A Short History of Nearly Nothing

Why is it that romantic love is valued so much more than platonic/’friendship’ love?

Don’t give me that “lol it’s biology” bull shit, either. Why are people “just friends” rather than friends? Why is romantic love automatically granted so much more weight and importance? Why do characters in films seem to so rarely have a circle as close friends AS WELL as a romantic interest? And if they do, why do are they automatically side lined the instant a potential lover comes into the picture?

I know we have instincts, desires, drives telling us to procreate and start a family, but it bothers me so much that society keeps sending out this message that finding love is the key to happiness. Fuck that shit. That’s something else I hate about all this “friend zoned” nonsense. So you have feelings for someone and they don’t return them. That sucks, I get it, I’ve been there (heaven forbid! It doesn’t only happen to men!). But didn’t you have feelings for this person because they were cool/interesting/into the same kinds of things as you are? Wouldn’t you be absolutely thrilled to have them as a friend if you weren’t attracted to them? Isn’t it ultimately better, considering that now you’re much more certain to keep them in your life and avoid hating them one day down the life? Kissing, sex, holding hands, the unique brand of intimacy romantic relationships grant us - they’re all really lovely. But the connections we form with friends over the years are too, and they involve far less risk and sacrifice. I can’t really imagine any boy/man meaning as much to me as my oldest, closest friend.

I don’t know. I’m tired and not articulating myself properly. Something along these lines is brewing in my head as a story of some description. Hopefully it’ll eventually surface and let me figure out what I’m trying to say.

Love, AKA those ornate little ships inside wine bottles

inspired by this, this, and everyone I know. 

Your words are intoxicating. Each sentence is a shot and I think that if I knew you, I’d love you and we’d never grow old together. 
I’m drunk, though, so never mind me.
(Don’t listen to her! She’s a liar. The words of a drunk woman hide in her mind every second she’s sober)
Don’t mind me.

I sober myself up with a reminder that love is a part of our biology, something built into our systems so that we want to fuck each other before fucking each other over. It’s the continuation of the species. That’s all love is. That’s what I slap the romanticist who lives some where inside me in the face with whenever she gets too loud, too sentimental.
I’ll watch Amelie and let her run amok for 2 hours and she’ll take over, saying things I don’t mean while we both fight off sleep and then I’ll hit her. Fucking knock her down with cold, sterile facts, and I’ll laugh bitterly while she wipes blood from the cuts on her dry, cracked lips. 

“That’s what you get for making me miss the greatest mistake of my life, you silly little whore,” I’ll whisper, before rolling over and surrendering to tiredness. As long as I beat her into submission before then, it’s okay. 

But now I’m thinking. Future and past and that irritating present combine into some other time frame that won’t slide into any definition. 
The first time a boy told me he loved me.
The arguments people present in favour of/against love and its existence.
The way I still believe in it in spite of everything I’ve just said. Not “true love”, none of that  ”the one” bull shit. But on some stupid, pathetic level, there’s something that tells me all those sweet love songs are based on truth. Josh Pyke wouldn’t lie to me, would he? 

I remember a conversation I had with this girl, once, where she said she loves everyone. Now, I think she’s an incredible person for a number of reasons but… If you love everyone, then doesn’t it mean nothing? Surely. She wasn’t making any distinctions, but there’s got to be a few. I’m not just talking romantic love, here, I’m talking about anything and everything. Friendship, family, characters like Charlie in Perks of Being A Wallflower who you get so attached to that you love them like the closest friend you’ve ever had. It feels like there’s something reaching out of your chest, everything is warm and comfortable and it is a physical feeling, just like all strong emotions are. The reaching sensation wants to turn into an embrace, an expression of gratitude that the person is even alive. Their mannerisms or ways of speaking or perspectives that are so much a part of themselves that you can’t help but smile quietly, even if they mean nothing to anyone else. 

I’m still not talking about romantic love because I don’t know what that feels like. I think it might destroy me. I want it to, just so I know how it feels. No one is ever able to adequately explain the feeling of being in love. I ask friends who say they’ve been in love what it feels like, but they can’t put it into words. I’m not sure if that’s proof that it’s real or proof that it’s the collective naive hallucination of the human race. Biology mistaken for something more profound. We are the unwitting slaves of our biology in this respect. 

Say it aloud, see if you’re lying. I know I am. Every word I’ve written is a lie. The words write me. They are more than me. And I still feel something for everyone I’ve ever known. If you know me or love me in any way, we own each other. Only a person completely unloved and unknown is whole. Or empty. Whole, empty, what’s the fucking difference? 

And then there’s sex, that other complex aspect that I can’t for the life of me figure out. Biology, mostly, again. The human instinct to survive. We’ve tied it in with love and now it means so much more even if you tell yourself it doesn’t. It doesn’t, of course, it means absolutely nothing, but do you think those silly little feelings and whores inside your head are going to listen to logic? Never. So we’re all subject to these logical fallacies. 

And 15 year olds will go out on dates and tell the wold how in love they are and I’ll laugh at how unavoidable it all is. Then in 40 years time when they’re divorced and lonely and crushed beyond repair, they’ll go out on more dates. They’ll settle. We’ll all settle for less because we’e afraid of dying alone, dying unloved. You are giving yourself away and I’m deathly afraid of all of you. I’m afraid of dying as a part of some one else. I don’t think anything terrifies me quite as much as love. Doesn’t it scare the shit out of you as well? Oh, be afraid. Be so afraid that you can’t breathe. Have a panic attack every time some one holds your hand and a nervous break down every time you kiss some one. Keep a gun with two bullets close by in case of emergency. Use only if you feel yourself falling into a fate far worse than death. 

And it all comes back to words. Words said by a stranger who says nothing about his identity and posts only his glorious words. He is more than a person, and so, he is safer to love. 
And I’ll keep taking in every sentence like a mouthful, finishing with another drunken slur.

Thank hell I don’t know you, ‘cause if I did then we would love, and we’d hold ourselves back from age. 
But if you knew how it worked, you’d have to grow old.