I feel as though every time I open my eyes I am drowning in a love that I cannot feel. Always romance novels drenched in longing and rejection and red roses, passionate French kissing on the couch, or a forbidden love that stretches across galaxies, devotion rivalling the light of the blazing sun in a dazzling major motion picture.
Every time I open my eyes, I see dating apps, mixers, “Find your soulmate” quizzes, pick up lines as flimsy and hollow as a paper straw, not deep enough or strong enough to even serve as pick-me-up.
Every time I open my eyes, I see a world full of people desperately searching for a second half, as if they are not already whole, clawing through the rubble and trash for something that can fix their perceived inadequacies, as if they are incomplete and indebted to someone that they have never seen before.
Every time I open my eyes, I see love bombs that twist a person from the inside out and poisons their mind; words like mistletoe that beckon forward, promising a passionate kiss, yet in the same breath buries its sick roots into one’s body to suck the life out of its host. I hear sweet nothings oozing in lust, whispered lovingly into ones’ ear, yet they mean and offer just as much.
I look at the mess through the eyes of an astronaut looking down at earth, distant detached disinterested. No celebrity crush, first love, first kiss, first partner or date. There are no sparks in my chest, no tugging on the strings of my heart. “You must be so alone,” they say. “Whatever are you to do?”
And I think of my family, my parents who came from households filled with dysfunction and arguments neglect, reeking with the smell of fish and overwork, yet they fought tooth and nail to carve something out for themselves in a world made of unforgiving unyielding bedrock, even if their fingernails broke and their molars reduced to nubs, all to bring us into a world where they could spoil us rotten. I think of our house, filled with warmth and laughter, its walls fit to burst with all the love that it can barely contain.
And I think of my friends, of our hours-long talks on the phone, words transmitted across impossible distances that bring us ever closer, yet null and void of any intimacy that the romantics cherish so. I think of smiles and inside jokes, woven bracelets, stuffed plushies, secrets whispered over a game of Go Fish long forgotten.
And I think of them, and my chest bursts with pride, filled with warm yellow roses blooming on a summer day, the scent of citrus carried on its breeze.
“Whatever are you to do?” they ask, their faces full of pity.
And I smile softly to myself as I reply, “Whatever shall I do indeed?”
stormborns
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