It took a lot of running at first and freezing to learn to retrain myself in those situations and feel my own fears so as they became a strength, to use my fear and throw it back at what’s scaring me to walk into my fears and rise above.

  In mastering my environments, predicting when I need to be scared and when not, working out what was logical and rational. I became the manager of my fear. Monsters are real. I was no longer going to be controlled by fear or people who hurt me.

  It is wholly exhausting living with trauma, mentally, physically and emotionally. They all work together in overdrive, so I had to have a relationship with my triggers, a relationship with a solid understanding that I am working through. Trying not to make sense, trying to just accept me for me and to live authentically as best as I can, for my survival, trusting if things are showing up, I must listen and allow. To be fiercely me, switching out of fearful survival mode, I was actively choosing my happiness mode, with limited protection detail, because of life’s ups and downs. I can and have found such love in the depths of me and what I am capable of and the realisation of wanting to one day share the love inside me, before I was put in a cage.

  I am not caged anymore.

  This led me to learn to soften myself. Funny enough, one of the ways I did this was to practice smiling more, as I was so awfully hardened and closed as a person. Surviving is equally hard, and I found my hearts strength and who I could be before she was taken from me.

  I am only just now learning the possibilities of my heart, of the love that exists, already within me. I have not ever allowed myself to completely understand this love. You see, my heart, was locked away a long time ago, along with who I w
as meant to be, it was all taken from me. Monsters locked me away and my sense of self followed soon after, and I stopped functioning in life. I didn’t live nor know how to thrive, until recently. You don’t know what you don’t know.

  Opening my heart and self to softening has enabled joy to show up, for love to be felt from within. I fell in love with myself and I so appreciate her and all the lived parts of me. I do understand that my heart is my way forward to evolve and be the woman I was always destined to be, and hopefully, if I am lucky enough, to know love. I know it’s mind-blowing and I’m yet to fully explore or surrender to my love and discover the love of another. You see, while my experiences in life have made me into this person now, I don’t believe I have ever been broken. I refuse to break but my god, I have bent. This is my inner bent heart, my love of real things, my body and soul being ignited by the desire of a man, attraction, all the while I’m attempting to allow space within my hurt heart for something new to grow and for me to learn love. This is not just any man, nor is he a fucking warrior, he’s an ordinary man with good values, built for me, I hope, and I him, the soul’s recognition of love’s potential.

  This is not a glance across the room kind of moment. It’s a stop you in your tracks love at first sight, showered in chemistry and sprinkled possibilities. Your body ready to explode like a firecracker, with heat firing in all corners of you. I would not have been able to love him previously, as I was locked in fear. I had to learn that fear is a beautiful thing when I embrace all the parts of me, not running nor pushing it down deep inside me. I didn’t want to be stuck in my traumas anymore. I had to face these otherwise being ‘bent’ was going to become ‘broken’. I was so very sick, so very tired of fighting. I found myself rising in my own darkness, learning to just allow myself to feel, to trust me to swim in the ocean of life. Truly deep down, I believe I took back my life through small moments of bliss, like swimming in Mother Nature’s ocean. That one thing for me that made me feel free from my horrors every day. The ocean, beautiful and dark, embraces her storms and rolls with them, her power shining bright in storm and light, she shares her magnificence, so I learnt to tread water in my stormy darkness, followed by swimming in the sunshine. I allowed and learnt to love those parts of me too, accepting my fears and my pain as real. Then I managed to stand up and get the hell out of my own way.

  I learnt new ways to tread water, not judging my screams, just by rolling with myself daily not looking for a reason or label. I felt and accepted my feelings and found my emotional expression could be whatever it needed to be. I was expressing my emotions and the storms within began to subside.

  The treading of water taught me so much about my storm, how to read what was happening for me internally and what my fear was thinking. Experiencing the storm inside me from a perspective of kindness and softness led me to a tenderness from the fight within, that nurtured my rage, felt my sobs. I felt my overactive and fearful mind quieten, as I stopped trying to dissect what happened to me and let it be viscerally processed, while learning what swimming looked like. I stopped fighting with myself and my demons. I accepted, cried, accepted and raged some more with a tender heart, allowing space for my demons to exist and my irrational fears to dissolve and the things I should be fearful of stayed and yet didn’t control me anymore. I understand that fear has a value we need it to survive. There are things I should be afraid of and things that are there because I am afraid, retrospectively defined by my past and my traumas. I needed to distinguish what was real fear, and what was preventing me from living my life. I practiced trusting myself, realising that within me was all I needed. I found that everything is within my power and I can also get out of my own way.

  Being too scared to go down my dark tunnels meant that my life was on rinse and repeat! The same merry-go-round every day, so I decided: life must be more than this. I planted my feet on the ground and began with accepting and allowing whatever to come forth without judgement or expectation. Only softness could live in my responses, so if I felt like crying I would. If I was scared, I trembled and encouraged my body to express it. I cried a lot, like truckloads of tears, mostly exhausted, mostly in the dark and often ending in exhausted sleep. I screamed, I shake, I beg, I still do. I process.

  My body releases for as long as it needs to, and I don’t judge her. I am grateful for my body’s expression. From deep within me, my all my power came back, replenished, a new beginning for me. The way my body releases scares me at times, with trembling continuously, shaking in my bones that creates that dull ache, that continues physical pain, convulsing out of my body. At times I didn’t know if I could go on, although I did believe that forward was the only way, backwards was not in me. Moving forward, I felt a building strength in me. I could feel the mountain moving, but I could trust myself to live through it. I am not going backwards, so, I shake, pain burns into me. I’m bending, not broken, all things that provided a glimmer to go on, to choose me, no longer letting monsters in. I continue to express my feelings without judgement, if I am lonely, I let loneliness in, if I froze in the moment, shutting out the world. If I have a pang of emotion, I accept it and just allow my body to express it however it wants. Allowing and accepting with kindness became a daily focus. Even if accepting was screaming my house down, I learnt to listen, not to judge. Over time this listening to myself and allowing space for whatever expression soon developed into softer, less pained expression. I guess I stopped getting so out of control in trying to be in control of my darkness, that it allowed me to gain back my control. I went from expressing rage by screaming, to being able to just feel, note it to myself, combine my body and the feeling, the rawness of healing, a messy, exposed, red raw fight to release and trust.

  My internal volcano became a mountain followed by a hill. The opening and closing of my heart enabled the true horrors of my pain to show up. Please understand my pain is mine, it belongs to me and my heart’s strength is releasing and holding on to some of that pain in order for me to find my way back to me. It is a relationship with myself, not an end, not a label, I need an understanding of who I am, being open to me, I couldn’t get over it, I couldn’t get it out of my head, I have learnt for me that is impossible. Some pain is meant to be remembered, held on to or simply exist in the depths of your darkness, it’s not necessarily meant to be dissected. I understand the stripping back of a person, of the slow unravelling, it happened to me, first by others now by my choosing. My bent pieces have lived and mended and lived again. The heavy pounding of the darkness, on my chest, the tricks my fears play to on me, to keep me locked away, protected, my nights of shuddering, begging for the waves of ugliness to pass, for self-hatred to swallow me whole, for someone to save me, for it all to stop, for the self-loathing, the torment, the tearful exhausted sleep to engulf me, awake flashbacks and surrender to the empty night, repeat. Finding hope in the dark, then awakened monsters again, my darkness knows me, understand me, giving up, cuddling my insides, darkness wins. It’s mine, not anyone else’s. No one can take it, nor save me from it. I live, I rise, fuck you, I know my monsters and I control my internal self now.