Don't Be In Love

by Liana Cincotti

I knew men like Dorian. They chased. Caught.

Running away had a bad reputation. But sometimes, it was the only option. It offered me solace. Privacy.

I couldn’t believe that society had been pushing this “women are confusing” agenda for so long when men like this existed. What a bunch of nonsense.

“It’s love. Everything about having love is embarrassing. You’re pining over someone who’s across the room hardly thinking of you. That’s incredibly embarrassing. But I also think there’s something romantic about being secretly fond of someone in a way that only you know.”

Embarrassing. She thinks I’m embarrassing. Maybe I was. Maybe that’s what happened to a person who kept going back to someone who didn’t love them.

Suddenly, the words were out. I was an open book, and my pages were losing ink.

There was something cruel about your parents deciding to bring you into the world, and just choosing not to be with you in it.

“People are only interested in you for as long as you’re new.”

I was surrounded by the ghosts of who should’ve been there every time. Sometimes the ghosts would fade to the back in a crowded room. Stick to the walls. Stretch their heads over shoulders. They were always there. Reminding me that no matter how many hours I worked, how many friends I made, how many job acceptances I got, I still wouldn’t have a scrapbook.

I packed my things like a squirrel in the winter to protect my life and my joy and prove to myself I had memories worth keeping, only to feel like they were all slipping away now.

Was I just a collection of the things no one wanted?

Love just gives the people close to you an excuse to inflict pain

without consequences.

Everything you do in that decade forms what’s to come. And it feels as if you’re never doing the right thing or making the right decision.

“The mistakes I regret the most are the ones I didn’t allow to happen. You have to make decisions with purpose, knowing that they may not be around forever.

It had been so long since my heart felt like this that I almost forgot it had the capacity to break.

“I know that you think you can’t fall in love, but you don’t get to make that decision. You can choose not to date and to keep yourself at arm’s length from others who love you, but you can’t choose not to fall.”

“You can’t just make me fall in love with you and take it all back,”

There was something beautiful about falling in love with the uncertainty of life.