Everything you read

You shouldn’t believe everything you read. I should know this. I worked in the newspaper business for years and if anyone should know this better than anyone, it’s me.

But I read something. Six months, maybe a year ago. I read something and I believed it. Because it sounded so good. It was exactly what I wanted to hear. I believed it, even though I knew better.

“If you feel loved, you probably are.”

That’s what it said. I’m not sure who wrote it or what I was reading at the time. But I repeated the words over and over in my head and decided it was true.

When I’m with him, I feel loved. When his warm hands glide over my cool skin, when his lips seek out mine, when he looks at me and smiles, it feels like love. And for a while, I truly believed he loved me.

“If you feel loved, you probably are.”

I’d like to find the person who wrote those words. I’d like to put my hands around their throat and squeeze until I feel their life slipping away. Until they think they have drawn their last breath. And then I’d let go. I’d let them gasp and wheeze and cough and stagger around. Dazed, confused, wounded. And then I’d ask them how it feels. How does it feel to suddenly have your life pulled out of you like that? How does it feel to be given something only to have some total stranger take it away?

He doesn’t love me.

And I could blame my fucked up childhood or society or that evil serpent hanging out in the garden. But it wouldn’t change a thing.

Sometimes I feel loved, but he doesn’t love me.

On the road again

This is my first love-at-first-sight relationship. I almost used the word romance, rather than relationship. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like a relationship. But sometimes it doesn’t feel like a romance either. Sometimes, most of the time, I’m not sure what it feels like.

Love wasn’t something I was looking for when I met him. My heart was already in so many pieces I didn’t think it was possible for me to love anyone ever again. I actually thought I was safe, immune, protected. Lonely, yes, but there was no way I was ever going down that road again. That longest road to nowhere.

I’ve loved people before. But I’ve always fallen or been pushed. Love was something that grew, like a flower or a weed. It got bigger and stronger over time. Or it withered and died. There was always a reason. There was something I knew or sensed. There was direction, a light at the end of the tunnel. Or at least some sort of carrot, dangling there in front of me.

Not this time.

I didn’t even know his name. I didn’t know who he was, where he had come from, or where he would be going. I didn’t know if he liked country or rock. If he was married or single. If he was allergic to dogs or chatted with children on the internet.

I knew nothing.

But a small splintered shard of my heart knew. Some tiny little piece of broken love overcame the pain and began gathering other pieces together.

And before I knew it, there I was. Back on that longest road to nowhere.