The Truth About Love

by Maisie Myers

“The whole world isn’t rotten, but it’s like all you can see is the ugliness,”

“We must love one another or die.”

“The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.”

“Perhaps if you were more secure in your own individuality, you wouldn’t feel the need to tear down others for theirs.”

“So, is that the truth about love? That it lives even longer than the hearts who are touched by it?”

Because living with the monsters in my head already causes me enough pain without the addition of heartbreak. I’m already too damaged, too corrupted by the evil of clinical depression to expose myself to the danger of falling in love.

“Mental illness doesn’t make you a burden. Only a weak person would think that of you.”

All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.’”

This isn’t Taylor Swift’s twenty-first birthday, and I’m not Jake Gyllenhaal.

It might not have been love at first sight, but it was pretty damn close. It was more like the recognition of souls. Like my soul saw hers and knew instantly that it had found its home.

“You are part of my existence, part of myself.”

He could have given me a rock from the driveway of my house and still I’d have treasured it. Because it had come from him.

I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you Till China and Africa meet, And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street

Because, from this moment on, I will forever be the girl who is loved by Auden Wells. And I’ll never be the same again.

your heart knows when it’s found its home.

Because if I’ve learnt anything from this it’s that sometimes to truly love someone you have to let them go.

We’re strangers and soulmates and ghosts from our pasts. I’ve moved on from her, yet I’ve loved her every single day since she left.

Babe is a word men use when they forget the name of the girl they’re fucking. Babe isn’t the name you use to refer to the love of your life.

“It’s your fault that I couldn’t stop thinking about you enough to focus on my own girlfriend. It’s your fault that with every woman I’ve taken to bed since you left, it’s you that I’ve imagined beneath me. It’s your fault that I’m too hung up on my damn high school girlfriend to love Cara the way she wants me to. The way she deserves me to. All of it, every single second of the pain, misery and suffering I’ve faced over the last five years is because of you.”

“It doesn’t matter how much time passes between us, if you need me, I will always come for you.”

I was an addict. You were my drug and I couldn’t go cold turkey just because you’d decided to take yourself away from me. So, I’d torture myself every few weeks by calling Winter, if only to hear your name said out loud by someone who wasn’t me.

For so long I have read poetry that make bullshit claims like you are the master of your own destiny, but now is the first time I’m stopping to think that maybe it isn’t bullshit at all. Maybe I really am the captain of my soul.

“Pretty girl, listen to me. There is no one else in this world for me but you. It has always been you. And I will wait as long as you need me to until you show up on my doorstep and tell me its time. I’ll wait forever, baby. Forever.”

Mental illness isn’t a choice. No one wakes up one morning and chooses to be depressed. I certainly never wrote ‘depression’ on my Christmas wish list, but I was gifted it nonetheless. So why should I be ashamed to take a few prescribed pills if they help to keep the demons at bay? Especially if they help me live the life that I’m desperate for, if

It’s not my condition that was the problem, but how I dealt with it.

“Loving you was never the hard part, Summer-Raine. That’s always been as easy to me as breathing. It was never a choice or a decision I made. I fell in love with you because my heart didn’t know how to do anything else. Loving you was the only thing that ever made any sense to me. Please don’t think you were hard to love, baby, because that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“Don’t you dare let a guy be the reason you lose all the progress you’ve made. He may have been the motivation but you didn’t go for rehab just for him, did you? You went for you. Please don’t let this ruin you. You’re stronger than that, I know you are.”

“I think of you every day,” I find myself saying, though the words flow freely and without thought. “The moment I wake up until the moment I fall asleep, it’s you who plagues my every thought. I wonder what you’re doing, if you’re okay, if you’re with him.”

“I get lost in memories of your touch on my skin and the way you felt beneath my hands. I remember the sunsets and the poetry, the brightness of your smile and the way you used to look at me like I was the only good thing left in the world. You don’t look at me like that anymore. I even still carry that piece of lavender I had frozen into glass around in my wallet. I still take it out and touch it every time I watch the sun setting.”

“There’s a word for people like you, you know?” she says, her monotonous voice is flat and completely devoid of emotion. “What?” I raise an eyebrow in question. “Martyr.”

I hate him because despite everything, I still love him with every shattered shard of my soul.

When it comes, will it come without warning, Just as I’m picking my nose? Will it knock on my door in the morning, Or tread in the bus on my toes? Will it come like a change in the weather? Will its greeting be courteous or rough? Will it alter my life altogether? O tell me the truth about love.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good. Finally, after all this time, Auden Wells is saying goodbye.

“Baby, I wasn’t lying when I said I’d wait forever for you. I’d wait a thousand lifetimes if only to hold you in my arms one more time. I wouldn’t touch another woman for the rest of my days if it meant touching your skin again just once.

Because our souls are connected like puzzle pieces, like metals of the strongest magnetism. We have no choice but to be together.