What better time for self-reflection than a government issued lockdown? With this self-reflection, I took it upon myself to preorder a mini poetry collection by R.M. Drake, who is most known for his instagram poetry posts. His recent release of “In My Feelings” Volume II was the medicine my soul needed at the time, and this is why.
What I Really Mean When I Say Good-Bye Don’t Go & Leave Me The F*ck Alone
This was the first book that began my four phases of self-realization. My heart was hurting, and a method I decided to do was take two highlighters and one color would represent my feelings and the other would be what I felt his perception would be. I was yellow, he was green.
The yellow:
Because in the end, how it hurts does not matter. All that matters is that we loved.
I just want you to need me, the same way I need you.
It’s the simplest things that suffocate me. That shit kills me.
But the truth is, I’m hurting without you.
That doesn’t mean we can’t laugh how we once did.
Maybe love is a collection of people who’ve moved you. Who’ve meant something to you.
Then we will find each other again. We will pick up where we left off.
You can’t lose hope on people. Everybody has a little love in them somewhere.
Our hearts blind us and we follow what we feel more than we should.
The green:
I want you but I need to be alone. I don’t want to pass my pain to another person. I don’t want to leave my heaviness in the heart of someone I love.
Maybe I am the one who keeps hurting you. The one who keeps taking you for granted. And maybe I’m too blind and too naive to see it any other way.
You can’t run away from what hurts. Eventually your demons will find you.
These were just some of the parts of poems that spoke to me. There are three whole other books in this collection that break down the other phases: What I Say To Myself When I Need To Walk Away Let Go & F*cking Move On, The Advice I Give To Others But Fail To Practice My Damn Self, and The Things I Feel In My F*cking Soul & The Things That Took Years To Understand.
Reflecting on these words alone I have come to realize that every relationship is different, and our attempt at trying to understand each other’s leads to disagreements and hostility. It’s not about trying to understand others’ relationships, but believing in the one sentiment that connects them all—there is no one word answer to love.
Love is not always supposed to be easy. Love is sacrifice. It is changing parts of you that you didn’t know needed to be changed.