It'd Be Easier If I Didn't Love Her

"Love will turn you into a stranger if it goes wrong," my friend blurted out loudly, shocking me initially. The clock had struck midnight about three years back. and her cheeks were stained with tears. Even though I couldn't see her, I knew, and the darkness in her that drove to cover the sole light in the moon above us emerged out of her chest.

The chaos of her ex was dancing mockingly in her mind, and painfully enough, there was nothing I could do to reassure her. Like many, I was awkward around emotions and I didn't know what to do. I didn't relate. I didn't understand the pain she was going through, which meant the very most I could do is lay there and listen. In the world of romance, I was still innocent, still naive, and it showed.

"Sounds risky," I responded without hesitating. As blunt and inconsiderate it may have seemed, I didn't know any better. "Why would you take the risk?"

I could feel her smile --a sad, self-pitying smile spotlighted itself discreetly before silently going away, the toiling within her exposing the cigarette her heart was smoking and the black smoke she longed to hide herself in. "Because there's a chance of healing somebody and being healed if it goes right, and when that chance comes along, you never pass it up."

As clear as it was, very obviously set out before me, it didn't click. I watched that lovely woman have to find herself all over again, not recognizing her own face in the mirror or in the way she dressed or in the color of her hair. She changed after him because he might not have been physically part of her life anymore, but he will always have taken up a fragment of her time that shapes people as they grow, and that's that. There's no turning away. It's how the world works.

And I had no idea what that was like, until I did. Until that person showed up.

The person that made me flustered-ly search for a depth within myself. I wouldn't be a puddle anymore, but an ocean, just so they could take notice of me. The person that had me up until the sun came up, wondering where in the world I wanted to be ten years from now. I never came up with answers, but what I did know is that every single idea included them. The person that made me get a taste of what it would be like to taste the sun, the stars and the sky, giving me a taste of something better than real life, and who made me crave for them oh so desperately, I can't describe it in words. The person who instantly zapped away the loneliness that came along even when I was in a crowded room, and who made me feel whole.

For a moment too good to be true, I forgot what it's like to be broken and to be overwhelmed by the anxieties surrounding me. I was climbing toward the top of the hill, the sunshine on my skin making me glisten, and I finally felt known and felt heard. The cold in me went warm, and the crimson thoughts went white as snow -- I was brand new again. I wasn't worn down like I got used to being. I had this window of opportunity to see what it was like to thrive. To be uplifted. To be optimistic again.

I held the bravery to put my happiness in the hands of someone else when I used to be afraid and hold myself back. Maybe it was me being gullible, being vulnerable, being dumb, but I think everyone is a little stupidly in love when that person passes by. I wanted this person to have a part in my story that would never end, that would never be over and that would hold my hand through the hardship, that climax where it seemed the author was out to kill me. I found the person who wasn't for anyone else, but was made for me, who made me believe in destiny and in fate -- that there was so much more than a mere coincidence for our roadways to cross.

I genuinely believed in a happy ending for once in my life, even before I got myself to make a move. I saw meaning in a future every single day we got closer and our bond was full of more laughter than I've ever had before. I couldn't ruin what we had, not when we had it so good and so blissful, but I liked to think about it. I'd zone out just to let it soak in.

"Why me?" I can imagine them say. I can imagine them say that and mean it with the entirety of their breath, and I could easily look at them and say "why not you? When will it ever not be you?" to draw us closer together, but that happens in another world. It happens in another dimension, or quite possibly in a dream.

It doesn't happen here. Loving them was the greatest form of self destruction that has ever existed on the planet.

Because she's a woman, and so am I, and she's as straight as they come.