Do I deserve this thing called love? – The Writings of Tom Grasso

From the deepest regions of my soul I can feel it. Yet, even as I enjoy the bliss of this experience my mind continues on with its mantra, “do you deserve this thing called ‘love'”? That voice was given strength by me but created by the ample efforts of those who molded that thing I was. It echoes through the vastness of the void left by your departure, yet billows outward with the knowing that it shall all soon be over.

You are still with me not in soul but in body. I take pleasure in what your body can give me without the ecstasy of what your soul could share. This is only half a triumph for a man so needy of both yet so starving for one. Such hunger causes him such despair that he devours the body as if it could satisfy his need for the soul. The flames in which I walk singe my feet with unabated agony, the searing heat of hell evaporating the tears before they can even form in my eyes. They beat me into this, they hammered me into a shell of a boy and less of a man. The vision of my self standing before the mirror of what has been this life to date sickens me as I stare at the naked, bleeding man looking back at me. I am so helpless, I am so childlike, I have grown but some small amount in the time I have been here.

Yet I thank them this day. Without their torture and anger I could not know such peace and love as it is and as I wish it to be. Without your tears and cries of pain I could not see it as that which I wish to end. Without the storm I could not see the beauty of the sun. Without your love my eyes would still be clouded with that which I knew as right, but felt was wrong. What little growth there has been is still growth, and I thank them for planting the seed that not only spawned the knurled sapling but also the growing tree. The roots of this tree have known such infertile ground as to root deeply in the good soil while still looking upwards to heaven in loving purpose.

So, as my mind rings out the words of fear, “do you deserve this thing called love?”, my soul knows itself and my heart listens no more. I bask in the warm glow of the sun as the storm has moved on. While I can hear the distant roll of thunder that once deafened my ears, I am not afraid of it. I no longer see the world as my torturer but as my self, I no longer seek to instill fear but to hold love so dear as to know fear no longer. This Being, this part of the me you wished to know once upon a time now beckons for your hand, your love, your soul. I beg you hear and grasp that part of me I now know to be the only part of me that is truth.