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I’m so tired of cliched love stories. Eyes meeting from across the room, sending a spark that somehow ignites the connection of soulmates. That one kiss that creates a vividly imagined scene of fireworks exploding from the mere contact of lips. Not being able to live until that one person fills the hole in your chest, and you realize that at last the puzzle is complete.
If the human heart is strong enough to pump blood fast enough to circulate through your entire body and keep you alive, how is it fragile enough to shatter into a million tiny pieces when someone finds his way inside and plants an unforeseen time bomb? When the complete notion of love is so fragile and insecure, how can anyone be expected to trust it? I’ll never trust my heart for as long as I live. It can pop like a small balloon and I’ll be dead. Give it to someone else and they might just pop it for you. If you’re lucky the person will take your heart and stick a needle through it, fast and hard, so it pops in an instant. If not, he’ll take your heart and suck all the life out of it, slowly and playfully, like helium in a party balloon, until you aren’t sure if there’s anything left. He’ll play with you, float you up to the sky like a self-styled god, pull you back down to earth like you’re some amazing prize to be won, and then suck just enough life out of you at a time that he’ll be raised up but you won’t necessarily fall.
If my heart is a balloon, I want no part in love. Love, trust, caring . . . Call me a cynic, but all of that just makes everything complicated. I don’t care if the death of a loved one gives me drive or passion or initiative. Why do we have to suffer such immense pain to accomplish anything? If the world is full of martyrs, why are so few celebrated and remembered? I don’t want the light at the end of the tunnel if the tunnel itself was shrouded in abysmal darkness. It doesn’t seem like much of a fair trade to me.
I told you, I’m a cynic. I don’t believe in much. I don’t believe in the golden rule. I don’t believe that anyone is either good or evil, but somewhere in between. I don’t believe in sacrifices for greater causes. For a very long time, I didn’t even believe in love. Sometimes I still question whether or not it’s something I should put much stock into. Every time I loved someone, they either spat in my face or were taken from me for some cruel and unusual reason. I didn’t want to get hurt, well any more than I already had been. I didn’t see a point in the trivial aspects of human existence and the social aspects of life.
And I know, I know , I said I was tired of cliched love stories, but cliches exist for a reason. Cliches exists because they’re real, they’re true, and they happen. You can’t, I can’t . . . escape cliches no matter how hard you try. I can’t escape how perfect his smile is to me, even if it’s a little crooked and ridiculous. I can’t escape how much his dumb southern accent irritates me, or the dread I feel when I realize there will be a day where I can’t hear it anymore. I can’t escape the fact that he’s always there to be seen as the prince charming I never had - when I think about how my sister sacrificed herself for a so-called greater cause, how the only family I had left was taken from me for no reason. When I fall apart thinking about how I almost died time after time after time after time protect a world that didn’t even want me in the first place. When I numb myself to my feelings of dread and self-pity because I’m thinking about the fact that the only reason I’ve been put through literal hell and back is because I was born - to pick me up and show me that maybe there’s a point, however sick and twisted it may be, to all of this madness. I can’t escape the feeling of comfort and pure joy I get whenever I am anywhere near him. I can’t escape how, even though I hate it, my hand fits perfectly in his, and a spark is felt with every touch. I can’t escape how my lips melt into his, even with the slightest peck, and how I feel whole in his embrace and could stay there for years. His golden hair, his tan skin, his mess of freckles, his bright blue eyes. He is the in-between season from Summer to Fall, and I can’t help but want to hear the newly fallen leaves crunch under my feet every day because of him. I can’t escape any of it.
I don’t believe in much, but I do believe in the warmth and comfort he brings me. I do believe in him. I know it’s cliche, and I know I said I’m a cynic, but something about the perfect cliched love story . . . it makes even the darkest of cynics melt under its warmth. You know . . . No one ever wants to go to the doctor. Everyone feels like he can fix himself on his own, or that he doesn’t even need fixing. Once you go to the doctor, though, you realize that doctors have cures and doctors save lives.
I’m glad I went to the doctor. He may not have cured or fixed me completely, but the solace he gives works miracles on my deflating heart. Doctors save lives, so I think I’ll keep going to this doctor. He saves my life everyday.