Loving/Unloving

All's fair in love and war, but neither can exist without the other. If you must love, then your heart must break. 

And when chaos becomes a bed of roses for unwritten love songs, even sweet melodies can become haunting ghosts, 

echoing down the hallway 

of a lonely heart.

"Everyone is lonely.” 

My younger brother once said, with the same airy nonchalance he applied with everything. 

But he was right, the heart needs to be fondled and touch is a human necessity‒ attraction is only a gift given to a few to help fill the giant hole at our core. Who (or what) we fill the void with, is a combination of (ill-)luck, time and a cliché human limitation to forces beyond our control.

And so, if you choose to love, you do so at your own peril or elation. 

The path is treacherous, but the alternative is to not love, and never know. 

It is true after all, that a life lived in wonder is a life not lived at all;

What kind of existence is that?

So, I fell in love.

But like I've done before a dozen times and half. 

The first time, "with someone in my class”, I told my older cousin, whom I'd always wanted to be like—with a serious shrug. 

The second time, three years later with a childhood crush; mad desire borne out of unexplored innocence. Somewhere in between, I found God in a poet that smelled like earth. One day after a long nap in my arms, she tells me, "Hope is a myth and everything that blooms must wilt.”

The third, fourth and fifth times, I felt something like love were a blur, every other name has rolled by my eyes like the trees on the side of the freeway.

Is it love when emotions are strummed like guitar strings with no harmony?

Or is it not?

Drugs, I've learnt, are not only limited to substances. Sometimes letting yourself indulge in a person can have the same effect. 

No matter how long or short the love lasts, the high is undeniable at its peak, and just as tormenting at its lowest. You’ll learn quickly the air-headedness you feel when a kiss is placed on your forehead can be replaced with bloodshot eyes and a heart beating fast enough to burst out of its cage of ribs. 

Memories that used to bring happy thoughts become a toxic whirlpool, spreading poison through your veins. And then one day, you catch yourself wishing the one you loved were never born. 

"Time is a flat circle.”

But there is nothing on the other side that won't defeat the purpose of this lifetime.

I admit, it is quite sad that the universe is designed that one thing cannot exist without taking something out of the other. 

But if we're meant to live out our days alone, the weight of living will crush us until our knees give way and everything else will crumble. 

Even when love damns our souls, we must remember the entire point of Russian Roulette is to reach the peak of fear then do it all over again. 

Either way, we live or die.