Anonymous on Instagram asks,
Can i ask you a question? What would you do if someone you love played with your feelings?
]]>Can i ask you a question? What would you do if someone you love played with your feelings? I feel like cutting off the 4-year friendship I have with someone special to me. He is confusing--One day he likes me and another day--he's different again. It just keeps going and it pains me already. He walked away easily when i asked for space for me to move on. Should I be angry? I'm worried because I'm slowly becoming bitter of him and I don't want it to grow. How do we even move on?
He seems confusing because he is confused. He walked away because he wanted you to know he was brave. He wanted you to know he was brave because he cares what you think of him. Where do you want to move on to? You refer to him as, "someone you love", and then asked him for space and he gave it to you and now you feel bitter - perhaps he is not the only one confused about how he feels? If you want to move apart, then you don’t need to do anything, time will do the job it is meant to do and move you along, day by day, slowly but surely. If you want to be together, then you will both need to be brave. To say, “I want this, do you want this?” is easy. To find the strength to say it, and the way through each other, to the side of a person that can actually hear you, is much more difficult. Sometimes, it is worth it. But that is up to you to decide.
- Iain S. Thomas
To ask a question, send a private message on Instagram. Browse our new collection of fine-art prints inspired by Iain S. Thomas' most popular poems by clicking here.
]]>Firstly, you start on your knees.
This is the important part. You start on your knees because you start from a place of vulnerability because that’s what love is, it is being vulnerable with someone, it’s saying,
“You mean so much to every single part of me that you could easily destroy me right now, and so I am putting myself at your mercy, I am telling you who I really am in a way that I cannot tell anyone else.”
How do you do this? You admit your flaws. Admit where you are weak. Admit where you are overwhelmed with emotion and explain,
“This is what you do to me. You have destroyed who I was because you have made me who I am.”
Love changes us.
Talk about the change. Talk about what your life was like before now, and how they’ve changed every aspect of you.
Write to one person and one person only.
Talk about “You” and “Me” and “I” because when we talk to each other, that’s how we talk. You’re not addressing a crowd, you’re not writing a newsletter, you’re writing down why the fire of the universe has been ignited inside of you. That means you say, “You.” You are the only two people that matter in the eternal moment your poem exists in.
Create tension between the mundane and the metaphysical.
You can create tension in a poem by changing focus – talk about what happens when you touch their skin and what it feels like to touch the edge of forever. Talk about their smell and talk about how lucky you are to exist at the same time as them. This change from the intimate to the incredible creates tension and propels the poem forward. One of my most popular poems is one sentence long and it resonates, I believe, because of this tension between the casualness of the statement and vast metaphysical nature of someone’s soul.
And then my soul saw you and it kind of went, ‘Oh there you are, I’ve been looking for you.‘
-Iain S. Thomas
Tell the truth and stay.
It doesn’t have to be long, the shorter the better and the less room to make mistakes.
The thing we really want from our partner, is to be seen and to be understood.
When we write something to them that shows that we truly see them, it’s proof that we’ve actually sat down and reflected deeply on who they are, and who they are to us.
What is the truth of this person? What have they done? Do they make you want to be a better person? Tell them. Is it sometimes hard to love them in the chaos or having a family and work and all the other commitments that make up modern day life but you love them anyway? Tell them. Have you neglected them? Have you taken them for granted? Tell them. Tell them the things that they know are true, that will make them feel seen and truly understood in a way that no one else but you can.
Do they make you feel whole?
Tell them the things that only you can tell them.
The most powerful thing you can do for your partner, is to see them,
Most of the time, we fight not because we disagree but because we don’t feel understood.
This poem that you’re writing is chance to demonstrate that you do. Spend time on it and make it as beautiful as the person you’re in love with.
[This originally appeared on my blog over at www.iainsthomas.com]
]]>