the failings of a surgically healed heart | a collection

2 | to all the friends i've loved before

mama says, i love my friends too much offer more of myself than i have to give and each time find i am indebted with no more of me to spare for my family — or myself.

mama says, i never put myself first but rather rank myself and always end up last place.

mama says, it's why it hurts so much more when i am betrayed. why i weep for days and find that i am washed away in a flood of my own making.

it is what happened with danielle (first year of primary school, in scotland) after all; what happened with zienab (the year i left for london); what happened with sanna and sally (in my last year of primary school); and, is what happened with jenny (before i returned to scotland)

in other words, mama is right.

and yet, how can she blame me? movies and television and books fooled me into believing the only folk who could break my heart: were lovers, and crushes, and cheaters.

nobody told me your best friends can break your heart (too). let you hand it over to them — even when they know it doesn't work properly — watch them knead it until it is pulp — elbow grease and (peer) pressure all that is necessary in this recipe for heart break —

and i have tried to stop; learnt all the wrong lessons: refuse to get attached to those who call me friend and later stab me in the chest.

yet, i cannot (i am an extrovert after all). to ask me to exist without friends is to ask me to exist in a solitary confinement, of my own making — it goes against my nature

and so, even after i profess i will befriend no one upon returning to scotland, two years into high school, i risk it and befriend the fire haired girl i sit next to the rest of that year in maths (and in the years that follow)

risk it when i reconnect with a left behind primary school friend who spoke behind my back pending my arrival.

i risk it so many more times after that —

and each time i do, i find another wound i thought i sewed up tears open — twice as large — and bleed for days, but after the bleeding stops and the flood washes all the red away, i watch flowers bloom and pick them from the earth brown of my skin; gift them to all my friends as if, i am their lover — because in a way i am. and in a way they all have a piece me.

and so yes, mama is right: i love my friends too much.

and yet, if you ask me to pick a life without heartbreak/ or one without friendship;

i choose chronic heartbreak without a cure every time,
i choose friendship — again and again and again —

and i make this choice until my heart becomes paper mâché.

- for the voice in my head that questions if my friends love-me/love-me-not ; it doesn't really matter
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there aren't enough odes about friendship and i love love love my friends so here you go