Prologue: I feel the need to inform you that I wrote this in late 2002 and my views may have changed from this original sentiment and they may change back again. I've just gotten a couple emails on this piece that are sort of out-of-contect now in my life that is very much happier. As a matter of fact, six months after I wrote this, I freaked out and moved to Switzerland for a month, and I have been a lot cheerier since then.
Anyway, I leave this here unedited as an interesting essay but not necessarily a current part of my philosophy. Thank you.

Lock 'n Load!

There are two truths I know about love.
Love is a well-acted farce. And love is just a thing deluded people say.

I should have stuck to my instincts. After a bubbly fantasy childhood that I wish on every person in the world, something happened in my years of adolescence that made me the cynical and jaded individual you know and love.
Perhaps it was the realization that while my parents were the Poster Children (Parents?) of Perfect Parenting when I was young, they knew jack about raising an adolescent and soon became overprotective insult machines.
I'm not here to whine, but what I'm saying is that my sarcasm stems from a lot of situations not unlike that one marijuana commercial: I learned it from watching you, all right? I learned it from watching you!
Mix that in with being raised by situation comedies and old stand-up routines, and you have me. Sarcastic, Scathing, Caustic Me.

In high school, I found a best friend. Since first grade, I had always been best friends with Kameron, but at times I felt more like a side-kick. That ugly, nerdy friend you bring along to make yourself look better. Although she's proven herself to be there more times than not, I stumbled upon a gentleman who was more like myself than I was.
Ever since the day we sat two seats down from each other in that English class, we've had one of those freaky karma cosmic bond things where you say the same thing at the same time, then crack up laughing at the same time, then kind of look at each other like "Woah, wasn't that weird?" and then crack up laughing again, then simultaneously comment on how "Wow, that sort of thing happens all the time with us, doesn't it?"

I used to have profoundly deep conversations with this fellow about everything, but more often than not, it all returned to the topic of love.
While we were virtually the same person, he liked to take the idealistic side of arguments while I took (surprise!) the cynical, jaded side. The Idealist in me was bound and gagged in the corner of my psyche, because Cynicism is buff and knows how to kick some ass. I still knew it was there, but I refused to acknowledge it.

This made arguing very difficult and heated, because everything he used to say made so much sense, but I would not let myself accept it, and here is why.
Cynicism is something that you control completely. Idealism is fine, but in order for it to work, you have to rely on the good in others.
I can stand on a mountaintop and flip the world the finger, and when they say "fuck you", I'll smile, because I was right. If I stand up there, arms open Shawshank style, freely sharing my love for the world, I'll be damned if anyone runs up there and shares it right back.

So this Idealist used to fight with me nearly daily on the topic of Love, and nearly daily he was virtually brought to tears because of my ability to deny all that he held true.

For years, he tried to convince me that love is above all else. One love, one life, one blood. The song One by U2 was his anthem.
He said there was one person out there that completes you. Understands, fights, forgives, loves completely and unabashedly.
I would argue that no such thing exists. You can't trust people to love one thing. There's always something better, something seemingly more perfect.
If television and divorce rates and my low opinion of human nature has taught me anything, that is a load of crap. You see googly eyed people all the time, announcing how in love they were and arguing which one was Shmoopy, and then a week later they'd break up.
How idiotic! I never wanted to be these people. I hate looking like a hypocrite.

I had never been in love. Although I denounced it, I held the word "love" to the highest esteem. Since I didn't believe it existed, I wasn't about to inject it into common salutations like half the world does.

A couple pointless and frivolous relationships later where one dumped me for a girl of his own race and the other just up stopped talking to me altogether, my state of mind remained the same.
This gentleman I used to fight with would resurface and inform me that they simply weren't the right ones, and to keep looking, I'd find him.

And soon I did. I found a boy that was everything I wanted. Friendly, intelligent, a little shy, inexperienced, and above all had a sense of humor that was exactly what I was looking for. The kind where a something simple affects you so profoundly, like a duck walking across a bridge as you drive by, and you just break off into hysterical laughter.
I've always found odd things funny. At times my mother would come into my room to see what I'm laughing so hard about for an hour, only to find me in front of my mirror making faces at myself. Rightly so, people just usually write that off as me being clinically insane, but this boy understood it. He thought it was cute that I sometimes throw French Fries that have pointy ends away or that I could completely hate somebody just because of the way they spell their name. He called my neuroses quirky! What a guy.
I thought I was in love. I told him, and I told my old friend that I finally understood what love was. I was skipping through the pansies in slow motion, that's what my life was like.

