I Walk Down The Street With No One By My Side

I walk down the street without anyone by my side.

Truly, I walk through life alone, only joined briefly by another pair of shoes that step in time with mine, a smile and a hand to hold until another tugs them away. I do not wait for love. I've seen what it does. It burns the hands it does not hold, it ices over the hearts it cannot infect, it drowns in tears the people it cannot tempt. I have been love's victim- someone's else's love, one that does not deign to include me.

The world tells you that the flutter of your heart is more worth chasing than the companionable silence, or that the slide of another's skin against yours is the only euphoria you can experience. Have you never laughed with a friend until your belly is sore? It is like the joyful warmth of the sun in winter, melting the chill from your eyelashes. Have you never shared your deepest, darkest desires with another trusting heart, heard whispers of "I'll never tell another soul" through the dark at 2am, slept side by side with a person you would go to hell and back for? Have you never screamed along to songs in the back of a car, for one glorious moment sharing the same soul, the same life, the same emotions as 4 of the most wonderful humans to grace the earth?

I have. And I have also watched those same souls, those same kindred spirits who assured me that our hearts would beat as one forever, be torn away by the stars in their eyes and the flutter of their hearts. Assurances melt away, replaced by the gushes of love and desire that fill their every waking moment. Where is your Philia, where is your Storge, where is your Pragma? Where is the love you have promised to me? Why does it take a wink and a smile to make you forget me? Why is Eros suddenly all you know, when I have been giving you my world for so long?

How I wish I could coexist with your loves. How I wish things could stay the same, plans could play out the way they were made, priorities did not shift in the blink of an eye... How I wish I could understand what it takes to forget the years spent unburdening ourselves, making memories, sharing our lives... How I wish I could justify it when you drift away, enticed by a pretty face and a more enticing life than what I can give you.

They tell us nothing will change. We will still have each other, our bond will be just as strong, no romance can tear us apart! We are sisters, we are friends, we are kin.

They lie.

How many times will I be shifted to second, a stranger taking the place I once treasured with the human I once adored? How many times will I grow comfortable with another soul, only to be uprooted from my garden and tossed into the wheelbarrow of discarded loves and hopes and dreams?

We are told that romance is the deepest, the grandest, the only relationship that matters in the grand scheme of our lives. Are you alone, despite your friendships, your success, the home you've made for yourself? You are to be pitied. It is alright, sweet one. You are attractive, you are lovely, you will find your soulmate and you will be happy forever! Do not fear!

I do not fear. Not because I know my prince or princess will find me one day, but because I am not waiting for them. I am happy! I am loved! I have everything I want and I do not need that to change!

But you do. Oh, my love, you are but temporary. The deepest friendship will be replaced, one day, because you have be trained to want it to. As quickly as I try to fill the gaping hole left by you, you will all be stolen away.

I am comfortable, but you are not. I am happy, I am fulfilled, I will be everything you want me to be, except for one. The one thing you have been told you need.

Why do you need it?

Am I not enough?

I walk down the street without anyone by my side, because you, world, have told them I am not enough. I am supposed to rejoice in it, to cheer for the accomplishment that has removed me from the place I occupied. Well, I cannot. Perhaps that makes me selfish, or perhaps I should be allowed to mourn the truth that has been revealed- I will never be enough, as long as we are told that romantic love is the only real love that matters.