Power

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There are ghosts that walk this campus - two ghosts that held my heart.  I do not see them or hear them. I can sense them if I try.  And I know they are here.  And that fortune is waiting to bring them into the light.  

I was captive - captive to the versions of myself that they saw.  With one, I was soft, trembling and afraid of speaking out.  With the other, I could speak out through music.  I was allowed to entertain my creativity.  But it died through the logistics of chasing someone who did not want to be found.

I left the shadows to reclaim my soul - to find my utmost power, to feed my music and AK Kerani.  I left because attachment, even love, wasn’t enough to be a full person.  I was dying and I knew it.   If I stayed, I would not only have become a ghost’s captive, I would have become one myself.  

Leaving a toxic situation is not easy.  I saw how hard it was for my mom.  And even my microcosmic versions, pale in comparison, were hard enough for me.  You always hope at the deepest pores of your heart that it will get better.  You convince yourself that the pain and negligence you feel is a small payment compared to the security you get.  But are you really secure?  Or are you just claiming to be so you can fantasize about a future that you better hope you don’t achieve?  Are you really secure? Or are you just so afraid to find it in yourself that even an unstable and tantalizing attachment to someone else seems more attractive?  

These are the hard questions.  But they’re ones I have to ask and answer.  If I don’t, I might still not fight for you, because I’m not sure I actually want to.  But I will break under the memories of that false security that I mistake for undying love.  I will frantically throw myself into superficial situations that seem affirming until the point where I shut off and just hope it’s soon over.  I will run in circles, trying to prove I can quickly move on from your influence when obviously, a temporary spark is no match for years of true partnership, no matter how dysfunctional.  In trying so hard to prove my success in getting over you, I end up reaffirming the fact that I’m still struggling.  If I stand still, if I wait, I quickly realize that I’m perfectly fine.  I have everything I need, even clarity.  And I have moved on.  I don’t need proof in another person.  I have it in my amazingly close friendships, my passion for my business, the way I present myself and a confidence that was dead under your influence.  You didn’t mean for it to, but your love and my need to guard it with my every breath, sucked the life out of me.  

And now I have it back.  And instead of spreading myself so thin between people who cannot possibly capture my intensity, I want to keep it all for myself, my passions and people who over time have been able to capture it.  When the person I love is ready and comes to find me, he will see someone who is not empty and trying to fill a void, but overflowing.  

Our mutual friend the other day said that I have no power over you anymore.  And those words sting like a knife through my gut.  I want to believe you will always love me in some form.  I want to believe that you’ll remember me forever like you said you would.  Tell me, please that I’ll always affect you.  Because I can be sure to God that you will always affect me.  But if you don’t - if you have become more callous than I could even imagine, that is not my loss.  Because I was able to give you all I have and somehow, now have even more than I did when I met you.  My transparency is my strength.  I will always admit you have power, that you left a mark and that you are a part of me.  It will hurt like Frodo’s knife stab on Weathertop even after the ring has been destroyed.  But I will move on.  And I will find a world within myself when I will be free of that pain.  

This is my life.  It doesn’t belong to you.  It never should have.  It doesn’t belong to my past failures or to the guys that want me for release.  It doesn’t belong to a criminal who would have been family.  It belongs to me.  And I will take that power to the grave and beyond.  Because one day, I will want a connection.  One day I will want partnership again.  But now...I want power.