“Garbage Trucks”
I believe in true love.
No, I do not have a reason to believe in it. However, I do have many reasons not to.
Homeschooled up until public high school, I was initially unaware of the rules to which I should follow socially, and got drawn into the wrong crowd right off the bat. A boy who was known as “the king of the skaters” took a liking to me. Claiming me as his girlfriend, his friends were now my friends, his skate park was my home, and his wishes were my command. I was innocent, naive, and in love. I didn’t even realize it when he raped me. Even now the pieces of that night remain vague in my mind. I did not know that this was actually possible, but I blocked it out. Brainwashed, I still dated him for a very long time, only realizing what had happened months after I had recovered from our break up.
I then dated many, many, many a man in the following years, only to find out that they didn’t like me as much as I liked them, or vice versa. Never was it completely mutual, although sometimes it seemed as if it was. I gave my virginity to a friend who said we’d get married. I believed him, he was so infatuated with me at the time that I never thought he could ever bare to leave me.
Well, it turns out he could and he did.
After this he ended up asking out the man I had cried over for a year prior to that who never loved me back (it was only later that I found out he was gay), and even though he was declined, this knowledge was traumatizing to me.
So here I am in the wreckage of all of my abusive love stories, unrequited love stories, and messed up love stories. They keep piling up, like mountains of garbage, slowly building thicker and thicker walls around me. But still—still—I believe in true love.
The truth is that I have no objective, evidentiary, concrete reason to believe in true love. All I have is reasons not to believe in it. I wish I had some real reason to believe in it, to know that it exists, but sadly I do not.
At least I know that if I ever do find true love, we’ll both be broken; we’ll both have our own piles of garbage surrounding us like castle walls, but we’ll have the power to break down those walls. We’ll be garbage trucks for each other, and it will be beautiful. I believe in true love, and I believe it will happen to me.
We all have reasons not to believe in true love, but that does not mean that we shouldn’t—it does not mean that we shouldn’t.
And don’t worry—when I do find true love I’ll let you know; so that you can believe in it too.