A Thousand Deaths and Births

A Thousand Deaths by John Brockington

A Thousand Deaths

"To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don’t recognise inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out; to become speedily found when they are lost.

But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honour what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that disappears and temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness."

~ Heidi Priebe

A Thousand Births

A response

To love someone is also to attend a thousand births of who they’re becoming. The people they strived towards. The people they quietly drifted into. The people they only ever dreamed of bringing into existence. The people they had to be reborn as when their old lives ended.

We fall in love with full spectrum people and expect them to stay a picturesque painting. A shot, frozen in time. Watercolor bleeds, and the colors don’t always run red. Sometimes a prism permeates the page and us along with it. If you’re red, don’t be surprised when you mingle with someone who’s blue and they fade into a lovely lilac sky.

Color outside the lines. (They don’t exist.) We do.

And sometimes, ink drains out of our faces, blood from the paper, and it’s time to start fresh. Just silence…until a newborn’s cry can be heard again. Don’t be afraid to catch them this time, because your rebirth is coming next.

~ Zoë Zack Dunning