This Is How You Love The Damaged Girl

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You stare at her like you’re stargazing in the middle of the night, and love in ways love is not meant to exist. You know she’s the right person because she makes you throw away all the current plans for future and walk into an oblivious path without any dull fate. You love her because you love her depression too. You accept her sadness even though she doesn’t.

You were there when she lost her father at 3, and mother at 6. You were there when she lost her elder sister who’s kind of alive. You were always there, in your own way. You held her and sometimes you didn’t. Sometimes you distanced yourself because at that time it was the best way of communicating and caring for someone.

Alongside dull diary entries and stale coffee, you’ve become her constant. You’re there every single day, even when you’re miles away. You’re the good morning text she doesn’t expect and the good night call you don’t necessarily have to make to show the love. Because your love is a calling in itself.

She had bulimia and that was one thing you hated. You managed to love depression but bulimia? You couldn’t do that. But that’s where the magic comes, that’s where her love comes. She forgives you for not loving a self-destructive part of her. Because she loves you. She loves you too.

You read fat books together and discuss different meanings of love, and talk about an oblivious future together. oblivious, but together. You play with lightness and darkness under the blanket with a torch and think of growing grey hair together. Inch by inch. All together.

I know it gets difficult for you sometimes. But let me tell you, loving broken people is a blessing. They teach you about things humans aren’t entitled to feel or breathe. They reach for broken leaves and fix them. They reach for dead flowers and grow a tree that helps us breathe. They create magic in magic and make the sparkle sparkle even more. They create a home for you. With exactly three cushions because thats your favourite number and paintings from your favourite artist. She has old school collection of music, the kind you like, and they’re always playing in the background, even when you fight. Your likes are always there, as noise, as voice, as shine, and even when you dine, together or apart, that doesn’t matter.

You believed in live ins when you met her, but she was the kind to make you believe and fall in love with the concept of marriage. She’s the kind to make you walk circles around the fire and fill the edge of her forehead with red dry colour, she’s the kind to make you whisper ‘I do’ every single night when the sun goes down to sleep and the moon dances with the stars. She’s the kind.

You asked her to marry her the day she confessed to you about her marks. About self harm, about self hate. That day you promised yourself to love a girl that doesn’t love herself, and you knew it was going to be hard, its a rough path, but a beautiful one nonetheless. She’s the kind to wait up for hours until you arrive home and then have dinner with you and watch reruns of your favourite tv serial no matter how tired she is. She’s the kind to change the colours of the curtains every six months because you get bored easily, and you always need colour, in one way or the other. She’s the kind to twist her wedding ring when she’s getting bored or waiting for her appointment at the psychiatrists’ and thinking about the umpteenth memory of yours with her and without her. And thats the thing about her, she doesn’t hate imagining you without her, she likes you individually too. She likes you in bits and pieces, and as a whole.

And there will always be this one thing about her – her poetry. The words she writes when she manages to exist. The poems she fills you up in and the proses she decorates you with. She carves your scars with her words, her depression, and her bulimia, she does it all when you’re sleeping. And once in a while you’ll wake up in the middle of the night, and she won’t know because its too dark, and she’ll be sitting right beside your laying figure on the bed, caressing the edge of the burnt scar on your left knee. In that moment, she gives birth. Birth to the poetry of your rare love. And these things – her words – her poetry – her depression – her bulimia – and your love – will never change. Never.