He cho-cho-chose wrong.

And then... there's always an "and then"...
One day, I noticed something amiss. Afraid to chalk it all up to my never-ending paranoia that everything that is good and right in the world dies or is taken away, I was reluctant to inquire, but it kept eating at me. I said nothing and silently watched his composure. In casual conversation he stopped referring to future happenings as "We'll" and started saying "I'll". We always had a joke that our kids were going to be the pinnacle of hilarity, and we would make them compete weekly and whoever made us laugh the most wouldn't have to do their chores. One day he recounted this to a friend as what "his" kids would do, and it was like that single frame in Simpsons where you can actually see Ralph Wiggam's heart breaking in half.

I finally inquired, and I was right. Something was amiss. It just didn't feel right anymore. "I still love you, but I'm not IN love with you." "I just want to see if there's something else out there." All the bullshit rhetoric you hear every fucking day that makes you say to yourself, "all right, honestly, just tell me who you're sleeping with." I mean, I swear, people -- do you HONESTLY think you're the first guy to say "I love you, but I'm not IN love with you?" I've heard it from every guy who dumped me (well, except for the guy that stopped talking to me… Wait, maybe he died… Wait, replace "maybe" with "hopefully").

At any rate, from that day on, love was a fluke. "You were in love," they all said. I even returned to the gentleman from high school, and having grown up and had a few meaningful relationships of his own, he concurred. "Love means different things to different people in different situations. I've been in love with different women in different ways."

This was unacceptable. I finally swapped sides on the debate, and now so had he. This entity I had referred to as "love" is apparently something that can disappear for seemingly no reason after three years.

Fuck. That.
Love shouldn't have a time limit. It shouldn't have any limit. Hopefully, if everything I hold to be true IS, I wasn't really in love with that boy at all.
But if that wasn't it, what was it that I felt?

Now I'm a very confused girl. Ever have a close friend and observe their little cutesy rituals with their significant other? Then watch them break up, and see them do the same things to the next guy?
I had a friend who did this cute little Kiss Attack sort of thing, where she'd jump onto her boyfriend and kiss all around his face really fast. He really seemed to love it, but then they broke up, and the very next time I saw her with her new boyfriend, she did the same exact thing to him. He really seemed to love it, too. His expression was that of "Wow, this girl is so cute and spontaneous," and I wanted to say, "Buddy, it's just part of the Mandy Boyfriend Treatment."
All the things I used to do with this guy I thought I loved, little tickles on the back of his neck, holding on to his elbow skin, they used to have so much meaning when I did them to him, but I was shocked when I started dating another guy at how easy it was to do.
Wow, I thought. I can still convey this affectionate message without any sentiment attached! How fucking sick am I? I'm just miming through the actions.

I couldn't figure out which relationship it cheapened more. The one I was currently in, or the fact that I was recycling a sentiment that apparantly didn't mean enough in my previous relationship.

I kissed my boyfriend the other day and when he pulled away, I was just looking at him up close, and suddenly, I got the urge. I said to him: "I am going to bite your nose off." And then I proceeded to do so. After a few unsuccessful attempts and an assurance that he needs that to smell (with the obvious retort "You smell enough anyway!"), I was suddenly shot into a crazy flashback land where I used to try and bite The Other Guy's nose off. It was the most depressing thing in the world.

I then came to the realization that I must write up this manifesto and share my sentiments with the world. Yeah, I will probably say "I love you" to someone again. I will not mean it. Maybe I'll think I will, but I won't.

This is a sick outlook, and yes, it probably wasn't appropriate that when my current boyfriend informed me that he loved me a few days ago that I burst into laughter, fell out of the chair and rolled around on the floor. Perhaps I could have handled that better.

You may be reading this, and you may be thinking "This girl's just out of her gourd. I'm in love right now. Isn't that right, Shmoopy?"
You're not. I'm sorry. But you're really not.
She'll leave you. Or something better will come along for you and you'll be so torn and broken up about it, but you can't possibly let this opportunity pass you by. You'll think to yourself that you're a horrible person, but it just feels so right.

It will end.
On the off chance that it is something true and real and magical, one of you will die.
That's just how it works.
Sorry.