Unrequited Love

What is unrequited love? If I had to describe it in one word, I’d call it a band. It's the drumbeat of a heart beating to the rhythm of its heartstrings being played with, complete with words that no one actually listens to. Why doesn't he hear me? Why does he hear words that she isn't even saying?! Whether from the sun looking down on me or her very presence causing my blood to boil, I find myself incredibly hot-headed on this summer Sunday afternoon. She always comes up at the worst of times.

She appears and all of my insecurities come to light. What's so great about her? It must be the blinding shine radiating from her pearly whites. Maybe it’s her glowing, tanned skin causing everyone to pale in comparison. It might be the glare of her eyes, burning a hole in the back of his head until he turns from me to focus on her. I’ll bet it's the red-hot lipstick etching the outline of her pretty, perfectly shaped lips. It could be her dazzling hairdo, with the way her hypnotizing curls set so well across her shoulder tops. Whatever the reason, she always seems to be the center of attention.

Isn't that nice? All she needs to do is look hot, and she gets all the attention. She is merely an object to be beheld. Who does she think she is, some sort of star? Whereas I have a personality, she simply has personification. She doesn't feel the need to see everything that he does so that she can say she really knows him. She doesn't feel the need to stress out over whether something she hears will prove that she embarrassed herself beyond recovery in his eyes. She doesn't feel the need to worry about incorporating well-structured bits of entertainment into the monotony of small talk to have something worth speaking about, and something he deserves to listen to. She is just attractive. See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil. She's a thing– a wretched thing. I hate her. She does not even deserve to be referred to with such pronouns as if she is a real person, because she is not.

It is a wretched thing. I’m sure once it moves away, it will just become another burn-out. How self-centered can something be? Does it not notice my crescent smile fade in the distance when it shows up? Does it not notice how hot-tempered I feel? My body heat literally rises whenever she comes near me. Does it not notice the crater in my heart widen when she interrupts me to speak to him? Every nervous drop of sweat that she pushes out of him as she nears, every smile that she plasters onto his face, every laugh that she pulls from his diaphragm, every longing gaze she leaves melded on his face as she sets out into the distance darkens my heart. I hate it. What exactly does it think it is? Why doesn't he look at me like that? Why doesn't he laugh that much when I tell a joke? Am I not interesting enough for him? The only thing that matches the drops of nervous sweat down his neck are the drops from the clouds over my head. She doesn't deserve him.

Did you know? Supposedly, the universe is expanding endlessly. How can something so unimaginably omnipresent manage to keep growing? I could never understand it. The very concept that something seemingly infinite can keep developing nonstop seemed like a foreign concept to me. Then I thought about how tiny I am by comparison: 5’4, 123 pounds. I virtually take up no space here at all. Maybe no one would even notice if I disappear. My thoughts could never conceptualize the sheer magnitude of such a massive space, but just then I realized that there is one thing even more impressive. There is something within me that takes up no physical space whatsoever, yet still manages to encompass my entire being and keep growing all the same. It is the hatred that I have towards myself. I hate myself endlessly. Eventually, that hatred was turned into absolute emptiness.

“I do not care.” exuded the total lack of emotion radiating from the tiny young lady as her ears were filled with the gossip of two similarly young women gossiping about something as they held up the checkout line she was in. The edges of her equally colorless hair stopped ever so slightly above the ground beneath her, as the impatience continued stirring behind her empty gaze. It’s true: she does not care. That is not to say that she does not care about anyone or anything. There are two things that she does care about: herself and her quality of life.

Ironically, the only other people she feels anything for are those who brazenly declare that they don’t care about someone. They’ll put on a whole show about how people and their opinions don’t matter to them. It nauseates her. What she feels in those moments would be self-diagnosed as a second-hand embarrassment of sorts, but a bit more akin to a sickness. She believes it’s because they are lovesick. She cynically refers to it as a common case of cardiophilopathy. “Genuine lack of care does not result in a person passionately trying to convince any and everyone that the person could not care less. To not care is simply absence.” is what she would say if she had to answer. As you can see, she isn’t very friendly.

Raven wasn’t known for an outgoing nature, a deeply shy personality, or much of anything. Her jet-black hair, expressionless face, and absolute lack of empathy would be her most defining characteristics, but people do not even see that lurking within this girl. They simply see another girl. In that sense, they still see more than she does. Raven doesn’t see herself for who she really is. This is a girl lacking any and all self-awareness.

If love is blind, that explains why her eyesight is so amazing. If hate is a strong word, that explains why she avoids speaking. If love and hate are truly two sides of the same coin, that explains why she grew up incredibly poor. Now, what does a keen-eyed, antisocial, poor girl do? She studies those around her. She sees each of their thinly veiled little insecurities as they interact with one another. She can tell what their lives will amount to at the rate they’re going. She pays attention to what they communicate both purposely and incidentally, allowing her perfect insight into their personal lives, the personality traits of those that they must spend the most time with, and how the lives of those people will turn out as well. Each restless eye might be a sign that someone has left her anxiety largely unaddressed. Each runny nose may be the stench from a rotting corpse in the making of someone who doesn’t take good enough care of himself. Each running mouth may say that someone doesn’t get enough attention at home. She can’t help but notice it all, not because she cares about any of them, but because it is all so painfully obvious to someone who wants nothing other than to improve her quality of life. Noticing the issues of those around her to learn from and avoid them is a given. She feels nothing.

She is not a hero, nor is she a villain. She is simply an observer. From a bird’s eye view, she sees the world around her for what it is. She has the power to fix it. She has just as much power to rule it. She does no such thing. She simply continues watching the world spin out of control, pointlessly and endlessly. After the world orbited the sun about a dozen and a half times, the little bird finally saw something she couldn’t take her eyes of: the gaze of yet another observer.

“It doesn’t matter” filled the thought bubble above the head of the guy holding an apple in one hand and an orange in the other, deciding what would be lunch and what would be dinner. He wasn’t a man of many words anymore. If given any choice, he had none to offer at all. Beyond the grumbling in his stomach and the weight of his eyelids, he didn’t feel much lately.

What is emptiness? Is it the loneliness of piecing back together the shards of your broken heart abandoned by the culprit responsible? Is it the pain of your heart breaking piece by piece with every beat as you struggle to just move on? Is it the hate left in your heart where love once was? No, it’s not. It’s every empty space that they would typically fill. It’s every seat that they may have sat in beside yours if they never left; it’s every word that they might say to you if they ever come back; it’s every laugh that could have been filling the room right now if they were still here. As you work through the emotions, you begin reaching a heartbreaking conclusion.

You avoid it as long as you can, playing every possible scenario of a reunion in your head while ignoring the fact that you need to move on from unrequited love. You scream and you seethe and you weep, pouring your soul out until there is nothing left, but eventually you realize nothing has changed. No amount of hurting has helped you, because that’s not how wounds heal. There is simply nothing left to feel as time constantly does what you aren’t ever able to do: move on. There is a space in time where you know you’re supposed to pick yourself up, pull yourself together, and put yourself in a better place, but you don’t do it. You simply don’t do it. That space in time is what it is. That is emptiness.

If love is a losing game, that explains why he hasn’t been able to succeed in life, in any traditional sense. He didn’t need traditional success though. He already had everything he needed. If he gets really thirsty, there are a few ponds nearby. If his last bit of food runs out, there are enough rats and raccoons running around the area around his sleeping bag that he has some backup options. Finding an outlet to load the data of all his denied job applications could overheat his computer well enough to make it a makeshift heater, and all of his college rejection letters could keep a campfire burning all night if need be. Somehow, all he wanted was a heartwarming life. The two people were more similar than they realized.