Paytan Douglas

I wonder what would happen if I crawled off into the woods. Just went off, froze to death, maybe even had my carcass eaten by coyotes or coy dogs.

Would they find my body relatively soon? Or would it rot for a few days and make my skin turn blue as snow fell on top of it, like that one kid who went out to do chores that never came inside again.

Would they think it was an accident? The freezing to death part, not the coyotes picking at my carcass, they meant that. Who would mourn the most? Aside from my mother, of course, she would have the most trouble coming to terms with my sad, lonely death.

Would the cousins inevitably ruin my funeral like they ruin everything else? Could I make a stipulation before my death about how they weren’t invited to my funeral?

That would be nice. Really nice, actually. If I could ban people from my funeral just like any other important event.

Weddings are the worst. People get married knowing fifty percent of marriages don’t work out, idiotically thinking, “That won’t be us.”

I have a newsflash for people who attend weddings that get mushy-touchy-feely about getting married themselves: either your marriage will fall apart, or the one you’re attending will. Place your bets carefully, because one of those suckers won’t last until you die.

Why did heartbreak exist? Why is love so hard if the sole purpose of humans being created was to love each other? Did Adam and Eve love each other when they first screwed? Or was it more of an obligatory screw where God and the snake watched creepily from a tree to make sure they were actually doing it?

Screwing is much easier than loving.

Loving requires time, energy, effort, money, attention, and a shitload of other things that people shouldn’t waste their time on if it’s fifty percent likely that the love will end dramatically.

Screwing is much easier.

Screwing requires time, and energy, and that’s it. It’s how most animals work—there’s no love involved in mating. They screw with the sole purpose of recreating life. To keep the world spinning. There aren’t any complicated feelings involved. No heartache or divorce papers or feelings of regret. They just have their new offspring to take care of.

A fish isn’t required to look after the flounder it just impregnated. It can leave right after it finishes without even saying goodbye. It was there to impregnate the flounder, and whether the job was done or not, it’ll never know—since it’s too busy finding another fish to impregnate.

Love is a trap. Nothing more, nothing less.

Marriage is suicide in its most basic form.

And children are by no means glue or strings keeping either of those things together.

You think a human can continue to love someone they despise just because that other human gave them offspring? You thought wrong!

Kids are like a slow-acting poison. It may take five years or it may take thirty, but eventually, the children will successfully drain the life out of you and every drop of love you ever possessed.

The only thing worse than a child is someone in love. People in love are dangerous. They can do the most horrific things and then claim “it was out of love.”

Love is scary. Love is what your mother tells you will be your saving grace. That once you find it, everything else falls into place, even though you know your father is sleeping with his secretary—and your mother knows it, too. Love is the thing that crushes most people’s souls and does it in many different forms, some of which haven’t been invented yet.

Let’s go over the list of ways love can hurt someone, shall we?

Of course there’s unreciprocated love, the most painful of love since it makes you remember how insignificant you are to others. The kind of love that makes people commit suicide—or for others, murder, once they find out their “one and only” is sleeping with someone else.

Then of course there’s the love where you both used to love each other and fuck like rabbits, only to later realize you hate their fucking face or the way they snore or how their eyes are too far apart on their tiny heads. Then that love vanishes, you become disillusioned with the mate you couldn’t keep your hands off of twenty minutes earlier.

That love isn’t the worst, though.

The worst kind of love is when it’s completely reciprocated, and never said aloud that it’s reciprocated.

That is the kind of love that leaves you in your death bed wondering why they never loved you, why they never looked your way and gave you the time of day when in actuality they were always looking at you.

It’s the kind of love that burns the most.

The kind that makes you realize just how truly and utterly idiotic you are for wasting your life by loving someone who already loved you back. The kind of love that’s most obvious to those around you, that irritates them to no end since they can see sparks dancing between you both when you lock eyes across a room. The kind that makes those around you at fault for not pointing it out to your oblivious ass and helping you sooner.

That kind of love is the worst.

Unrecognized love is the most painful.

And falling out of it is the easiest decision you’ll never make.

Love is fickle.

Love is fleeting.

Love is a fucking trap.

Best advice yet: DO NOT FALL IN LOVE UNDER AND CIRCUMSTANCES.

That is, unless you want to be my saving grace.