# 60 || "When is a monster not a monster? Oh ... when you love it."

"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world." 

-- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

( photo by emma matsuda )

It was just a fantasy, I have to remind myself of that every single morning. It seems I’ve been lucky enough to have been introduced to a kind of love that I have never known before. Perhaps it is a kind of love you only ever experience when the weather is warm enough to not need a sweater first thing in the morning, when you don’t want the night to end even if you know you get to wake up and do it all over again. If sleepy kittens and soy lattes aren’t enough to convince me out from under the covers, then perhaps the notion that summer even exists at all, maybe that is supposed to be enough. Maybe even a taste of paradise is supposed to satiate you until the end of days. Maybe it's wicked to want anything more than a morsel of something that felt like heaven.   

We dream about things, we conjure visions from the deepest and darkest hollows of our imagination. We dare to hope, we dare to desire, and we dare to lust — all of these seeming indulgences take more courage than you could ever imagine. It is easier to lose ourselves in the delusion that maybe nothing is transient. Especially not love. You don’t realise how the human mind attaches itself towards the comfort of what is familiar, and what is simple, and what is to be expected. It’s scary to be scared, it’s scary to not know what comes next, and it’s scary to even think of losing who or what seems to hold everything together.

I promise you’ll be okay. None of this is fair, and none of this makes sense, but I promise you’ll be okay. Here comes the sun and everything is gonna be alright. George Harrison said so, Bob Marley said so, Alicia Keys said so and I can only pinky swear with my right hand, and cross my fingers on the left, that what they and millions of others say is true. At some point tonight I realised that everything is bigger and better than anything I’ll ever be, and that isn’t something to be sad about, but instead I’m reminded that the capacity of every human emotion is so very powerful, and that power holds the answer to every action and inaction. But if that emotion just so happens to be love, don't ever feel like you need to defend your decisions. 

Question: Why?

Answer: "Because I loved _ _ _," --- that's more than enough. x

( i solemnly swear to be there, especially exclusively when you need it most )

# 59 || Þerney (One Thing)

I once-upon-a-time believed that absolutely everything is a choice, that nobody can make you do anything if you don’t really want to. But as I get older and the days blur into one-in-a-million, I can’t help but notice the norms that exist within society and all that keeps us united as citizens of the insanity that is the world we live in. Sometimes I think it is easier to love than to be loved, it is easier to give than to receive, and it’s all very well to offer advice and an opinion we don’t really believe. Or maybe that’s just me. 

What is self-love? I have never craved an escape like this before. I’ve never wanted to disappear so much. Sometimes whilst trying to stay present, I remain a split-second behind and mistake it for being stagnant. I indulge in the luxury of written illustration of the present moment, which is often misinterpreted as daydreaming. This habit is more of a tendency than a habit, and somewhere in the last decade maybe I’ve lost track of what’s really real.

Dear sparkle, where are you? I think I lost you somewhere in six or seven months ago. Please come back. I miss you. Love, Afifa x 

PS. What a mess !