Numbers

I spent sixteen to twenty eight in an odd state of cynicism. Or perhaps all cynicism is odd, since it is rooted in disappointment; from yearning for something that, if acquired, would turn cynic into poet.

From eight until the middle of sixteen romance was the only truth that mattered. So when it got a chance to reveal itself I allowed it as naturally as a wolf to the moon. Water to fish. Love was home, he was the one and together, the two of us would get there. It wasn't a dream or a fantasy. It was fact. There was no clearer math. It didn't even matter that he was short. That his teeth stuck out in clusters. That his heart was divided into multiples of which I was just a fraction. I'm often ashamed when I realise the math still doesn't add up. I believed it was possible to be everything to someone to whom I was only one thing.

Eventually, I tore up my poems and turned my back on romance. Love at first sight was an idea, again with the numbers.
But one is not singular, and so "The One" is a lie. There are infinite numbers between zero and one, Hazel Grace would tell you. So I chose a different path. I took a break from love to find life, and I found my second lesson: bite off more than you can chew, if you wish, just don't let anyone see you choke.

I never freely used the word love again. To be fair, I'd hardly used it even when I'd thought it. Cynicism birthed an updated truth; a caveat to the romance clause that decreed that love was the only number, that it lasted forever, that there could never be another. Everytime my heart broke, I was safe in the knowledge that it was certainly not love, and therefore it was certainly not a break. My heart was intact and I would do well to get over it and move on. There's nothing so unfortunate as to watch an egg roll unaided, by virtue of the winds or the rather more cruel fates, and tumble to the ground unaided. It wasn't my heart, it wasn't my heart, it wasn't my heart. I vowed that it would never happen again.

It happened again. And again. And again. I am still confused.

Am I not me, strong, fortified against weakness by the knowledge of strength? How could I fail when I knew all the answers? Why would I? Was I setting myself up to fail? Was all that knowledge the biggest tricksies every played? But why would I sabotage myself?

And then, right when I thought everything I knew was nothing at all, I found the love.

It's a funny thing. It's a funny thing to admit that you love someone. It's a funny thing to find out yourself that you loved them - from them themselves. It was the oddest thing I had ever experienced, to hear him tell me how he thought I felt, and to hear myself falter in response. Later, when I logged off, I didn't feel anything at all. There was an emptiness where my feelings should have been. It quickly filled up with tears.

"What did you think would happen?"

"I hoped you’d be the one."

But there are many ones. Many bits of one. They all have names, now that I stopped being so scared to let them go. And these many bits took up fractions of my one, the only real one that isn't a lie: the me that I am.
The ones I wanted to love, the one I loved, the one that loved me and the others in-between had hollowed me out in unnoticeable places and wedged themselves into my whole, and then they'd sauntered off into their sunsets, emptiness piercing through me in holes I hadn't ever known to stopper. All exposed. All revealing themselves to me now, war torn survivor smiling for the cameras. Cheese.

I wonder, if I'd been less eager to fight. Less angry. Less guarded. Less fortified. Might I not also have been less breakable. Might I not also have been more one.

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