Free

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Love is weird.
Kind of like a drug.
Enough can make you feel good; too much and you feel terrible.

I have loved one man in my life.  Just enough to move on when we weren’t loving each other the same ways.  You know: if you love something set it free; if it returns it will be yours forever and if it doesn’t it never was yours in the first place.

I used to believe I didn’t know how to love right; didn’t even trust how I’d handled the first situation.  Until I became a teacher.  Where I loved hard.  So hard I didn’t sleep.  So hard I took every bad behavior, every bad grade personal.

To love that hard is suffocating to the person being loved and takes the breath of the person doing the loving.  It’s not good for either party.  And here, I thought I had learned that lesson.  Until today.

The whole damn class decided to skip.  They’re always a boisterous class, nearly all alpha males and trying but not always sure how to, shine.  I try to give them that chance because I know that in their world, hell, in this world, to be a black man can dim your shine before you even get the polish out of the pouch.

Now a couple of them are sitting here looking cheesy hoping I will say something nice; wishing I would look at them.  But I can’t.  Can’t stand that they’re as oblivious as my other lover.  And can’t love me the same way I love them.

It is probably unhealthy on my part to care that much.  But there is so much at stake.