Oh to be in love

Love, that fickle thing

To yearn for time with them, yet never appreciating the time that you have

To find someone whose soul thrums at the same frequency as yours

That’s love.

 

To hear their heartbeat racing after winning first place

To touch their cheek ever so slightly, finding a scar, after fixing their hair in time for their date to prom

To find their repulsive socks around the house in the most uncanny places, but washing them anyway

To regret the negative things you say to them, even if it is only a joke

That is love.

 

To trudge through the morning, looking like a troll, because you stayed up waiting for them to come home last night.

To laugh at their reaction to the dog you managed to save up for to get them, and the crushing hug you receive.

To act elder even though you aren’t, much to their annoyance

To know that you add nothing but stress onto their plate, but they make time for you anyway

That’s love.

 

To drop the happy act, because they don’t believe and you are done pretending

To hurt their ego by pointing out their flaws, if the need arises

To jump on their back at the most inconvenient moments, but they give you a ride nonetheless

To attempt to knit them a sweater, even if it better fit their dog

That is love.

 

To eat their favourite food on their birthday, and the next morning discovering you are allergic

To make them promises you know you cannot keep

​To break your grandmother’s priceless vase as your boiling unchecked rage erupts

To know that no amount of words can fix what happened

That is love

 

To walk away from the pale thing that isn’t them. It isn’t them, you’re not awake. This is just a dream

To fly through the air in their arms, pretending to be a superhero

To ride rollercoasters together in the theme park for the first time together

To struggle through the first day of their absence, not knowing what to do or how to do it

Is that still love?

 

To stay up all hours of the night, afraid to close your eyes,

Because once you close your eyes all you can see is the pale form that isn’t them.

To bite your lip and cast your eyes downward in shame when you see one of their friends

To cut their picture into a million little pieces in a bout of anger, and then regretting it a million times over and over until you guiltily piece it back together

Is that love?

 

To weep in the rain and possibly the shower only, because then your tears will go unnoticed.

To write, and write, and write, and write…

Then scream.

 

Scream because of all the pain they have caused you, scream for the good times you had.

But you’re not screaming.

You crying so ferociously because of the anger, the sadness, and the loneliness, that it seems you are screaming.

To fidget, a nervous tick that can no longer be quelled because they're gone.

That can’t be love.

 

And people keep telling you that you’ll get over it,

That people go through this all the time,

You’re on part one, containing four out of the five steps necessary to overcome this.

That other people understand.

Because of love.

 

It gets to the point where you have to attend a group of other people going through a similar process

Similar, yet different.

They make you describe how you feel, they rip the most private of thoughts from your head

They speak to you as if you are a child throwing a tantrum that needs to see logic.

But no rhetorical appeals are going to work on you.

What is love?

 

And you realise how ridiculous you’re being,

You see how stupid it is to dwell on this.

You understand that you should suck it up and move on

But you can’t

Love.

 

Then the dreaded day arrives.

The final goodbye.

 

There are not many people at the event, only you, your sister, and a small group of their friends.

You remember nothing from the event, only the smooth, polished wood encasing the focal point of the gathering.

And you remember how surreal it felt.

To be sitting so close to them, yet so far.

This is what love has done to you.

 

Four months later you still survive off of caffeine and the food that they force down your throat

You’ve become a shell.

Hallow

Empty

Loveless

 

They ask you a question.

One single, but meaningful question

“What is love?”

 

You look up, without expression, wondering if they were asking that to you.

“Go on” One of them encourages, and many people look surprised to see your eyes for a change.

 

You repeat the question.

You think hard about it for a minute, and then the answer comes to you.

“Love is a feeling you don’t always realise you feel.” You answer simply, because the rest of it is swimming past in a blur of images.

You smile, knowing that you might actually be alright without them.

 

You have a creative writing assignment in English,

And you know what you’re doing,

In a feverish flurry, you scrawl your hand across the blue ink lines in a blur, writing down the random bits of thought once again going through your brain.

 

And as the first coherent thought appears, you kind of chuckle to yourself.

 

Oh to have been in love.