I Am Staying

They have loved me in pieces, like someone gathering what shines and leaving the shadow on the other side of the door. They have loved me for my laughter, but not for the silence that sustains it; for my wings, but not for the wind that sometimes breaks them; for my light, without wondering how much night I had to cross to kindle it. They have come to me like castaways searching for shore, and I, with my whole coast open, offered them shelter without asking if they knew how to stay, if they brought roots, if they knew the weight of an anchor. I showed them my beaches, my bonfires, my harbors lit in the night. I opened my clear waters to them, but also my deep currents, the hidden reefs, the places even I don't always know how to return to. And yet no one ever came to inhabit all of me. No one stayed to sleep across the whole expanse of my soul: in its festive streets and its gray neighborhoods, in its secret gardens, in its calm seas and in those waves that rise when something far too deep begins to hurt again. Perhaps they loved me as far as they knew how. Perhaps each gave me what their own shores allowed. Not every abandonment means a lack of love, nor does every love know how to become a home. But I too grew tired of being a refuge for those who never learned to inhabit themselves, of offering the ocean to someone who only wanted a place to rest, of making myself small so I would not overflow anyone's shore. Because I was not born to be a quiet pool when tides roar inside me. I did not come to translate my depth into simpler words, or to ask my intensity to forgive me for not knowing how to live on the surface. Perhaps my love is an ocean and many have only learned to swim in calm waters. Or perhaps I have yet to find someone who does not confuse depth with danger, freedom with distance, or a storm with the end of summer. Someone who knows that the sea rests too, that even the wildest waters hold places of infinite tenderness, and that loving does not mean knowing every corner of another, but not running away when the unknown appears. And here I am still. Not untouched, not invulnerable, not waiting for someone to come and rescue me from myself. I am still whole, with my tides and my shipwrecks, with the sweetness that still lives in me and the wisdom of someone who has learned that opening her heart does not mean giving just anyone the keys to her house. I no longer want to be loved only when I am easy to love. I want a love that does not ask me to choose between my light and my shadow, between the woman who laughs and the one who needs silence, between my open wings and my days of weariness. Someone who does not try to calm the ocean, or tame its currents, or turn it into a lake to feel safe. Someone who sits on my shore unafraid of its immensity, who learns my tides without believing they own them, who knows how to stay without making their staying an empty promise. And who one night, as the moon dissolves its light over the water, looks at the horizon, then looks at me and says, without heroism, without fear, without needing to save anything: Here. In your calm and in your storm. In all that you are, even what I do not yet know. Here, like this, I am staying. — Victoria Inaudi