Romance

Romance, who loves to nod and sing, with drowsy head and folded wing…

- Edgar Allan Poe

I feel like love is the blanket when something is tucked in. It lays delicately on top, curling under every corner and crease to make something sweet and warm. It shelters. It secures. It encompasses.

Or at least, I feel like that’s what it is now. That is the option we’re afforded after adolescents, after childhood, after we’re beat so hard by this world that we can’t possibly focus on the something. If romance is to be anything, it will be the thing that lays ontop, one that wraps, and covers.

But I always thought love was the something. That delicate what have you that stays safe under that cotton cocoon. That mysterious sleeping cataclysm that we may be afraid of, but we’re just so in love with. It’s honesty, it’s vulnerability, it’s gentle nature as it sleeps safe and warm.

It may be the sleep of something so violent that drove us to be so in love.

We see it tucked away, so happy in its sanctuary, and we smile as it sleeps. As we go by, we pull the blanket off, inch by daring inch, to see just exactly what it is we’re in love with. After its full exposure we’re lifted with exhilaration, with pride, with honor, and adoration. Examining and reveling in this beauty that we get to behold. That in all its honesty. Truth of another, in its most brutal and beautiful form.

And then it wakes up.

The cold nips it, or the sound of your breath interrupts it, or the sheer fact of your presence annoys it. The beautiful that was just before is lost in the eyes that reflect you. Somehow, through the bloodshot and the terror, the pain and all the possibilities of annihilation, you see your reflection this something’s eyes.

Oh shit.

And you wish it was sleeping. So beautiful and lovely as before. When you could handle it. When you were so strong, before it took you whole, before it wrapped you in its arms and dug it’s claws throguh your ribcage, you though you were quiet enough, you thought, you thought, you thought.

And you either let it take you for all that it is, or you let it tear you piece by piece in an agonizing display of torment. Trusting that somewhere, someone is in the same dark room with the same vicious creature. But your eyes are the eyes they’re looking at.

If they, too, are in love.

And that’s why unrequited love hurts so much. Because it always feels better knowing we have some kind of comradery. That we’re both going through this mess, facing these things, but we’re doing it together, and you’re suffering my demons as I’m suffering yours. And I’m satiated in the fact that this is our journey, and we’ll come out together on the other side. Our something’s will be sleeping together, someday. And we’ll be able to look on them both.

It’s usually not the case.

Someone is stuck in the claws of their previous, or still pulling the blanket from the one they never got, or still looking for a something that sleeps even more beautifully, or not as beautiful since the more beauty it sleeps with the more vicious it will be. As time goes on, the likely hood of someone dealing with other people’s something’s is far more great. You cant be dealing with a something and expect them to be dealing with yours. We dont have that kind of complement anymore.

So I’m with my something.

I battle it every day. It reflects my imperfections in its bloodshot and needy eyes. It keeps me pinned to my comfort, and whispers bad things about the world around me. It screams when it doesn’t get what it wants and all I want it to do is go to sleep. I want to look at it in its honesty and be able to say I’ve tamed her. She is my love, and I got through it, and now she sleeps, so I kiss her good morning and I kiss her goodnight, and she smiles every time.

But it won’t go to sleep.

And sometimes I think about killing it. Wrapping this something in that blanket and smothering it to death. Because I’m tired, and I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to look at myself so hard. I don’t want to fight all these patterns I’ve made, all these things that need adjusting and improving. I want to silently stare at this blanket with its rhythmic synchronicity. Unknowing to the dreams taking place underneath it, unknowing to its potential and to its horror. A silent bliss, where everything that could be is safely thought within my head and everything is calm and sweet.

But I won’t do that.

I wake up every day to this something Im trying to fall in love with. I try to absolve all the other something’s that have their teeth in me. Every fault of mine is a battle she wages. She screams and cries at my imbecility, at my lack of motivation, at my romanticism I let run away with me. She pushes me against the wall and screams “Why are you not good enough?” and all I can do is cry.

She says, “I know you.”

And that’s the scariest part. She knows my capabilities, the things that are possible for me, my dreams and all I desire. And she believes in me. And she’ll never let go. And I love her. For all that she is, in her chaos, in her sleep, when she dreams, and when she screams.