Loving in The Dark

Relationships are difficult, in general, but mix in two Zimbabwean gay men who have never seriously dated or seen other people like them date, then it becomes an extreme sport. My ex and I were both new at being in a long term relationship. We had spent 18 years of our lives in the closet, hating ourselves, admitting to be into girls we did not care for and blaming our singleness on being studious students. We both yearned for love, yet we did not even know how that love looked like.

Our relationship was many things, but it was mostly figuring out who we were as lovers, how we loved and wanted to be loved. It was like buying a brand new Mercedes E class, full tank, but having no idea how to drive or handle such a beast.  In some ways it was easy, we both spoke the same language, we both understood what we had to go through to get to where we were now, he understood why coming out was not a thing among Zimbabwean gays and I understood his belief, still, in God. We were familiar and provided a sense of security to each other. Yet, we still failed to translate what we felt in ourselves to the next person because we did not have the tools.

How we fair in love especially in the earlier, formative, stages of our lives is largely influenced by how we experienced love as children. Some of our parents showed us love and our minds mapped a love pattern that was stable, nurturing, kind and protective. But most of the people I know learnt love that was stern, often violent verbally and physically or unavailable. Most of my friends never had fathers who hugged them or told them they were loved, and my friends growing up learnt that love was absent and unexpressive.  I learned early on that love, was expressive, dishonest (so as to save you from hurting your feelings), angry when provoked or confronted, disloyal. I did not know then that this is what I had learned.

Teenhood is ideally where most people begin to explore their sexuality and their emotional/cognitive love maps. But while my peers were asking each other out, and having their first kisses I was masturbating to thoughts of the boy on my swim team and crying immediately after. I spent my teens burrowed in shame, then when it came time to reciprocate love, I found myself failing. Learning to love yourself and love someone else simultaneously is a difficult task that no one should be expected to do.

My parents divorced when I was young because my father cheated and my mother, unlike most women in Zimbabwe, would not stand for it. I grew up in a home where promiscuity was commonplace and normalized. Then, I found it disgusting and swore to never do that to someone I loved, but when the abyss stared back, I found myself falling.

We imprint as human beings, and my ex lover made me realize all that I had picked up along the way. Some of it I shed as I was with him. I learnt that honesty is love and care. Empathy in love is difficult but germane. Yet we live in a world where we are taught to think of ourselves first.

But there were things I could not learn with him and had to learn on my own. I could not learn to love myself if I continued to rely on him to love the parts of myself I found unlovable. There were some truths I had to come to terms with and I had to do that alone. I am selfish as a lover, irrationally possessive, eager to please everyone else but those who matter. Each day, I work on shedding each of these, but it is perhaps the hardest thing I have had to do in my life.

Today, I am a better person who still fails because learning is not linear and neither is progress. I am learning to love myself back to life. I am creating light where darkness had metastasized.