The Art of Destruction
Please read this carefully, and analyze it. It's a PSA of sorts about young love and how powerful it can often prove to be.
He had invested all of his money in a proverbial Enron, and paid the heavy price. He knew he wasn't attractive, and knew he wasn't as tough or "bad-ass" as the other guys in his grade. He knew he wasn't really extraordinary in any of the typical ways. He thought that undying devotion and a genuine interest were all that was necessary for love. The result of his affections couldn't have been farther from where he had intended them to be. He elevated a woman up onto a pedestal that she could only manage to fall from. There was no way that any girl was as perfect as he believed she was, and it became an oppressive thought that she would never be able to live up to his expectations.
He hardly really knew her, after all. Of course he "knew" her, but he didn't really understand her inner machinations. Her name, he knew very well. Her friends, her favorite sports, her birthday. All of these things he could call to memory with a practiced ease, as he had spent months and months thinking about how great it would be celebrating these things with her, if only they would just finally get together. It was a destructive pattern, as the woman he had created in his mind was truly detached and unlike the woman he superimposed that creation upon. It was like waiting for years and years for the Avatar movie to come out, only to realize that it was just a redo of Dances with Wolves, or Pocahontas.
Of course, none of that phased him. He shrugged off all of her imperfections, all of her undesirable attributes were mere things that gave her her character. They weren't important to him. He asked her to the homecoming dance, getting a dismissive answer. To him, the "not really" was actually a "keep trying!" And keep trying he did. He smothered her in praise and gifts, not realizing that she was too soft to let him down to the cold, icy bottom. Instead she did him a favor, tried letting him down slowly into the pool of water, hoping that he would float at the top. She transferred out of the only class they had together, and yet he still didn't think that it was any cause for alarm. No, surely it was just so she could take a different class. It had to be, or else... Or else it meant that he had scared her off. And that just couldn't be possible at all! They were meant for each other, she was "the one!"
She finally recognized that he was running in circles, coming up with excuse after excuse to explain why she was always busy when he asked her on dates. She told him, straight up, that the two of them would never work, and she wasn't interested in him as anything more than a friend. He put on a tough face, pretended he knew that all along. But inside, he was beginning to freeze over from a mighty frost in his deepest recesses. The more he thought about it, the more his life became bland. The things he once enjoyed became menial tasks that were pointless. His friends were too happy, they didn't deserve happiness while he drowned in deep sorrow! His world was coming apart at the seams, and nobody knew his particular brand of agony. He recoiled into himself, going from day to day as a mere shell of his former person, a pathetic wreck of a human being, seeking companionship.
And companionship it did find, but it was a double edged sword. He knew that he could find somebody else as perfect as his previous love, somebody who would actually love him, and somebody whom he could love back. The first girl to take an interest in him had no idea what a terrible danger she was uncovering. She saw only the handsome young man whose quiet ways held an intriguing mystery in their every state. He saw his previous affection, and expected his relationship with her to be identical to the Utopian place he had built for himself in his own mind. She gave him her all, she took care of him and nurtured him, listened to his every word and hung on his every decision. She was deeply in love with the perfect man.
But it all changed. He realized that this was not the person he thought it was. Her mannerisms were different, her subtle behaviors were not the same as his First. She wasn't the same, didn't ignite him with the same nausea every time she walked into the same room as him. He became increasingly snappy, more angry. He felt trapped in this relationship, that if he left it he would be relegated to the furthest corners of life, alone forever. He became abusive. He tried to change this new girl into his First, tried to correct her. Tried, and failed. She lost the man she had fallen for, and he expected things from her that weren't natural to her beliefs and behavior. He left her, hoping to find another woman that would excite him more than she.
Countless women denied him, and each time her returned to the girl from before, and each time she took him back. She knew he wasn't pleased, but she knew that the person she loved was deep inside. He, however, willed his First to be deep inside her, but he could never manage to work it out. And he would leave her, tear out her heart and stomp it into a thousand pieces on the ground without a care for the world. After long enough, he was sure that he could manage to dig and tear his First out of this woman. He had to.
But he never could, because the First never truly existed, and especially not in the fragile emotions of this girl that he kept on slamming into the rocky shoreline time after time. He never saw the damage he was causing because his sights were set on one woman. His woman. But she never came. At long last, the girl wouldn't take him back any more. She had had enough, she knew that he was lethal and volatile and couldn't be trusted at all. She finally had enough common sense to jump ship before it sank and killed everybody aboard.
Once she stopped taking him back, he looked across the battlefield and saw the mighty collateral damage that had taken place. This poor girl, the one he had destroyed, had turned to alcohol. Had turned to drugs. Had attempted suicide, had cut herself. Before, these things were just her behavior. Now, though, he saw the true cause of these things. The true cause was him. He was a monster, he didn't deserve to live at all. He owed her more than he could ever give back, he had taken her dreams and hopes and crushed them just as his had been crushed by his First. Yet, it didn't help him any. He was no better off now than he was before, in fact, he was far worse off. He was overcome with guilt, but he had alienated everybody that he could possibly apologize to or give reparations to. Once again, he found himself trapped.
But this time, he had finally learned something with enough trial and error. Now, he wasn't going to take advantage of any woman. He wasn't going to chase mindlessly after a woman that he had created, and he most certainly wasn't going to let one get him as low as he had gone.
He. Had. Learned.
Please think before acting, you have incredibly damaging power within you no matter how hard it is to believe. Every person deserves love, but love for who they are. Not for somebody you think they are. If this has been well-written or helpful in any way, feel free to comment or message me about it. I write this as an expression of my own life learnings, and also as a hopeful beacon for people struggling to come to terms with their own actions. I know I struggled with it, and I know lots of other people do as well. Have a nice day, and remember this if it helped you in any way.