The Exclamation Under The Stars

The Exclamation Under The Stars

I met this girl once.

Well, no I didn't. I mean, yes, I have met plenty of girls but the girl I was supposed to be talking about from that first sentence up there doesn't exist. I only wrote that because it sounded nice, all deep and secluded from the rest of the post like a hipster prologue. I had actually planned to write something about love since it's 2am on a Monday morning and there aren't that many better ways of ensuring that I start the week staggering around in public with half-open eyes and arms flailing for balance. So yes, I hadn't met that particular girl. Glad we cleared that up.

I have met other girls though. They were nice, generally. I can remember their names and faces and not much else. Like I said, nice. Or maybe that's just how my memory represents them. I can't really recall much else because most were just forgettable. I used italics for that word because 1) I wanted to emphasise the word and 2) I don't often use italics because they're like normal words but drunk. By now you can probably see how easily I lose focus, so it might not actually be any of the aforementioned girls' faults that I don't seem to remember them as I even have a tendency to forget the point of certain paragraphs when I write. 

There are girls I do remember. Crushes, flames, relationships, whatever you want to call them. Those people who, for at least a little while, meant something more to me than a regular person did. It's easy to look back and dismiss certain feelings as naivety and for the longest time, I did too. It was easier to pretend that those emotional bonds were actually nothing more than a phase that I thankfully grew out of because my sanity finally decided to kick in. I never really believed it though. 

Love is only around as long as potential is; it dies the moment the future does. We're all used to that grandiose talk of love conquering all but if there isn't anything to conquer, what's the point of love? That realisation helped me understand that maybe those moments were real, and maybe I was naive but maybe not as much as I'd subconsciously hoped, and that maybe it was easy to dismiss because the potential had been too.

Or maybe I was actually just stupid. Young love doesn't count, apparently. It's hard to tell from where I am now, but I do know that I have, on multiple occasions, thought that what I was going through was definitely realer than anything I've ever felt before this is amazing don't let it end. It did though, but that's not the point. For that brief, singular moment in my less than two decade old existence, I felt that I was more than myself, tied to this deviously beautiful sight of potential with one other person who I hoped saw it too.

I think that counts.