Once you were joyful. It overflowed from you as the chalice of God runneth over with triumph. Your skin itself effused happiness into the space around you like an aura; where you walked, flowers bloomed, and we–mere mortals–drew into our lungs the sweet pollen of delight. Your eyes held within them the rising sun; when you blinked, the world pulled its curtains shut and wept with sorrow. If perfection existed, it walked on two legs and wore messy hair and smiled shyly and it had your face. You were alone, but found peace in that loneliness, for a world blessed by your presence was one already full to bursting with happiness. It was in this perfect moment that I, distraught, first found you. You greeted me with a smile. You laughed, and my heart stopped. I had scoffed at the idea of perfection before; after all, in my imperfect and polluted universe where the Sun had long ago lost its luster, there could be nothing remotely close to “perfect”. You proved me wrong, and it was glorious, for now perfection’s twin black eyes gazed into mine and I had never felt happier.
Just as my heart remembered to beat again, I saw that you were gone— left behind was the memory of something beautiful. I got to know you, and I fell deeper in love. Love that I had to keep hidden, for the sheer audacity to fall for you was laughable; love that grew as a tree with rotting and malnourished roots; love that ultimately fell apart in a fiery blaze– less supernova, and more dumpster fire. Love left unspoken for too long can fester and rot like a raisin in the sun. It becomes something ugly and twisted beyond recognition. It becomes something empty.
When I saw you again Life had robbed you of the twinkle in your eye. In Her infinite cruelty She stole the honey dripping from your laugh, plucked the joyful crinkles from your smile, quenched youth’s fiery spark in your chest, and left dry the rivers of happiness that had once flowed from you. I had been fine–great, even–but you had not. There is no animal more savage than Man to His fellow humans; and savaged you had become. You were now a husk shambling about on withered stumps, all happiness evaporated as though by a great drought. You told me the horrors that, on your journey, you had experienced; I wept in your stead, for your tears had run dry years ago. A diseased heart spread no joy but instead sent sorrow’s foul plague coursing through your veins, sickening everything it touched. Heaven lost an angel on the day that I saw what you had become. On that day, the world stood still as I wept–not for your tormented soul, but because I had lost you. You left and never came back, breathing into the wind only three words. “ I love you.”
Every love story is a ghost story, because joy enters your life with concerning swiftness and flees twice as fast, leaving dandelion-fluff memories scattered on the wind. Love is a constantly crumbling bridge between you and someone else; perilous is its crossing, for you may become stranded on the route to your destination. Love’s saccharine embrace leaves you giddy and with a toothache–and even worse, cripplingly addicted. Eventually you’ll run out. Winding down from the high, you will tumble down the bridge and into the canyon below: the view from halfway down shows you what you left behind, and you’ll fall from the sky dejected and lonely and fucking miserable. Touching down on Earth, you finally see the people around you–love had robbed you of your sight–and know that you are not alone in this melancholy. You emerge from the harrowing experience wiser, more beautiful, and not put off in the slightest bit to the idea of love, for it had all been worth it in the end. There is no endeavor more pointless, embarrassing, and ultimately futile than love. There is also nothing more beautiful. Love gives you happiness not through a kiss from your lover or a softly spoken word; it taketh and taketh until you see that even a normal life is preferable to the abject misery that is love shattered. The opposite of love is loneliness, and the absence of loneliness is happiness. Does that make love happiness? I don't know. We may never meet again, and that’s okay, because I love you.