THIS FEELING
A Poem by Amina Ndagire
Hey, it’s 03.13am and I’m still putting together my letter to God about you
I told Him how I appreciate the work He is doing in you
About how beautiful a masterpiece you are
I thanked Him for what I feel about you
And disclosed to Him how much I love you
I thanked Him for letting me let you in
See, I always prayed to Him to help me love
And by love, I mean the way I love you
How recklessly and carelessly I adore you
It’s inexplicably beautiful. It’s insane….
Isn’t it insane how I love you for no apparent reason
Not the money, not the gifts, not the beauty nor your intellectual capacity
Isn’t it insane how the answer to why I love you this much is:
“I don’t know. Nothing. I just do. I just want to feel this fully.”
Now don’t get me wrong
I appreciate all the good things about you
But awkwardly, I love the shortcomings too.
You know, that beautiful way you stroke your hair
It messes it up too
I try to suffocate what I feel for you
I punish myself for every night I look forward to seeing you in the morning
But trying to suffocate this only suffocates me
So I have now let it be. I have accepted it
And you know the result? More of it.
This feeling
You know this whole thing…
The whole thing of loving you for no reason?
It scares me
It creates a fear in me
That just like I loved you out of the blue, I will “unlove” you for no reason
To be honest I don’t want to
I want to feel this for as long as I can
It’s intense. It’s deep
It’s unlike anything I have felt before.
See when I found you, I found joy and happiness
That money, power and people didn’t give me
I developed a feeling for you that made me overflow with love and peace
And now that I know….
Now that I know what life has brought to me through you, I am going to recklessly and carelessly love you
I don’t know if you have ever felt what I feel for you for anyone
And I don’t even think you could slightly ever feel the same for me
But that’s not what matters
This feeling I have doesn’t have to be mutual for it to exist
Fact is that I have it and I will recklessly feel it for you
I know you don’t understand what’s going on
That’s okay. You don’t have to
I don’t understand it either
And to be honest, many times it feels crazy
For now I am willing to be crazy.
Who said I have to be sane after all
“I wrote that when I realized that the experiences we go through with people shape how we interact those we meet later. I realized that if new interactions are to be fruitful and require trust, we need to make an effort to heal from what broke us before in order to make the best of what we have in the present.”
Amina Ndagire, from Uganda, is ALA class of 2015. Email her at Andagire@g.hmc.edu.
