Storypeople

has some sort of disease where you hallucinate & start to not believe in love, but after a year or two, or even sometimes ten or twenty, it cures itself & all that's left are a few little red spots that twinge & ache whenever you get too near someone else that has the disease & it's all you can do to stop from reaching out & holding them close

When I was 15, I adamantly believed that there was no such thing as true love. I proselytized this philosophy to my friends and even guys I dated. I said love starts out as mere infatuation and ends up, at best, as companionship. True love isn't this static stage that exists in perpetuity. If it existed at all, it's in a blink of a lifetime, an ephemeral moment, before deteriorating into banal reality or explosive arguments, infidelity or insecurities, old age and alzheimer's. Forever and always are sappy romantics' favorite verbal candy. I was cynical because of really screwed up family drama. The kind of deceptions and betrayals and violations you'd find in a sensational Lifetime tv movie. I didn't think the disease would ever go away. But for better and worse, life so often transcends our initial intentions and alters our plans.