A LOVE STORY

I miss the days when I knew exactly what “I love you” meant. You loved my laugh, and my ridiculous attempts at jokes, and you hardly ever wanted to do anything other than lie with me in your bed for hours. You could never quite explain to me why you loved me, but I knew you did, simply by the look in your eyes whenever you said it—the flush of vulnerability and honesty you let show just in that moment of slipping those three words. If there ever was a point in my life where everything around me was as perfect as it would ever be, it would have been two summers ago, when we were both seventeen, and wanted nothing else but each other.

I’ve been a hopeless romantic my entire life—I always lived vicariously through type a couples on my favorite television shows (Dan and Serena forever), movies, and stories. I never knew if their mechanically produced “love” was something I would experience. I eventually did, but little did mainstream media do for me by refusing to represent the reality of love—what happens when you lose trust, what happens when you forgive, what happens when you don’t love yourself and what happens when people change.

I wasted two years of my life changing myself for the worse, rather than the better. I saw any and every female as a threat to the treasure that I had, instead of believing in myself as a young woman, as a partner, as a girlfriend and as an overall person—I always saw myself as lacking qualities that others had that weren’t even beneficial to the makeup of my character—and day by day, I can easily admit now, that I became nothing but for lack of a better word-- a bitch.

I’ve spent more days than I can count being angry and jealous over being happy—but I cannot remember for why and for what. I’ve spent over a year, going to bed every night, asking God why I couldn’t allow myself to “just be”—and why was I obsessed with the thoughts of those around me and allowed their opinions to affect me…and more importantly…affect us.

It’s a disease I still suffer to shake off, and it’s a disease that I don’t want any other young woman or even man, to ever again succumb to, or else you end up where I’ve been for the past six months—in between doing what makes you happy, only to let the outside sway you to believe otherwise.

It takes two to tango, though, and where I’ve made my mark of being a bitch, you met me halfway in being a tease.

It’s impossible to “move on” when one is pursuing you all that they can—acting as if nothing has changed but stagnant on the fact that the romantic label has diminished. Hugs, kisses, secret ass slaps and “dates “are strictly platonic, right? Especially when your reasoning for doing so is “Because I love you”.

Dozens of dates of trying to find my replacement are essential, especially when you confess to me during your turns of feeling down that no one makes you feel the same, and no one has been just right.

You don’t want to be “us” anymore but you insist that you’re never going to let me go emotionally—and never will until the day I decide I don’t want to take part in the game anymore.

And as much as I hate it all, I continue to play the game, because the game has been the only thing thus far that’s kept me going and kept me eager and looking forward to tomorrow. And looking back at it all, that’s probably why you’ve been doing it to me in the first place—we could always count on the other for entertainment.

Relationships are supposed to be easy, they say. It’s all about give and take, fairness, equality, respect and an overall state of “healthiness”. Whoever has been in a relationship of this sort, in my honest opinion, has never been truly in love.

Because when you’re in love, everything is messy and absolutely nothing is easy. Love, being something that encompasses so much of a human being on that large of an emotional level—is terrifying—making everyday a gamble, everyday a risk, and everyday a challenge. It’s not just about the bliss, but the passion inside—one becoming  the crazy bitch because they love you—they won’t leave you alone, because they don’t want to lose you.

We were never the normal couple. We were never the normal teenagers in love. And because of everything that’s happened, I don’t believe either of us will ever be able to be “normal” again—

And with whatever circumstances the future holds, being with you has taught me that I don’t want to be.

—by BIANCA BETANCOURT