It had been two years since I shut down to love. In those two years, I fell into the deepest and darkest hole within myself. While my body had finally broken under all of the pressure of the last ten years of my life, so had my internal paradigm of everything that was love. The tattoo on the inside of my forearm said:

“Love no matter what”

Blue waves crash behind the words as the sky is lit by sunrise. The words are even in my own handwriting because they came from me, they were mine to claim.

I remember my lover’s darkness at the time I got my “Love no matter what” tattoo. It was my affirmation that I repeated to navigate his black hole that he called love. My love was the flashlight that barely lit a path through his fucked up love labyrinth. “Love no matter what” got lost in translation a long time ago. I live with “Love no matter what” every day on my arm. Some Days I can’t even look at it. Why? Because it’s the truth and it failed me. I want to tattoo a question mark at the end of it because I’m not sure love is enough anymore.