Dear love...

...I give up

1st August 2019

Dear love,

Seven year old me is wrong. That little boy could not have been more wrong. You aren't anything special.

I still remember writing that letter to you. How everything was okay. Life was life and the drama was low key. Do you wanna know why? Because at seven years old, you are still a mystery. An unattainable feeling until your teenage years, but something that was inevitably, well, good. Isn't it crazy how opinions change? How naivety is shed like skin and suddenly you're in need of rose coloured glasses? Every dream, every idea, every expectation, gone like the stars at dusk. No foreshadowing to warn you, no siren ringing across the land, no clouds lingering in the sky to reveal the brewing storm. No. It just strikes like lightening, with thunders warning following behind it as it's useless second best. You don't realise that's how it is, until suddenly it's you which it happens to. Or at least it was that case for me. One moment I was naive, the next I was aware of every stupid ideology this world holds. You're one of them- hell are you one of them Love. Just another concept used to destroy hearts and make a profit. A ridiculous concept of unreasonable expectations made for the brave, the beautiful and the dreamers. Your thousands of little 'cupids' with their bow and arrows, parading in hope of pushing two damaged hearts together. Strutting around like angels who hold the key to heaven. Well isn't that a stupid idea? Because you know what?Two broken halves will never make two wholes- they won't even make one- and one butchered heart can't keep two people alive. Instead they both begin the downward spiral, relying on the butchered organ that you stitched them. Leaching off their person until neither can live without the other. Neither realise it until years later, when the sorrows are inescapable and societies expectations of happy little families is hanging in the air like fog. And that's where you get your fun from isn't it? Destroying people. Not from giving them happiness. Never from giving them happiness, your just addicted to the aftermath.

Hell, Love, you're just a stupid concept people like to believe in. You're replaceable and impermanent, a lucky few actually keep you around for extended periods- but they're your little Cupid's aren't they? The ones that do your dirty work, so in reality that's only you repaying your debt. You have always known it, haven't you? Yet you still come into this land, strutting like your fairytales and happily ever afters truly exist. Well news flash! They don't Love, they truly don't. You're just something made for the dreamers who don't know any better. Something made for the brave who aren't afraid to break again. Something made for the beautiful, who can use their attractive exterior like a magnet- a magnet which inevitably destroys every single one of them. Hell love, you're just like the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and my good friend Father Christmas! Except unlike them you milk your charade like your life depends on it. You don't give up in adolescence, instead you up your game. Just know I've had enough of it.

I used to be one of those immature believers, waiting to be struck by your servant's arrow. But you know that don't you? You planted those lies in my head and tended to them like roses in a garden. I stopped to smell those roses thousands of times, admiring their well kept beauty. But every rose has its thorn, Love, and it's only taken me this long to realise that beneath your exterior lurks every one of your lies. You know what? All I wanted was to feel your potion bringing my body to life, the feeling of you pumping in my veins was going to be my new beginning. I thought I only had to wait for you to choose the girl for me, and I searched high and low to give you options, hoping you'd choose her quick. After that everything- and I mean everything- would fall in to place. You just had to have your stupid servant hit me with an arrow and my quest would be finally over and my life could begin. It's really quite simple Love. But now I know that arrows are weapons, sharpened to kill and potions are often poison, pumping through the veins for an inevitable, slow and painful death. So stupid of me to believe that arrows could heal me like needles, potions could complete me. But I know better now. I'm not that little boy anymore, with brown hair a ruffled mess on my head- a head far too big for my body. That little boy who sent you a letter telling you he couldn't wait for you. That little boy, who was stupid enough to believe you actually cared about him. Hell, that anyone actually cared about him. Maybe I should add happiness to the list of things you've destroyed for him. That list is growing longer with every word I write. Because rose coloured glasses are no longer making  my green eyes appear brown, and I can finally see the red flags they've been hiding- because they looked just like ordinary flags.

I'm a young man now, Love, and my hair is still a brown ruffled mess a top my head. But do you want to know what has changed? My head and body are proportionate. My body has grown into my head, and it's prepared to pilot this thing properly. You know what that means? Removing all the bullshit that fogs the path to adulthood. And you know what's first Love? You. It's time I give up on you.

Now. You're probably sitting in your throne, next to your good friends kindness, happiness and societal expectations. You can tell them to get the fuck out of my too actually now I think about it. Okay, so you're probably with them, wondering who I think I am, what world I think I am apart of. Well you know what? That's the thing! I don't live in a fairytale world like Cinderella and Snow White. My home isn't Narnia, or Oz. It's not Wonderland, or Neverland. Those fictional places where everything turns out just fine, where songs and you make everything okay. I don't every live in Hogwarts, Love, where among the all the devastation and war you can save a kid from Voldemort. You're not powerful where I live, in fact maybe you are, just in the same way as Voldemort instead of the freaking fairy god mother. Why? Love! You need to understand that I live in the real world. Not those lands that you succeed in. Here on earth everything works differently. That's why I'm just a boy sitting here, waiting for the last 17 years for his girl to appear. Okay not waiting, I've been searching with my eyes wide open hoping my quest will miraculously end. But every girl I meet is another lacking spark, the only chemistry I've ever seen that when an alkali is placed in water. But it's not going to happen is it? Im never going to find you am I? I'm sorry Love. I give up. I give up on you.

Mason Anderson