Cult Classic

by Sloane Crosley

As an adult, it’s hard to come down on a common institution to which you have no anecdotal access. It smacks of sour grapes. Boots had come along at a time when any reasonable person would’ve assumed I had an educated stance. If I wanted to take the political route, marriage was confinement, a raw deal. People hoped for transformation but too often got lobotomization. Idealization hardened into disappointment. But life is not lived in politics, it’s lived in days.

Not every relationship has to end with a stab wound.

Sometimes I would pull up an old exchange and feel myself fall backward as if through a tunnel, coming out the other end with emotions that were meant to be memories. It was like sticking a pebble in a wound, then getting frustrated the wound wasn’t healing faster.

Romance may be the world’s oldest cult. It hooks you when you’re vulnerable, holds your deepest fears as collateral, renames you something like ‘baby,’ brainwashes you, then makes you think that your soul will wither and die if you let go of a person who loved you. So you better have a good goddamn reason for saying ‘nah, not enough.’