lovely *UNFINISHED*

Everybody out there has experienced love before.

Every single human in this entire universe, and the saddest part is that most of them experience it, but they don’t understand that in order to appreciate it, they must open their eyes and recognize it first.

These are the stories of a few.

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            Nothing is as exhilaratingly breathless as falling in love with someone at exactly the wrong time. Falling in love with someone when you are sixteen years old is so horrid, so meaningless, because how can it mean anything when there are people all around that are older than you and haven’t had the faintest taste of marriage?

            You know logically in your mind and even in the tiniest part of your heart that this can’t be your soul mate, it isn’t plausible. God wouldn’t put you two together at this time if this was the person you were supposed to be with for the rest of your life.

           It isn’t supposed to, but it feels so right. It feels like everything you’ve imagined love to be. You love her lips, even when they’re chapped. You love her nosy hands, and the way she chews her fingernails. Her feathery brown hair. Her skin soft as a butterfly’s new wings, breakable as china. You love the way she’s always cold, the way she complains about the chill like all girls do. She’s adorably clumsy. She makes you give her piggyback rides all the time, but you can’t think of the word “no” when you’re around her. You would do absolutely anything to make her smile. Literally anything, because no mountain seems too difficult to climb as long as she’s waiting for you at the top.

            Somehow school and friends and even family slip into the back of your mind. She’s all you need. She’s like the first snowflake; unique, beautiful, shaped like a star, and as refreshingly cool as the winter sidewalk.

            You spend every waking moment together. In your bed playing with her hair, gazing out the window at the coarse green leaves as they change to brown and fall. Smiling as the trees have forced everything into a pink snow globe and all of a sudden it’s hot and you push off the blanket.

            She blinks and smiles. When she turns to look at you, that’s when you know. This is the girl you can’t imagine parting with, and it takes every ounce of your strength not to beg her to love you forever.

            Saying the words takes a day’s worth of energy and every single bit of individual self you have. You’re no longer your own; this is what it means to be truly selfless.

“I love you.” Her words linger in the air, each moment blowing them up like the balloon animal you were too afraid to admit you weren’t too old for.

Don’t you know how to speak? No, you don’t, because any word that isn’t repetition of her announcement is a breath wasted. When she opens her mouth in surprise, you blink and all of a sudden the door is slamming shut.

Her tears can’t match yours, and you believe you only have yourself to blame. Little do you know the tragic flaw of the world: to believe in love, to be a lucky one who takes it seriously, is not the way to win. No, because to believe is to romanticize and to romanticize is to understand perfection so thoroughly that you take earth’s best shot for granted. Everything tries and everything fails. Yes, you loved her, but your hope for the future ripped you away from the best present you ever had. 

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Loving someone who will never love you back, ah, now that is a love with a strength to turn the earth.

You love him and he doesn’t love you, how tragic. How cliché.

You try with all your might to close your eyes and not see his face. He smiles at you with eyes deeper than any ocean you’ve ever swam in, with dimples more precious than a baby’s, with every flaw an asset.

He’s everything you’ve ever wanted, but you are terrified to admit that this is so. Your heart flutters in your chest when you hear someone say his name, and when you see him you feel the high of a poisonous natural drug. You love him and it’s killing you.

Conversations last a lifetime, yet they are over before you can flutter your eyelashes.

The longer you’re with him, the more it hurts. You love him so much you would hold your last breath if it meant you could stare at him a moment longer.

His music is terrible. Awful, really. He has the most cliché hipster taste in music you’ve ever heard but you feel your criticism twist and turn about like the chord progression in his favorite song when he watches you listen. No one else gets away from your scathing tongue like he does.

He brings his girlfriend and you wish only to claw her eyes out. She’s pretty, she has a great personality. They met at a coffee shop. She was his barista and his coffee order (mocha frappe no whip with room) was exactly the same as hers. How fantastic.

When he admits to you that he doesn’t love her, the hope burns its way through your system and you almost tell him how you feel until he admits he’s in love with someone else. And her name doesn’t matter. All that does matter is it isn’t your name.

When you get home, your tears fall until your pillow needs to be wrung out. It hurts, it hurts like nothing you’ve ever, ever felt before. Yet you still won’t admit it. You like him a lot. Care about him a great deal. Would do anything at the drop of a hat if you knew it was him that needed it. But no, you don’t love him. Love is a word reserved for passion, beauty, the future. He’s just another boy and your soul mate is still out there, pristine, perfect, and waiting for you.