Ah but don’t we all long for the days when we were in love? And don’t we all do anyway that which will kill us in the end?

On Love, in honor of this bloody holiday. Cheers, everyone! Get drunk, be merry, reminisce!
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If it’s my destiny to be run over by a car tomorrow like I almost was on my way home today, so be it. I’ve lived, and having known what it felt like to cling to life in the depths of sickness, I’ve tried to live well. Maybe I vowed to myself that it would never get that bad again. Maybe it’s to take vengeance on my father, to show him that I’m better than he is. Or maybe it’s for myself, to finally prove that I can turn something fucked up into a beautiful life. But somedays, I still feel like a dying rose.

I’ve loved twice. I wasn’t in love with the first man I had sex with--or even the second or the third. But when I fell in love a little down the line, along the men I have blacklisted on my “rap sheet” (all men are bastards anyway, why can’t I have sex like a man?), he was my number 5, our favorite number, the number embodying chaos and discord. And I was his first. It’s like a bad romance novel and I’m Hester Prynn. While admitting the former might make me a whore to a devout Roman Catholic, I preferred to feel comfortable with myself and place myself in the television character Felicity’s shoes, in an episode of, say, Sex in Santa Cruz.

When love is reciprocated, we as humans come alive . . . Only to die. But we all love the ride, and it’s inevitable that we fall because that which goes up, must come down, whether it’s aging penises or dads on antidepressants.

The night I felt deep love for him he was holding my head over his metallic trash can and I was sobbing, throwing up my intestines and pure alcohol. The truth came flying out of my mouth. “Ohh, J. I LOVE you!!” Sob, sob, and then I was sick again. “I love you, too” he said quietly, nervously, concerned about me, patting my back the way my mom would. It was wonderful and terrible, and nightmare and perfect bliss. Women long to hear those words first. But I was drunk off my ass for the first time in my life, and the horror and drama I had created in that private dorm room amidst all my tears and confusion was what both my heart and stomach felt for that instant, and for the next hour, the next year.

When he said it, I didn’t want to believe him. “How,” choking, eyes ablaze and face puffy, “how could you say you love me, like this?!” I commenced breaking down, tears flowing in tide pools, cesspools of salt water sea creatures would refuse to swim in, in utter devastation, still too drunk to be embarrassed, but overly suspicious.

“I’d been wanting to say it for awhile . . . I really have. You have to believe me, because I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t.” He didn’t always say the perfect things, and he didn’t always tell me the truth. Maybe I sensed that, even then, and held my reservations firm. Maybe he did love me. My moods change and when they do, so does my perspective on our relationship.

It might have been love, because nothing hurts as much as losing it.

And back then, I handled intense situations freshman year like a naïve drunk. I wanted to be free and imprisoned, possessed and the possessee, living death, alive and numb, one extreme to the next. Soaking up his love, but refusing to fully accept it. I had been hurt before, and his was that first unforgettable experience. I was in disbelief, I still am. And I am still in love with him. That kind of love doesn’t disappear, ever. It might fade, but it occupies a part of you that was whole and complete with that one person. The void they leave in you is filled by them and them alone . . .