Haramacy by Zahed Sultan

Author:Zahed Sultan [Sultan, Zahed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800181335
Publisher: Unbound
Published: 2022-04-28T16:37:36+00:00

MY LOVE IS VAST, BUT SO IS MY DIFFERENCE

NOUF ALHIMIARY

I

PAST

Primrose Hill on New Year’s offers a panoramic view of Regent’s Park and the rest of London. For free, you could watch every fireworks show around London all at once. So many people gather and sit side by side, in the dark, to watch all the figments of glimmering light down the hill, around the city, up in the sky, displays that you would have to pay to watch from up close.

Coming into the new year, I sat on the wet grass alongside a lover, in silence. I glanced at them and asked myself why I wasn’t capable of saying something to alter the painful silence. Much like the fireworks, something about our love felt possible, yet unreachable and faraway. We dated for two years, but tonight it felt as though the pain of things that happened in both the recent and distant past was still here with us. And presently, I was consumed with this feeling that I am gathering parts and figments to make a creature that loved me.

We aren’t talking after one of our recurrent arguments, after which we would be drained, and nothing about the onset of a new decade was a reason for either of us to reach for each other.

Our relationship was one in which I learned so much about myself, my ability to grow, the capacity I have for change, my shortcomings, and more specifically, my inability to know where to draw the line. It was in this relationship that I became aware not only of the need to learn who I was, but also of the gruelling work needed to delve deeply into the intricacies of my own shadow.

And so we worked, or at least we tried. We tried to chase an illusive ideal of healthy intimacy, one we didn’t grow up witnessing. Equipped with nothing but love and the best of intentions. It seemed simple enough: we both wanted a relationship where we prioritised one another’s needs, and put ourselves first, where our self-esteem and independence remained intact, where we reassured one another but maintained full respect for one another’s individuality and close relationships with each other’s friends and family. But as my parts came clunking onto another’s, my intentions couldn’t uphold the promise of intelligibility.

We grappled and toyed with this concept; we tried time and time again to begin ‘loving each other right’. How could we healthily relate to one another when we felt weighed down with this familiar desire to take the things we loved and pin them down so they’d never leave us? And where did this desire come from?

These questions forced me to delve into a journey of healing the love that I am. And so I let myself dive deeply into the feeling of love I recognised. I wanted to discover the historical roots of my desires, and these enquiries brought me to my roots and the love I grew up with. The love I was taught embodied the struggles and experiences of those who came before me.

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