The IDEA of love

In a moment of pain and unbroken silence, I turned towards you. Through text messages and virtual meetings, I thought you'd complete me. Perfection had never meant something so stark and real ever before. My physical incapacity, my emotional scars, my weaknesses- they vanished, or rather were forced to get away because every time I thought of a 'Maybe' that existed, it lit up my world. The slightest idea of the comfort of your shoulder when I succumb to my weaknesses seemed like the end of chaos and the beginning of beauty, the end of weaknesses and the beginning of a future. 

But eventually, when I knew my weaknesses were hard-wired into my brains, when I realised that the true enemy can never be fought until you fight it yourself, I knew romance was not my answer to it. Love was never the answer, it has always been a question.

What if?
Or just uncertainty hanging down the like a creeper from the roof.

Maybe.

This is what kept me going for a long time. I had layered my emotional scars with moments of happiness sent through an electronic signal, from someone, perhaps, non-existent in my real world. And eventually I was addicted to the idea of the person, rather than the person himself. I never noticed how he moved his fingers when he waved at someone, neither did I notice how his lips broke into a painful smile when he said goodbye. I never noticed if his answers were the same as mine or not. I just always wanted him to be there for me, regardless of whether I was there for him or not. And I guess he never asked for too much. But the thing about crushes we develop over the internet or a text message or a phone call, is that, they are never here to stay. They give you an idea of what you want, but never will they ever let that imagination of yours take shape into reality.
And all of us know the beauty of observing water take shape of the glass container, which it is poured in. It's completeness, it's transparency, it's existence, it's presence.

I have never needed people, until recently. I have them, but I still don't find the right words to express how I feel. Of how one man changed my idea of men, of how one incident pressed into my heart forever long, will change my idea of happiness. I could never find the words, or rather, I don't want to.

These people I've let look inside of me, the ones I trusted, the ones I've given keys to happiness, were just ideas of people. They weren't actually there. Most of the people I've loved have also been ideas of a great person. But the only people I love right now are those I really know, are those I really feel, are those who are equally inadequate, who are scarred, who are deeply hurt, who have pasts that haunt them, who are as human as me and who need me as much as I need them.

All of us spend too much time contemplating our What Ifs and counting our Maybes, that when someone walks across us with eyes as dreamy as ours, they'd escape our attention, because never would we know, how to trust another person, how to judge truth in people's eyes, and how to tell phony from real.

But really, it is high time we learn. Time we know whom to lend our hearts out to. Time we know who can keep us safe and who cannot. Time we know that this IDEA of love is not really love, it's just an illusion. An illusion that keeps us going, some times. But it is not what we are looking forward to. It's not IT. It's a maybe, a possibility. But we need to run wild, throw our phones away for a while, just bump into a stranger and maybe for the first time, feel the magic in a kiss we have always longed for.

Let me run, don't hold me back