THE ILLEGITIMACY OF LOVE
In this text, I explore the consequences of past trauma on my vision of love, confronting self-loathing and imposter syndrome head-on.
There is a chasm. A silent, invisible abyss that stretches between the way I view the person I love and the way I view myself.
In my last piece, I spoke of the shyness that paralyzes me, that visceral refusal to associate the body of the beloved with acts my mind deems degrading. I thought I had exhausted the subject when I typed the final period. But writing has that effect: it was precisely as I finished unearthing that modesty on paper that I struck another truth. In its wake, a new question emerged, a thought that now gnaws at me to the bone: is it simply that I do not feel worthy?
The truth is that in my mind, the moment I love a woman, she transcends the human condition. She becomes a sanctuary of gentleness and purity. And in the face of that light, my own reflection terrifies me.
Who am I to dare lift my eyes toward her? I am a child of the depths. One who has walked alongside destruction; my body and soul are marked by scars I hide as best I can. So, when I imagine intimacy taking hold, when the vulnerability of bodies must be revealed, the contrast becomes too violent.
This absolute contrast acts as a magnifying mirror for my own flaws. Before the one I have chosen, I am no longer the man who survived; I become that little boy with no self-esteem all over again. I convince myself that I am nobody. A mere stranger, worthless and empty-handed, breaking into a place far too pure for him.
Even as bonds are forged, my traumas constantly whisper that I am not worthy of breathing the same air as her. To touch the woman who embodies my pure vision of love, when I feel as though my hands are soiled by my own past, feels like an act of corruption.
My intimate paralysis is therefore not mere shyness. It is the absolute terror of tainting that which is perfect.
It will take time and work to understand that if such a woman ever decides to choose me, it will not be by mistake. And it will take even longer to accept to stop being a stranger in my own eyes.
Love gives me the absolute will to live, while simultaneously screaming that I am unworthy of it. Loving, ultimately, means having to forgive myself for being someone, in the face of the one who represents everything.