So Happy Together

by Olivia Worley

But here I am, falling too fast and too hard for a delusion, a hazy outline of a man that I filled with details of my own making.

Love is a choice. Sometimes, it’s the wrong one. But that doesn’t change the simple fact: if something’s going to work, it’s because we decide that it will. If something fails, it’s because we let it.

It was there, staring at my reflection, that I started to wonder if I’d ever had a personality, or if I was just a muted reflection of all the ones I’d come into contact with, a wooden puppet dressing up as one of the real girls. Was that why I liked writing plays so much? Because I could put different opinions in different characters’ mouths without the burden of having to take an actual side?

It’s like I learned back then, locked up in my childhood bedroom: you have to pick the scab, make it hurt. It’s the only way you won’t forget the wound.

Isn’t that what I’ve been doing from the moment I saw my mother lying on the grass? Searching for the love she never had. I told myself I wouldn’t end up like her. I would choose love, bravely, but not that kind, the love that’s really possession. I would find safety in softness, in kindness, in men who see me as a person with goals and things to say—not as something to own, a delicate jewel locked away for safekeeping until they decide to smash it just because they can.