Vulnerability

• Makayla Meek, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2019

I believe he is my person, and I love him even though he will never love me back. There is nothing even in it for me, but yet I still love him. All it is, is loving him, and that’s more than enough for me. He is one of the most beautiful people I have ever been fortunate enough to meet, and just knowing him is all it takes to love him. I don’t need anything in return. Being able to befriend his humour, intelligence, wisdom, depth, understanding, is what love is, and it's why I choose to love him so intently.
I fell in love the way you enter a house and realise that you’re finally home. The way he smiles, even if it’s not directed to me, makes warm hands wrap tightly around my body, filling me with warmth and whispering, ‘You’re safe’. I’m in love with his eyes. When I stare into them, I see galaxies upon galaxies, and pupils no longer exist. He makes me feel like everything is truly possible, even when I know some things aren’t.
When he looked at me, it was as if every ounce of breath was ripped from my lungs and tossed back into the starry midnight sky. When I see him, it's as if space and time become one. My universe begins and ends with him. I love him, always. But he could never love me.
Loving someone is one of the most vulnerable positions in which you can be. You can open your heart someone and your most desired wish is for them to love you back. It would be far easier for a woman opening her heart to a man and a man to open their hearts to women. Society accepts it as ‘normal’ and congratulates it. But how does a man open up his heart to a man who is clearly in love with woman and is rejected by the society. Love isn’t a feeling that you force upon yourself; it just happens. It is supposed to be beautiful and to be celebrated by, but one-sided love isn’t love. It is torture.
It’s waiting for something that will never happen, using every chance to make a wish and just hope. It’s looking at someone who doesn’t see you the same. It’s thinking of someone throughout the day and dreaming of them at night when you never cross their mind. Waiting for a call or a text and knowing that they are calling or texting someone else. It’s losing everything you own and feel just for a response and, instead, receiving indifference.
You are battling your emotions and your feelings. You are battling yourself. One-sided love is not love. It is heartbreak, self-destruction, and obsession. And yet I would still give up everything for him, because I love him and that’s what love is.
How do I tell a man I love him, when he could never love a man like me back?