Author's Note:
Hi! If you've been an early reader then you would know I had a different prologue. I realized that it didn't really make sense so I decided to change it! Hope you enjoy it.
• • •
Friedrich Nietzsche once said:
"Sometimes people don't want to hear the
truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed"
I understood those words from the beginning; everyone did. Everyone knew that the truth always hurts so we try and hide in fantasies for as long as we could. I understood the philosophy-or so I thought.
My fantasies consist of Shakespeare's romantic tragedies and marvelous sonnets. Midnight balls and waltz, tea, and dresses. Tear-jerking films and heartbreaking novels. My fantasies we're about love. I've always been fascinated by how it would feel like to hold someone dearly, have them as your partner. The idea of staying with someone and having them there every day. An infatuation of the idea that a lifetime of memories is out there waiting to be unraveled.
I loved the idea.
What a story would be to tell to find someone like so? Someone so beautiful and perfect that hurting seemed like an anomaly. It's quite a vision but perhaps one day it wouldn't be just a vision. Perhaps in days to come, it will be more than that-I thought so too.
You see, what I didn't understand then was the fact that fantasies are miles and miles from reality. I was desperate to find something so perfectly curated that my head hazed with confusion. I failed to understand that pain is a more prominent emotion more than anything.
It took me a man and a few others to realize that my expectations don't exist in any world. Because my expectations were of perfection; not love.
My idea if love was perfectly flawed that when things took a turn, I didn't know how to be. I didn't want to know the reality that I started denying it. I had thought that love meant a perfect, respectful, kind, and helpful man. I believed that love shouldn't be painful, it shouldn't be something worth working for.
I was stupid to think that.
Love is more than just the 4 am walks before sunrise.
Love is pain, pleasure, acceptance, loyalty, and-him.
I hadn't realized for so long that I was trapped in my own mind with no way out. I was so sure of myself with my high grades, middle-class family, and an excellent resume. I thought I had everything anyone could ever hope for. I thought.
That's the problem, all of this was just a thought. They weren't real.
Just because I was the perfect woman doesn't mean my happiness is guaranteed. It took me a while to learn that and it wasn't easy. After nights of pondering, nightly chills, and panic attacks I realized many things.
I realized that their expectations we're nothing to live by. Their opinions aren't instructions. Their manipulation isn't power. It took me 18 years to figure that out.
I was imperfect; that makes me human.
If it weren't from him then I would never have known all of this. My own family is willing to let me go just because I finally broke out of their control. If he hadn't been there then I would never have known it. I got so used to being on top that I never thought of how I got there in the first place.
But without him, then I wouldn't be hurting.
I would never have known the kind of man he is. He would never have had control over me. There wouldn't be scream matches every five seconds, broken cars, and library conversations. There wouldn't be traction in my life without him.
He and his soft Italian accent, sarcastic tone, and eccentric mind. Without him then I wouldn't be what I am now.
His pain became one with mine and we ride together. No painstaking risk is ever done without each other. He took my demons and made it his and I did the same to him. We were one, a broken piece of art pieced back together in different colors. We are chaos but we are real. Without each other then we never would've made it through tears and blood-red lips.
Without each other then we never would've made it so chaotically yet majestically here.
Without me, he wouldn't have been saved and without him, I would never have escaped.
And it makes me think:
Was the journey worth fighting for?