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The Truth of the Matter Is…
 
Text Box: The three most powerful, empowering words any human being can speak, “I love you” were being said to me. In her eyes I could see she truly believed that she was truly in love with me, but as I replayed the last few months over in my mind the tangible proof that was needed to create love wasn’t available to her. Her heart and soul she served on a platter to me, and I chose at my discretion which emotion I would invest of myself on any given day. I never gave her that option, and yet she was ‘in love’ with me. Who or what was she exactly in love with is what I would try to find out. Her words hung in the air like a long cold breath on a winter’s night. It stayed there so long it turned to ice plummeting to the sidewalk, and shattering into a million tiny pieces just like her heart would be in a few minutes. Thinking that maybe for some unfathomable reason her words had escaped my ears even though the night itself had been silent and held its breath; she said the words again. This time I couldn’t avoid her eyes imploring me for a response to her declaration. I had known for a few weeks that this moment was coming. It was unavoidable and surreal as I watched it unfold. Somehow I had managed to steer clear of the topic, but now standing on her front porch, my date with the truth was inevitable. Nothing short of reciprocating her feelings would suffice. A hug or thank you would be an insufficient response to such a declaration of affection. “You say you love me,” I finally said to her, “what is about me that’s deserving of Text Box: your love? What have I done for you to fall in love with me?” My questions momentarily baffle her, and she squints to find my face through the maze of sunlight rays. A beam of sunlight illuminates her face, still so full of hope, but in a few minutes it would be replaced by tears and disenchantment with love. The person she is at this moment will be forever altered, and the ones who will try to claim her heart after me will come face to face with the new her forever changed by a man they will never know, save for the suffering because of his callous nature. She would now be hardened and wary of any man’s intention towards her, and simple gestures of affections once warmly received will be dissected and questioned at every turn. But for now, she was still that sweet, beautiful girl I had met and thought God had left one of his angels behind just for me. But even God’s Angels aren’t immune from tears and a broken heart. She finally finds her voice at first unsteady, but with each word gains it confidence and builds momentum. She reminds me of my words though vague that had resonated with her and filled her with hope that with each passing day we were building something for the future. The words she said sounded familiar as she quoted verbatim words I had used to ‘seduce’ her, she said. I explain that everything that crossed my lips were emotions I believed to be true, but as time passed I couldn’t sustain the conviction of my words. Our conversation was interrupted by a passing plane streakin Text Box: through the afternoon sky, and I watched it disappear into the clouds of gray and white. The three hundred or so people flying blindly thousands of feet above the ground have put their faith in something they don’t quite understand, but believe that they will arrive to their destination safely. Love is a lot like that. A rational thinking person would calculate the odds of love surviving for a lifetime, and would take refuge before letting love capture her heart. But love isn’t about being rational; it’s the absence of rational thinking that enables us to let love consume our hearts and minds. To approach love rationally would seemingly temper the fervor of its influence upon us. In mid-sentence she stops, looks at me with eyes of a woman who’s fallen in love against her better judgment. The waterworks start and I stand there unsure of how to react. Instinct tells me to comfort her, to reach out and somehow ease her pain-which isn’t possible at this moment. Instead, I opt for the safe route remaining unemotional and in her eyes uncaring of her pain. But as I stand there watching her shoulders heave up and down and her face contorted with pain; I know this scene will haunt me every time I think of her for the rest of my life. I will always know that because of my actions, an inability to connect with another human being who was only asking my love and had given hers freely without any demands of just rewards; I would change her perception of love and maybe of herself. That’s a power no one person should ever possess: the ability to shape another person’s perception. W Text Box: should all arrive at our mind’s destination in our own good time. She asks the question which has no answer, and should just be a rhetorical question. Why don’t you love me? It’s an unfair question to ask anyone. You can’t control love or direct it to the heart of your choosing. Love follows its own course, lives by its own rules and in the end when it leaves us disappointed it asks us to trust in its good judgment once again. I leave her with the only answer I have-my silence. Everything else that follows is pretty much cliché: her calling me every name in the book, more tears, my incessant apologizing, hoping my cell phone rings so I can haul ass, but in the end if I remove myself from the moment and view it as spectator, there is beauty in it. At the heart of any pain is passion, and to see passion in full bloom, though heart wrenching is a memory that will live with you the rest of your life. On your deathbed you will recall the one who broke your heart, the girl/guy that got away and the one that touched the soul of you. When you think of them you will smile because in that moment you will know that you were truly in love. Love, the happy and sad of it all is why we’re here. Continue to love, continue to believe that maybe one day when you turn the corner, love will be there smiling at you and you will embrace its smile. 8-31-05 8:17pm