Love… Is That You?

Antoine Unique Bowser

Description

Real accounts of one man’s journey over four decades in love. Poetic expressions intertwined throughout the narrative.

Sujets

• Inspirational
• Poetry
• Bowser
• Journey
• Challenges
• Love
• Pain

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 25 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781728378473
• Langue: English

Extrait

Love… Is That You?
 
A Poetic Depiction of One Man’s Loveless Journey
 
 
 
Antoine Unique Bowser
 
 
 

 
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
 
© 2023 Antoine Unique Bowser. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse 01/25/2023
 
ISBN: 978-1-7283-7848-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-7283-7846-6 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-7283-7847-3 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023901340
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
To Rakel, Kahlil, Daysia, Kihanna, and Am aria
I’m sorry. I love you.
Contents
Preface
Conception
I’m Good
A Child’s Hope
A Mother’s Day
Envy
The Anniversary before Last
A Hundred Ways
Reflection
Stillness
Change
Count It All Joy
Unworthy
Sick-Nuss
The Hard Part
Rose Petals
Perspective Vision
Fight or Flight
Strangers Again
Hate
Both Sides
Snakebitten
Forgive Them, Lord
A Love/Hate Space
Leave if You’re Leavin’
Until I Return to You
When the Dust Settles
Against All Odds
Now What
Truth is
Love Lesson
Let It Go
The Transition
Three and a Half Years
I Love You
Flaws
What If? (Part 1)
What If? (Part 2)
Joined at the Hip
Talk to Me
Selfish
My Mission
Hard Love
Damage
The Journey
Lost Together…
One Day
Feel It
Happiness
Red Rose
Three Generations
Black Love
Acknowledgments
More Writings
Unafraid
The Cure
Another One
Dust of the Ground
End of the Road
Internal Voices
Awakened Dreams
Unrestricted
Broken
A Beautiful Ride
Necessary Perspective
Boomerang
True Crimes
Cluttered
Hold On
About the Author
Preface
Lost in the mind
Of a man with a dream,
No one knows the things I’ve seen,
The things I’ve heard,
Or the things I’ve shared.
But maybe one day
When I find my way,
The things I’ll say
Will be the things I’ve learned
While in the mind of a man.
—Poetic Cortex
I am nobody to a lot of people; I am somebody to a few, but I am the realest dude you’d know or knew. I always keep it 99 or maybe 95, when society forces me to play the game. I’m just a real person, with a heart and a conscience. I have traveled this land far and wide, and it’s led me to this moment of truth right here, right now.
Hello! What’s up? What’s good?
My name is Antoine. My name is Unique. A few nicknames, but
I answer to them all. Who you know me as is indicative of what point you met me in this life. You’re probably reading this book for one of three reasons: you’re family, a friend, or a fan of Poetic Cortex. Maybe this book was recommended to you. Maybe, it’s none of the above and curiosity just got the better of you; either way, I’m glad you’re here.

This book is about me, my life, journey, and experiences along the way. It is centralized around a certain area of my life that ended up being an intricate part of it, which spawned and attached itself to every other area.
Unfortunately, taking you on this journey it must be about other people. Well, not about them but about how they relate to this area of the journey. I struggled and fought to exclude so many things from this book, because I didn’t want it to take on a life of its own and become more than what was intended. I realize that is impossible.
This book has been forty-seven years in the making, and even now, I ebb and flow with why I’m writing it and why you should read it. The enemy has attacked me throughout this process which has aided in that ebb and flow. Those attacks only cemented that I was doing what He wanted me to do. I am a poet, and those writings are expressed within Poetic Cortex, the name of my social media platforms where I post my writing. I’m a freethinker who obtains freedom through writing, expressions of thought, and experiences, both real and imagined.
Writing saved my life. It provided a positive and creative way for me to get out what festered within, thoughts that sought to destroy me one memory at a time. This book will take you on my poetic journey in pursuit of love along a broken foundation. Did I find it? Was I one of the lucky ones? Or did it elude and evade me in a sick, twisted game of “They love me. They love me not.”
My objective was to understand why I think the way I do. Why do I write so much about love and pain? Why is it so easy to articulate the reality and fantasy in love? Why is pain so easily relatable? Has led me to writing this book. This is a worthwhile journey whether you are a man or woman, young or old. The truth is women are not the only ones who hurt. They aren’t the only ones who feel pain or get played; men do too. Men, whether they admit it or not feel more than they are comfortable expressing at times. I wish I was more like that. I guess the difference is that men don’t usually divulge the details of those moments. Society says that as men, we must be strong, not weak; firm, not meek; emotionless; and less expressive. Well, I am that, and I am the opposite. I am all of it, and I’m good with that.
 
