To be loved is to be seen

I started wearing yellow again.

A few weeks before I published my second poetry book I had Linda read it over. She mentioned how much I mentioned about being watched or feeling someones gaze .

“Exchanging loud glances” “How I used to watch you watch me”

“hungry for the look that never ends”

I think really am looking for the look that never ends. I don’t think I mean this in the male gaze sense. Perhaps there is a certain element of that there, but I think I’m more so talking about the look of love.

Theres a scene in “Frances Ha” where Greta Gerwig’s character goes on a monologue to say:

“it’s that thing when you’re with someone… and you love them and they know it… and they love you and you know it… but it’s a party… and you’re both talking to other people… and you’re laughing and shining… and you look across the room… and catch each other’s eyes… but - but not because you’re possessive… or it’s precisely sexual… but because… that is your person in this life. And it’s funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it’s this secret world… that exists right there… in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. “

It’s this shared universe you have with someone that you share through this mutual gaze, from looking at each other. You don’t have to talk or acknowledge the love that you have for one another because it’s just there. It exists without the words. It exists because you feel it and your feelings are real.

To be loved is also to be seen on a spiritual level. For someone to see you exactly who you are, rather than an idea of what you could be or what they created of you in their heads. Thats why when you fall in love with someone genuinely without putting on a mask or a guard it feels so liberating.

How liberating is it to have someone accept you for exactly who you are.

bell hooks talks about this in “All about Love”. How often we put all our shiny pieces forward when we first start dating and the moment we start showing our true sides the relationship falls apart. We then panic and assume that those aspects of our true selves are the things that make us unlovable. Our true selves must be unlovable, or not worthy of love. And so the cycle repeats. You suppress your true self in order to fulfil your need to be loved.

True love can only come when both parties can see each other for exactly what they are. Without the façade of being someone that we’re not. Because being loved means been seen, and being understood for what we truly are.

In my last relationship I don’t think I was honest with myself or him about who I was or what I wanted from a relationship. I moulded my style and taste of music and my casual outlook on relationship to what he wanted. So I’d feel loved, so I’d feel wanted. I tried so hard to convince myself that it was also what I wanted, that I was this person. And after we decided to keep in casual, my body started to physically reject it. I spent the next month with a chronic stomach ache which I thought was anxiety but it was really my gut feeling which I kept rejecting in fear of not being loved.

When he broke up with me, in some ways it liberated me. My stomach ache had vanished and I felt the weight lift off my shoulders. I could slowly go back to who I really was. I could go back to the polka dot dresses and red scarves. Go back to the girl who writes little love notes and leaves trinkets as gifts on the mantelpiece. I wear primary colours and look a bit like a nursery teacher at times. With him I wore a version of myself that definitely existed in me, but it denied me the rest of myself. I tucked those pieces away, knowing that’s not what he wanted.

But now I feel myself breaking with old habits and moving forward with my life. I dyed my hair pink last Tuesday and started wearing yellow again and daydreaming. And I’ve got a new crush. And this time feels different. I’m showing myself in every way that I exist and not feel shy about it. And if he doesn’t like me then that’s okay. As the image of myself becomes clearer in my mind, I am less afraid of someone diminishing it by denying me love.

Because to be loved is to be seen, and all I want is to be seen.