To Be Loved

I have never known what it is to be loved. Admired, sure. Feared, probably. Hated, without a doubt. I've been adored, loathed, revered, clung to, detested, taken care of...but loved? I'm afraid not.

Is it the tickle on your cheek as that one breathes so sweetly on your face while gently whispering to you? I have never known that. I can only dream of it. Is it the tingling sensation you feel when he's trailed a dozen feather-light kisses across your skin? Perhaps the tender caress of his eyelashes against your neck when he closes his eyes as he nestles on your shoulder. Oh how sweet it sounds.

Is it the smoldering look you receive every time you see that one? The melt-me-like-butter stares? The fleeting glances when you know you should be doing something else? The daily distractions, the fact that you can't get him out of your head? It's that, and more.

Love is when you get a flutter in the pit of your stomach every time he walks by. It's when you share those tender but passionate looks, those accidental but scorching touches. The moments when you catch each other's eye and hold it, unable to look away. That is love.

When you can talk so freely, even if you know you're being trivial. When you can laugh and joke, just because you can. When you feel like you could conquer the world just because he's there. When your heart is at ease...yes, that is love.

And how can I define love? It's not because I have been loved, it is because I know how to love—a forbidden love, the most tempting and most equally aggravating kind of love. It is exciting to want the forbidden and yet so galling when you finally realize you'll never have him.

For so long I've watched him now, lusting, needing, wanting. For so long now, he's been around. Too long, I sometimes think. For so long I have longed to take him in my arms, to let him know that he is truly loved. I can see that he needs the solace of another's touch, that his friends can do nothing about it. They don't know what I know.

It would be nothing short of heaven to know my love does not go unrequited...yet each day passes without a word from him. I merely exist, barely as a friend, if even that. He doesn't see in me what I see in him. He can't see that I yearn for him, thus my fantasies of being swept away dissipate into nothing. Reality is such a bitch.

Why is it that we always want what we cannot have? It is our curse, my curse, to lust for the taboo. It did not begin with me, and nor shall it end here. We are all blighted by this fate. At one point in his or her life, every single person to walk this earth will know what it's like. They will want the forbidden fruit. They will want what they can't have and it will hurt.

But why do we do it? Are we so subconsciously masochistic that we cause ourselves such pain? Do we torture ourselves for some unfounded crime we have previously committed? At times, I'm tempted to think so. We feel the pain, yet we always come back for more. We live in a sick, sick world. We are sick, sick people.

Oh, I would love to know the feel of his arms wrapped tight 'round my waist, to better know that haunting, lingering smell of him...to know the taste of his lips on mine...to see the passion in his heaven-light eyes...to hear the sound of his voice as it drops to that sensual note...to know him at all, beyond what I daily see with my obsessive eye. Just to know him, oh that would be sweet.

I wish I could foresee a happy ending to my tale. I would love to tell you that everything will be all right, that he'll love me. I can envision it in my twisted mind, I can see it all...

The two of us, married...lovers... whatever the case, us, together. Our love compounded once we have a child, a sweet child. Nothing like myself when I was young, nor like him. This one would be free. Completely free. I would love to see the effect of his eyes framed so delicately by my free flowing hair. Beautiful.

But it will never be. My fantasy will remain a fantasy, never heard until this is found. My requiem of a love lost, of a love never found.

Let these words forever stand tribute of my unheard plea—a desperate letter of love and the fear of love. I'd have told them, but at least they'll finally know, even if it is when I am no more. I do so hate to leave him this way because I have so feared him abandoning me, but it is better this way. There is no shame of rejection...only bittersweet sorrow that they were all too late. That he was too late. That I was too late.

But he'll move on, he'll find someone. He will know what I have never known, and for that I am glad. I'll watch him from my perch, wherever it may rest, and I'll personally see to it. He deserves so much more. He deserves what I will never have, what I have never known. And he'll get it.

I have never known what it is to be loved.