Love Is a Weapon

There’s something in this life that I wish I never had to find out the hard way. No one warned me about this, no one told me about this weapon. We talk about it like it’s nothing, we search for it like it’s our one destination, we long for it like an addiction. We make songs about it, we have a holiday for it, we encourage everyone to spread it everywhere. L O V and E are the letters we all know too well. But do we actually know love?

Love is all around us; at the tips of our fingers, spilling from our lips, and burning in our eyes. It’s across the street, asleep in your arms, or right by your side. It makes smiles bloom, tears dry, and hearts warm. Love forgives, love takes, and love gives. Love is a God, and we worship it. People try to understand love to such an extent, it’s just immeasurable. Most people think love is all good, that it can move mountains and fill oceans. I used to think of love as this amazing thing that can heal any wound, break any spell, and mend any heart. I wasn’t totally wrong, because it can heal you, but it can also break you.

People spend their whole life waiting to fall in love. I had never thought about the term, “falling in love” until I hit the very bottom. I didn’t realize that love would hold my whole heart in its ruthless grasp, tighten its grip, and threaten to kill me. I never knew I’d go from simple first dates and little jokes, to falling in love, to looking in someone’s eyes as if they were a crystal ball and seeing my whole entire future. I never thought falling in love had the ability to literally kill me. I let my heart pour itself off my lips and onto another’s, I let my walls break so far down they were turned into dust. I burned with passion and lit myself on fire. I opened up like a chest and my heart was the treasure, rewarding its victor. I melted myself into someone’s skin, trying to share the same space with them as if my whole life depended on it. I held out my heart on a platinum platter as if it was prepared just for them. I didn’t think love would ever hurt me, definitely not like this.

I never knew that I’d go from kissing and laughing with someone so important to me, to screaming my lungs out crying alone in a bathroom, gasping for any air my body would let in. Wishing they were dead. I never knew I would go from wanting to live every single moment in this love I had made for myself, to not wanting to live at all. I never knew I could hurt so much and not be in any physical pain. I never knew I’d have so many wounds and yet have none to show. Love ran through my veins and turned into venom, without it I feel empty. It became my drug I could not live without, my addiction, my poison. Love made sure it showed me how dangerous it can be. It’s a silent killer, a gun in that’s in the hands you thought you knew, that held you so many times. I said I’d take a bullet for you, but I never meant like this. I got on my knees and looked it right in the eyes. Love is a beautiful weapon, I just didn’t know it was pointed directly at me.