He Loves Me Not

My name is Hannah. I am (almost) 22-years-old and I am an expert at unrequited love.

Yes, you heard me right. Here I am, on the Internet, proclaiming my status—lovelorn, Hannah Kay, but it's not all bad! I'm pretty sure if you've clicked on this post you probably feel the same way and if you feel the same way, maybe these thoughts can bring you some form of clarity.

You see, I like to think I've officially experienced the gamut of bad reactions to the whole "I really like you" conversation, but that's a story for another day (and a pretty funny one, I might add, because I am a mess).

The thing is, there is this big debate on whether unrequited love is a real thing or whether it is just ridiculous, and it's really funny because the concept seems to genuinely annoy people that disagree with it.

Matthew Hussey, a man I've come to really admire for who and what he is and does, has an entire video dedicated to how "Unrequited Love is Bullsh*t." If you watch the video, yes, what he says makes a lot of sense. He advocates that essentially unrequited love is masochism (which, let's be honest, it sort of is), that love must go both ways, and that the fact that a person isn't attracted to you should automatically make you not attracted to them—OH, but if it worked that way.

I hear his silence like a kick drum of maybe, a hint of forever, and I'm drowning in a sea of somedays because dammit I love him. No, I'm sorry, I like him a lot. How can you love someone that doesn't let you love them? That's what we've learned, right?

But there is what I believe is my favorite bit of Button Poetry—a piece of spoken word called "On Watching Someone You Love Love Someone Else" by Sierra Demulder. It describes a scenario that hits so close to home I cry nearly every time I watch it and I watch it a lot because you see unrequited love is a bit of masochism. It takes your soul and rips it and rips it, but you can't stop. It's disease-like that way and if you have it, I'm not sure it'll ever go away.

That's the scary part about it because I want that happily ever after even though I'm scared I'll never get it, and I rejected that poor guy I swiped right or left on—I don't even remember which. What I do remember is how I kept coming back for more and more and more, hoping one day I would stop loving the wrong guy who would never see me that way and start loving this guy that just might. What I do remember is the time he said, "I might be falling for you," and I changed the subject because I never stopped loving someone else.

Hmph, and the more I think of it, unrequited love is bullshit, but it doesn't just go away. Or at least I can't get it to go away. Instead, I stare at my phone and the wrong boy texts me, and I cry, and I am so stupid, so stupid because I am worth it, and you are too.

I'm beginning to think that our unrequited love is a form of hiding. I sometimes stare at his picture and I think that he is only a distraction. That he is the thing that I hold up so that I can't be happy because happiness burns out, and I am afraid of the aftermath of the blaze.

Maybe you are too.