I Reek of Bonfire and Loneliness

Sometimes I think that in the grand scheme of life, my choices matter far more than any romantic comedy has ever let on.

In movies, somehow you’re just there at the right time, and the right place. The boy decides he will visit the library after school today. The girl has just enough time to return her Palahniuk that has been wasting away on her bedside table, the return date burning a hole through the pages. They brush arms on her way in and his way out. He smiles and mentions that he loves Palahniuk, and she laughs, all bright and shiny and new, gazes into his eyes that are just her favorite color, though she never knew it before, and whispers her name.

This has led to a series of events playing out in my life based on a bullshit sense of false hope.

I go to parties and music events and find my eyes scanning the crowd for a face, a beautiful stranger that will attempt to skew my pessimistic view on the world. I don’t blink out of fear I could miss them. I will agree to go to a public event, or out for a night, in hopes I’ll find someone.

I have come up with zilch.

This leads to a whole new set of problems, all stemming from my trust issues given at such a young age. I am brought up to believe that if I am in the right place, at the right time, I will find the most beautiful brand of lover. I am brought up to believe that I will be nothing short of completely confident that they are the one I have been destined to love.

I am supposed to find someone to breathe life into in the backseat of a car as they trace their initials onto my back like they’re tattooing my spine. I am supposed to find someone who sets my skin on fire with ever press of their fingers, and every smooth movement of their palm caressing my face. I am supposed to feel whole, and yet now I am left wondering why something was supposed to be missing from me in the first place.

I was brought up on the belief that if I hope enough, and dream enough, and am just the right amount of indie heroine, I will meet some asshole that loves Palahniuk as much as I do and he’ll whisper the words against me as he takes me home.

There is a scene in “500 Days of Summer”, in the near end, where Summer is talking about how she met her husband, and it was fate that brought them together. She asks Tom “What would have happened if I went to the movies instead? If I went somewhere else for lunch? If I showed up to eat ten minutes later? Tom, it was meant to be, just like you said. And as it was happening, I knew it.”

Well, Summer Finn is kind of a bitch, as I realize now. But at fourteen, I thought that shit was the most romantic piece of art I had ever seen.

Movies will never tell you about the ones who decided to settle. They will never portray the story of someone who has loved without their whole being. Movies will never take the average story, and maybe they should, because it would have prepped me a hell of a lot better for life.

I wish I had a big lesson for this. Some giant moral that ties everything together. I’m sure that there are some people who go to a coffee shop, order the same drink as the person in front of them, and fall in love. I’m sure that there are people who decide to move away, and find it was the best decision of their lives because they find their future significant other lives in the apartment across the hall from them. I am positive that this happens.

But I am so tired of going to coffee shops and coming home lonely.

If you really want a moral of this whole story, the best I can give you is this: If someone asks you to return a book, but all you really want to do is sleep, just go home.