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.