Forever lasted 8 months

Funny, I find it harder to fall in love now compared to, say, when I was 18.

And this is not to say that I’d been in a lot of relationships.

Not that I wish to be in many relationships, anyway.

You know what I mean.

So, yeah.

It’s even funnier that when I do fall in love, it’s so hard to just…tell him I love him.

Oh, what is so hard about saying I love you to someone I actually love, you ask.

Well, everything.

Everything about it is difficult.

All the what ifs.

What if he didn’t love me back?

What if he just felt obliged to tell me he loved me, too, just because I said it first?

What if he didn’t love me?

Those darned what ifs.

Or you could turn it the other way around, and say, what if I’m just putting too much rubbish in my head?

Fair enough, I do.

But you see, when there’s a lot of hurt inside, you wonder if you’d ever heal. You wonder, if that person you see in front of you, that same person you love, would ever hurt you like that other person did. You wonder if you’d have to go through that same healing-but-never-getting-there process will be longer this time.

Maybe you’d never wondered. But I did, and still do.

So people fall in and out of love all the time. So they walk in to your life and make you happy, maybe for a while, maybe for a lifetime.

It’s always a risk.

And it gets harder to say the I love yous each time.

Some people are lucky, others not so. Some find that one person that they spend the rest of their lives with earlier than others. Some spend half their lives knocking on all the wrong doors.

Don’t hold back, they say. Dance like no one’s watching and love like you’d never been hurt.

I would like to. Only it’s slightly more difficult each time to stand up when they leave.

And the thought of pulling myself up again each time is…highly unappealing.

Selfish, but who doesn’t want to be happy forever?

Like how you’d said you’d love him/her forever.

Forever is a long, long time.

Cheesy, but I believe in forever.

And I believe in marriage, and till death do us part.

I’m traditional in that way.

If you tell me forever, what makes you think you can end forever next month when you decide to just walk away?

Did you not mean forever forever? Did you mean forever only until me and you ends?

Somehow, I’ve always ended up feeling cheated when I find out that the forever you meant is like the way I’d been in love with the Azzurri forever. You know, that unobtainable dream. Almost non-existent.

So why do I never tell any of you that I’ll love you forever?

Because I know it isn’t true. Because forever ends the day you say goodbye. Because I don’t want to make promises that I can’t keep. Because you and I both know forever is a lie.

When I was 18, I fell in love for the first time, with this guy who is 5 years my senior. And he drew me a picture of the both of us, walking hand in hand into sunset, into eternity, with many grandchildren in tow.

When he held my hand and I blushed like a little girl, he’d told me to get used to it, because he’d hold my hand 10, 20 years from now, up till the day he lives to be 70. He told me that with a name like mine, he’d found that piece of heaven on earth that he’d been searching for, that inexplicable happiness that only two people can share.

Oh, the joys of young love, you say. Those promises and dreams young people conjure out of thin air.

Of course, it had been fun while it lasted. Only while it lasted.

Till the day when things started to fall apart and forever didn’t mean anything anymore.