When I was high on acid at 15, lost in the swirling neon haze of my own mind, surrounded by the wreckage of sorry lives and illusions of happiness, I had this thought—the kind that cuts through the chaos like a blade.
I wanted to find that one person. Not a fairytale. Not some romance novel bullshit. I had no examples, no blueprint for love, just a song playing somewhere in the back of my head, the lyrics sticking like gum to the roof of my mind.
I want somebody to share, share the rest of my life
Share my innermost thoughts, know my intimate details
Someone who’ll stand by my side and give me support
And in return, she’ll get my support
It was naive, the kind of thing you only think when you’re too young to know better, too stupid to realize that love isn’t something you manifest out of thin air. It’s a transaction. It’s survival.
She will listen to me when I want to speak
About the world we live in and life in general
Though my views may be wrong, they may even be perverted
She’ll hear me out and won’t easily be converted
I was standing on the edge of it, staring into the abyss of adulthood, still foolish enough to believe in purity. That there could be a woman who would stand there, arms crossed, listening—actually listening—not trying to fix, not trying to mold, just hearing the words without judgment.
To my way of thinking, in fact, she’ll often disagree
But at the end of it all, she will understand me
That’s the part that really got me. The understanding. Because isn’t that all anyone really wants? Someone to see them, to get it, even if they don’t agree, even if they think you’re full of shit?
I want somebody who cares for me passionately
With every thought and with every breath
Someone who’ll help me see things in a different light
All the things I detest I will almost like
I played the song over and over in my mind, the words crawling into my bloodstream. I didn’t want a puppet, a shadow of myself. I wanted the fight, the friction, the kind of love that made you better—not through soft words, but through challenge. Through war.
I don’t want to be tied to anyone’s strings
I’m carefully trying to steer clear of those things
But when I’m asleep I want somebody
Who will put their arms around me and kiss me tenderly
Even back then, when my mind was melting into the universe, when the walls were breathing and the sky was folding in on itself, I knew—knew—that I didn’t want the chains. I wanted freedom, and I wanted love, and I didn’t think those two things had to be separate.
Though things like this make me sick
In a case like this, I’ll get away with it
The drugs wore off, but the thought never left. And maybe that’s the real tragedy—believing, even for a second, that something like that was possible.
