The thing about growing up on love stories is that doing so makes you believe that you’re going to get your own.
You read these stories of best friends who fall in love, of people who see each other in a crowded room and just know. One night stands turn into forever love, and people who loathe each other realize that they are much better off together than apart. Heartbreak is never really in the focus of any of these stories – they love, and are loved in return, even if its not until the last page. You see heartbreak around you, of course, but you’re so immersed in these stories that it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen to you.
Until it does. Until you’re sobbing on your kitchen floor because she promised she would be here, but she isn’t and the dinner you painstakingly prepared from nothing is long past cooked, your outfit ruined from fussing with it and it’s prom night and you didn’t understand why she would do this. Until you’re telling her that she needs to treat you better, because you can’t do it anymore but you love her so, so much, and instead of holding you close and promising she’ll be better because she loves you, she leaves you in the snow, not knowing about the velvet box that’s been five years coming. Until she comes back, and you think this is it, this is the part where we realize we’re forever , but she leaves again as quickly as she came, hands bloody from where she wrapped her hands around your heart and squeezed until she was satisfied, not caring about the broken pleas that left lips salty with tears.
You give up on love, after that. You never stay in the same bed twice, and you abandon your comfort, your safety, just to feel anything other than the gaping emptiness in your chest. You have bury yourself back into fictional romance when you’re not trying to start a fire with matches that just won’t light. Surely, there’s something that you did wrong, something you overlooked. But then you watch a tall blond leave the man he fought tooth and nail for, the man he broke laws and tore apart the earth for, and you get it.
Sometimes, you’re not the grand love story. You’re the stand-in, the secondary love-interest until the protagonist finds their real happy ending. That it might be all you’ll ever be – a stepping stone in love.
The hole in your chest closes as years pass, scars the only reminder of a broken heart that didn’t quite heal right. You meet people who you think you could fall in love with and wonder if you’ll ever get to be the happy one.
You don’t think you’ll ever get to be the happy one.
Why don’t you get to be the happy one?
dailybridgerton
snowghoul
janainaart
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
