I read the way some women write about love, and the anguish of losing it.  I listen to the way some women sing about it, saying they would rather die than to exist in a world without them.  I read about how some women feel the man they’re with is their entire purpose for being, that he is her everything.  I enjoy taking in their experiences as a voyeur, because I feel very detached from the experience of being hopelessly, madly, deeply in love.

 My last actual relationship was at least 6 or 7 years ago, and I think we were in love.  But back then I was a very sad girl.  I was the girl people write about, and pity, and hope to never become.  That girl loved that guy, because he made her feel good about herself for the first time.  He understood her, but still wasn’t quite satisfied with her.  He wanted to change her.  Wanted her to be less…her.  He liked the idea of her when she was far away, and he fantasized about what she was actually like.  He thought of her at every waking hour, and desired to know and to feel her.  When she let him in he was overwhelmed with her humanity.  “I did everything I was supposed to do to get you, but I stopped knowing how to keep you a while ago,” he told her.  And what could she say?  With the weight of the world on her shoulders, life had already left her cracked, and by then she was shattered.  Her fragile sense of self didn’t know how to put those pieces back together.  And then one day he came back.  She never knew why, but he came back, and she wasn’t elated with his presence in her life.  By then she was no longer the same.  She’d found the scattered pieces and come back to herself.  So now his kisses seemed to burn.  His touches weren’t soft and welcoming.  His words cut like a knife.  So she left, and with each step that she took away from him, she got closer and closer and closer to the woman she wanted to be.  Her own embrace felt so much better than his ever did, and she became addicted to herself.  He could no longer compete with her.  She bathed in his tears, and laughed at his sorrow, and was made stronger by having defeated that which broke her.  So he became the sad boy that no one ever speaks of, because no one knows those exist.

 But I am no longer that girl.  The woman I am now demands more in order to feel and give love.  So this woman before you, no she’s never been in love before.