So close…
Where you begin and I end,
Where trust extends
Beyond friends.
Love…Is that you?
Or is it pretend?
—Poetic Cortex
“Closer Than Friends,” Surface
 
“For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son”
John 3:16
I love you. Love? What is that? I imagine this to be the most overused and abused statement in the history of mankind. The whole time, we had the answer and example right in front of us. Love is sacrifice. Love is commitment. Love is choosing to endure with someone or for someone, the trials and tribulations that living in this world brings forth. Love is acceptance. Love is forgiving. Love is death, the willingness to die, to give your own life for another. Randomly ask your significant other if they will die for you. The answer to that question should come with zero hesitation. Until death do us part is rarely the case. Unfortunately, carnal love, which has tarnished the purity of loves beginning, is also very blind and stupid.
Conception
For the greater part of my life, I yearned to be loved by her, to feel for one moment a love that has escaped me. I longed for the feeling my friends had. I saw it in their eyes, in their responses, if you said anything remotely against the woman who had birthed them. Subconsciously, I thought of her more then I realized. My mother. The woman I had grown within until my birth. It was a Wednesday.
It was not having her that had created a void that shaped every fiber of my being, a bottomless dark hole, a constant free fall of emotions that almost destroyed me. So all my young life, prior to writing for the first time, my thoughts were contained, trapped, bound, and gagged. I couldn’t breathe. And anything that was expressed came out in angry outbursts.
I think that is why I find it easy to express things today, although there was a time when I struggled with that side of who I am. Then I embraced it, and my God, is there freedom in that. It’s an incredible feeling to be expressive and comfortable in that vulnerability. To be secure in who I am. This is a part of me but not all of me. The thoughts I have and express are presumed to have an attachment to weakness; there’s possibly truth to that, but in that weakness, there’s strength, power, confidence, and a self-identifier that allows me to be me no matter what.
As a youngster, I was so carefree. I had jokes. I often pushed the envelope of what crazy thing I could do or say next. I never really cared what people thought, but inside I was hurting and easily triggered. I talked aloud to myself all the time, talking through whatever had happened. Pain became a comfort zone at a very young age, a pain I juggled, a circus act I performed. “I don’t care” was a recurring statement made to convince myself that the hole in my heart, the lump in my throat, the fluid that filled my eyes suddenly and unprovoked weren’t real.
The truth was, I did care. I cared about it all. I felt it deep within myself, and I couldn’t un-feel what I felt. Once I realized and accepted that fact, I was able to navigate accordingly. I no longer had to convince myself that I didn’t care, that the feelings didn’t hurt, sting, burn, ache… yeah, all that. At times, it felt like I could actually feel the blood oozing from my heart; my chest was wet, awaken in the night but it was just sweat.
A young boy’s travel through life without his mother is next-level emptiness. It is emptier than your stomach when you’re hungry. Emptier than the jug of Kool-Aid someone put back in the refrigerator. I suppose everyone is different, and I’m not sure why it affected me so extensively-in a crowded room but mentally within the hollow walls of my heart and mind. The total absence of the other half of me, left me in a state of confusion and despair, connecting dots on my own. I was cemented in a narrative my