She Said

The old woman asked her:

Don’t you miss having someone to love?

It’s been such a long time.

She said: It is not the same if there’s no future.

Old woman: What are you talking about?

You got nothing but a future.

She said: I mean a future together.

Growing old together.

Without that, love is, uh…

It’s just another heartbreak.

Old woman: Explain to me in detail what you mean.

She said:

It’s not that I don’t miss love – It is the sound I heard when I was nine years old and my father slammed the door behind him so hard behind that I swear the building shook to its foundation. For the next three years, I watched my mother break her teeth on vodka bottles. I think she stopped breathing when he left.

I think he took her heart when he left. I think she died or at best she was a walking corpse with a hole where her heart used to be. Just a shattered mess of prescription pills, bloodshot eyes, and a broken heart…

It’s not that I don’t miss love – It is all the blood in the sink. It’s the twelve hours spent in the emergency room waiting to see if my sister will be okay after the boy she loved told her that he didn’t love her anymore. It is my friend standing at the ledge ready to jump because her boyfriend was cheating on her with a girl that didn’t care for him like she did.

It’s not that I don’t miss love – It is the two straight nights I stayed awake to watch my friend cry because her boyfriend went back to sleep with his ex. I think when you love someone, it never goes away.

It’s not that I don’t miss love – It is watching my teacher miss school because she was going through a bad divorce. When she came back, she was smiling and her Facebook updates inferred she was in a better place but her hands shook badly when she held her coffee. You could tell that something was broken inside of her. And sometimes, when things break, you can’t really fix them.

So, you see, it’s not that I don’t miss love.

It is that I do, and that scares me…

{A beautiful piece by Ed, I had to make some additions}