Love, Truly: In the Style of Martin Eden

When it started, I was in sixth grade. I was no more sweet or beautiful than the rest – we were all little fruits dangling from the branches of youth, optimistic and bright with the prospect of our futures. My dreams then were filled with a land where happiness was an intimate companion and sadness was just a wisp of a shadow too faint to see. Perhaps it wasn’t as lovely as I remember it to be, but I was content. My innocuous nature rendered me impervious to the demon named maturity, and I would often find myself swept away with daydreams. Such ruminations transported me from the gray-yellow walls of the classroom to the future that my parents had set out for me: a princess, a young princess with an advanced degree in medicine, living in a lavish home decorated with expensive furniture and intricate patterns etched into all of my beautiful clothes. I would be the princess, and a handsome gentleman would be my prince, and our children would be raised like royalty. How easy it would be to live a comfortable life with a man I could kiss hello every morning and goodnight every evening.

I suppose it was naive of me to believe it would all go smoothly the way they wanted it to, but I held on to the faith that it was possible. I studied hard, investing myself within the pages of textbooks and scribbled notes, but I was never truly interested in the monotonous drone of the machine they called education. I studied hard, but I socialized harder, and much of my time was spent under the sweet embrace of sunlight. I realize the irony now, my childish idea that somehow good things would be placed into my waiting palm if I simply willed them to, but back then, they were as real as the leaves under my fingertips. Everything was a fairytale to me.

The youthful facet of my character may even have let it remain as such, had the girl not entered so suddenly into my life. Her arrival was a blessing, the greatest gift one can be given, but with that blessing came the hook that gripped me and began to anchor me down, down into the darkness. She was in every way the role model that a child could hope for – she was grounded, humble, but dedicated and fearless. She was strong, too, with a psyche of steel and an unfaltering faith, with a confidence unshaken by any adversity.

She was beautiful.

I was entranced, captivated by her every word and movement. She was the girl with fire in her soul, with flames that lashed and nurtured at her every thought, and I was swept up by the inferno of her being. No one could compare to her, I was sure, not even the quiet boy I had developed a liking for. My desire for him was akin to barely smoldering embers in comparison, and my awareness of the difference tore me apart. I was awash with love, this wonderful monster that gripped me and threw me into a feverish passion, this fantastical sickness that both thrilled and revolted me. I was a stranger in my own eyes, the way I longed for something that I had been told was wrong my entire life – I was afraid of my own mind, and I hated the body that chained me to my immoral desires. My thoughts were a plague I fought to eliminate, and my waking dreams soon overflowed with the sight of her smile, the sound of her laugh.

I lay awake for hours every night, too exhausted to struggle, and let the thoughts overcome me. I opened my mind to their exaggerated magnificence, and they transported me to a new kingdom of paradise where we reigned as queens together. She was the one I wished grow old and silver with, and every moment spent in her presence was a sweet kind of torture, an infinite bliss to which I wanted no end. She was in my dreams, and she was also in my nightmares. After many months, months through which I managed to convince myself that she was only the closest friend I had ever had, my revulsion for my own mind began to consume me. I no longer awoke in the mornings eager to see her – instead, I began to dread the day before me. I had nearly every class with her, and with each passing minute I was tormented by her presence. My thoughts grew unbearably loud, and at times they were so thunderous that I feared she could hear them resounding within me. It was as if my skull was splitting in two.

It was not until the summer before eighth grade that I was able to admit myself what I had been denying for so long: I was in love with her. This love, bruised and beaten from being pushed away for so long, only managed to solidify with every passing second. It did not dawn upon me, but rather struck me, hard, across the face. Its wake left me speechless, and as the thought of it – how wonderful it was, to be in love! – spread to every vestige of my long-deprived body, I laughed, filled with the exuberance of having experienced something so tremendous and breathtaking after so long in the dark. It frightened me, but also invigorated me; that day, I walked outside, tentatively at first, but once I felt the sunlight hitting my face and the wind planting kisses against my forehead, I was sure of my decision. A hundred tons of solid rock upon my shoulders was as a feather upon my back, and it was if the heavens themselves had opened to welcome my new-found understanding. I was no longer to hide alone, with nothing but my tears, in the dark cocoon of my misery; in that moment, I grasped the locked doors holding me in and threw out my arms to the blossoming wings of acceptance.

It was in that moment, right then, when I recognized why those past trials had been thrust upon me. With the vanquishing of my fears and doubts I became as strong as the girl I once clutched to for support, and as the fire of her spirit burned through me, I felt the impurities of my entirety leave with it. I melted into a pool of refined steel, solidified beneath my convictions, and grew even stronger than the inexorable elements that could have battered me into dust.
She was the girl of fire, and, by some miraculous doing, I was the ocean she set alight.
And as we shone, twin flames of twin strengths, it occurred to me that - by some inexplicable revelation – we didn't seem so different, after all.