Jaachi Anyatonwu

Aba, Biafra

28 years old

I thought love was only experienced with people—which is why I spent agonizing time and emotional treasures pursuing relationships. You see, right now I’m in love with love itself. The thought of loving, being loved, giving and receiving feels like the ultimate purpose for me.

I'm in love with me.

It happened. The dreaded evaporation of cloud built castles. When I started merging with reality, I realized how wrong my perception of love was. Love is so omnipotent that it can be experienced everywhere, in everything, with everyone. It’s so massive that no human mind can ever comprehend it. It's so free that chains can't have it caged in romantic confinements. Isn't it so close-minded to think that love can only be found in romantic relationships?

In fact, writing has opened my heart considerably, so I know now that my future romantic relationship will be experienced on a whole different level. It will founded on a whole different ideology. It will be hinged not on conventional posts on pillars of...of...of... I'm yet to figure this out. Sorry.

The love I have found in writing outweighs any type of love I ever lived. That said, I’m delighted to say I found true love while writing. I found love in picking a theme and musing wild and wide hours before putting pen on paper. I found love in the connecting of dots, array of words, metaphors and literary spices. I found love in ruminating on certain situations and wandering down thought lane with it. We built an authentic bond based on trust. It’s the only home I have when I travel into my head. A safe haven it is. There reality is created from fantasy.

I fell in love with the headaches that afflict my head after brainstorming for hours—also the stiffness in my spine and the alphabetical scars I leave behind on the white of my diary.

I found love in the faces of my characters. Their expressions. Their eyes. The heartfelt words behind every moment of silence.

I fell in love with every city I visit in my head, and in every picture I paint of them.

I fell in love with the strangest of poem requests. The dirge that bring me to tears. The love poems that leave me in fantasia. The religious that remind of the existence of divinity. The societal. The government. The abstract. For family. For friends. For lost friends. For strangers. The most genuine bond we can create is with the people whose stories are unspoken.

Most beautiful are the strangers who, touched by my inking, become my closest friends and the friends who steal away a piece of me.

No language.

No religion.

No nationality acts as a barrier before true love.

No conflicting ideologies.

No past experiences.

There’s only one bridge full of words, full of lines, verses, understanding and equanimity. Love. Passion.

I fell in love with goodbyes and impermanence. Characters destined to die, though loved by all.

I love how I create new characters, only to kiss them adieu.

How I grow accustomed to one theme, only to leave it a few weeks (sometimes days) later to embrace another.

I fell in love with how I pay farewell to drafts and crappy poems, oblivious to when I muse same again. And I’m madly in love with the impression they have left on my writing adventure. They make me.

Although it’s terrifying, I found love in uncertainty. I fell in love with waking up to flirting thoughts every morning without the slightest idea of where I’d be heading the next writing—and wondering how the thoughts before passed by without a poem to hang on to. The love of neither having a time restraint nor a particular time outweighs the love of inevitability. The “now” is the only time that tick(le).

I fell in love with the rays of humour and the breeze of sarcasm. I learned walking under the heavy rain drops of tragedy, the same way I’d walk under the fierce sun or passionate love poems.

What writing has offered me can’t possibly be described in words. School and college couldn’t teach me half of the lessons that musing has given me.

Submissions and accompanying Rejections have taught me valuable lessons on letting go, trust, just letting things be and patience. Patience.

And the greatest love stories I’ve lived were the ones with the alphabets, punctuation, and numbers. Merging them into beautiful verses taught me about family, love, fun and what it means to be alive though different.

I fell in love with how I never cared about how bad I flaunt rules or abuse literary license. The play on words without being accused of cheating— teach me that authentic beauty isn’t deemed by what covers our skin—rather, by what covers our souls, speech and actions.

And mostly, I fell in love with fear. That kind of fear that puts me in my present moment and casts awareness upon me. Awareness of me. My pen. My words. My diction. My grammar. My relevance. The fear of things going bad, of getting lost, of having no more muse, of rejection. The fear of sinking in aloneness. What to speak of aloneness? In this state of solitude, ideas flow seamlessly like streams.

I allowed me to fall in love with myself and writing. To talk to myself and feel good about it. To yell at myself and still have my back. To live various lives and experience the pain, joy, fear, love, hate, greed, death of my themes, characters. To talk in my sleep on a cracked bed. To brew way too dangerous thoughts and still feel safe in arms of me. To having no idea what next to write, teaches you about yourself more than anything in life ever will.

Danger and uncertainty tests our tolerance, patience, willingness and courage. I discern my strength and spot my weaknesses. I behold myself as someone I’ve never recognized before.

I fell in love with my new notion of romance. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve found home in every poem, in every story, in every quote I compose. I’ve even discovered that love, sometimes, has cognitive faculties—at other times, it has fuckoffs and goodbyes. Love is not kisses, hugs, tingly feelings nor sex.

And weirdly enough, I fell in love with the worst that occasionally happens. I fell in love with getting a sudden cold of writer’s block, a painful burn of illogical criticism, or a backache long hours of sitting and reading and endless writing and discarding. I fell in love with the challenges they inflict on me and the power they stimulate within me.

For every person who asks me why I love writing, know that my reasons surpass any spoken words. The passion and eagerness it brings into my soul are indescribable in every possible way. To see the possibilities, the chances, the generosity of words, changes me on all levels.

Yes, I did find true love while writing this. Because writing is love itself. Love is vast, immense, intense. And this is what writing is about.

If you want to know true love, grab a pen—and by all means, write.

Most times we lose ourselves sulking over pieces of shattered hearts. We hold on to rolling rocks until we are crushed under its weight. But you can find yourself in things, words...anything. Love beckons.

Most times we find that beautiful path only when we get lost in the woods of hurt.

I'm hurt. I hurt. But, I've found love. She's me. Art.