I have this fear. This deep-running dread that one day, one day soon you will open your eyes and realize that I’m not as great, as wonderful as you once thought I was. This ache, this pang shakes my ribcage and sends a tremor through my every vein. I am constantly on edge with you, tip-toeing around my flaws and masking my imperfections, holding my breath and praying to whatever God is up there that you’re love for me is more than skin-deep. I’m kidding myself. I know who you are and you can’t even spell the word ‘love’, let alone mean it. There are thousands of you. I see them every day. They look like you, act like you, live like you, and love-well they don’t love, which makes them just like you:
Once upon a time, I was a little girl. I had hopes and dreams; moreover, I had my innocence. I was a queen-well I wasn’t really, but I believed it. And so I was. I administered my kingdom with grace and pride, an open heart and nothing to hide. I ruled to my hearts content, until I met a king. This king, well he looked an awful lot like you. He broke down my castle doors and sprinkled a layer of delusion over my magical land. He held my heart and healed all the pain my world had suffered. He ruled with me. Not in front of me. Not behind me. By my side.
This went on for days, months, maybe years, I knew not of the measure of time, and did no more than relish whatever I could spend of it with you. Time began to drip by and I started to realize you quickening your stride. You began to control my kingdom, just a few feet ahead of me but miles out of reach. You spat hate in all directions and set fire to the beauty I spent my youth constructing. Your layer of delusion melted and in its wake, the cold, cement reality greeted me with a dull pain. It was a prodding at the bubble of safety surrounding me, and an ultimate pop, sending me reeling into an eternity of hurt. I was trapped in my own castle, locked up in the labyrinth of my confusion, and hankering for an escape.
Much like the way I lost my youth to a kindergarten boy with a gap-toothed grin and sweaty palms, I lost my heart to a newer model of that same boy. It’s funny how some of us will never learn. We will get burned a thousand times but still fall beneath the spell of dancing flames. We will break our hearts a thousand more times but still find a way to love with all the little pieces. Even a thousand deaths could not keep me from living for you, and there lies my greatest fault. We are not ignorant, we simply thrive to be broken, hurt, and forgotten. We have theorized that it is better to feel pain than to feel nothing at all. Our pure, unadulterated need to feel something is what keeps us coming back for another heartbreak.
So even though I may think that you complete every jagged piece in my heart, and you may see through my desperate attempts to protect myself from you, and you say you love me despite it, you will one day, one day soon, realize that I never shone as bright as you thought I did. We are a culture that can only love things that will never love us back; and as real as it seems, don’t wake me up because you’re only in my dreams.