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Norwich University's Literary and Arts Journal

The Chameleon

The Chameleon
The Chameleon

Do I Really Love Him

“Do I really love him?” I found myself asking every single day. Love, love, love. How does one truly determine if they love someone? I like caramel ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s. I enjoy smoking cigarettes while drinking cheap alcohol at my friend’s apartment. I love the scent of my English professor’s perfume. I think I like drinking coffee with my mom on early summer mornings while she reads the newspaper delivered by the neighbor’s kid. But that’s not the kind of love I’m contemplating.

Love is about giving yourself fully to another. It’s about finding time to be with them and fighting for any chance to spend even five more precious minutes together. And do they really love you back if they are perpetually preoccupied? Not just every once in a while but quite literally always. A l w a y s. Always somewhere else.

Then the realization sets in: It doesn’t matter. Your love will break you. It can happen at any moment. One blow, and you’re shattered. Two, and you can no longer pick yourself up. Three, and you’re broken so utterly that all you can do is whimper, lying curled in the corner of a room that now feels like a tomb.

Love will inevitably shake you so violently that you’ll loathe yourself and the entire world for an agonizingly long period. It will happen unexpectedly when you least anticipate it. No amount of preparation, inner strength, or supportive network can prevent you from being cast into absolute seclusion, your resolve drained, your fighting spirit vanished.

So why put on this whole circus with vows and promises that you’ll be together “forever”? No, you won’t be. This person who now swears eternal love to you will flee tomorrow to another, to someone whose heart isn’t already broken into pieces.

The harsh truth of love’s existence is that we give every part of ourselves without reservation to those who don’t deserve even a fraction. Afterward, we are broken, our hearts in ruins. And no one will bother mending them. No one. Once broken, it leaves a permanent, unbearable imprint.

You can no longer gaze warmly into someone’s eyes or smile freely upon chance meetings. Your thoughts will batter you mercilessly night after night, and memories will never disappear. They’ll always linger deep inside you, patiently waiting to resurface. Then while sitting in your English History class, that haunting feeling will descend upon you once more as you ask yourself, “Do I really love him?” Love’s haunting question plagues your splintered soul, the shattered fragments leaving you feeling permanently hollow.

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