He looked painfully skeptical and said,

"Stop saying you love things so much"

"No one could ever love things like that"

"No one loves that much"

"No one feels that much"

"No one-

loves"

I wonder if he really believed that. I wonder if he said that from a place of pain and experience. I wonder if he spoke from a drought that seemed to be recurring in the eyes all around me. I wonder if he said it from a place of fear and distance. I wonder if he said it passingly and in disregard.

Although I really do doubt that last one.

I wonder

but I think I'll choose to believe that saying it was a purposeful choice-

That you love and have loved deeply enough that you know what love is.

That you have loved many things and have been hurt by many- hurt deeply enough that you had to fear the connections you cherished.

Because truly, who can really love it all?

Who can love being betrayed over and over

as the love you 'passingly' give through emotions

and considerations whose weight it hurts to consider-

as that love is rejected time and time again by people

who love just as much as you do-

as that love is rejected by the rejected,

those hurt by yet another time when loves existed

and were dashed.

As your tangible feelings are rejected by those

who seem to hurt others in order to avoid discovering

a new broken passion of their own.

And yet within this consideration comes the unavoidable and ultimately most painful fact of all: somewhere you do love. Otherwise, you wouldn't tell me not to care. You wouldn't feel anything about this- you wouldn't, and you couldn't.

At least, that's what I belive- what I have to believe.

It's what I'll choose to believe.

You love all of it and you've loved all of it.

You've felt that pain and that fear as love crept in

and memories reminded you of pain past and pain pending.

You too must refuse to allow a resurgence of sorrow to be cast upon something new and vibrant- something you love.

At least, that's what I'll choose to believe.

Because no one wants a love to be dashed simply because they let themselves love-

because they opened up to the world and its stupid, cyclical, sadistic whims.

So why love?

Why ever try.

I have to wonder that, even now as I speak, especially now as I unravel.

The thing is though-

I'm quite petty.

I refuse to hate loving because the world can't seem to love back.

I can't convince myself it won't ever love me back, no matter how much I tell myself and am shown time and time again.

I refuse to hate loving because love is illogical in of itself.

I maniacally chant to myself in a mantra of muddled musings-

'Since when was I, the world, or anyone, or anything for that matter-

Since when were they logical?

Since when did that matter?'

"If you love, you don't have to say it"

"You can keep it to yourself"

Maybe. But what if I told you I say it for myself.

What if I need to say it to remind myself that its okay-

that I have to say it, even.

What if I told you that I might not be able to go on

normally without saying it

Because it's what I have chosen to believe-

Chosen to believe in a concrete moment

Out of dreams and out of pure necessity.

Out of things as heavy and airy as emotion

and as transitive and passing as pure logic.

What if I told you that I speak so "vacuously"

Because it's what I have rooted myself upon

In a foolhardily rebellion to try to love-

to try to love and to be shunned and hurt-

all so that I can prove to myself that things can change.

All so that I can prove to myself that I can change.

What if I love in order to learn to love

in a mind that has long forgotten

and yet eternally remembers

some semblance of passion?

What if you were the same?

At the very least, that is what I have decided to believe.