you cut me open

i don't care what they say,
i'm in love with you.

i'd like to think sometimes that love is just a verb, but then when you're surrounded by it on a daily basis you're bound to think otherwise.
i'm not in love, i've never been in love and i don't think i ever will be, but it's just one of those things that you can't help but think about, just like the meaning of life and the theory of life after death.
the way your heart painfully thuds against your ribcage, the way your hands get clammy and the words you've spent hours perfecting inside of your head just collide in some kind of verbal car crash - it's astounding how all of these things happen at exactly the same time, and how it happens when you see that one person. i don't know if that old theory is true, where everybody is meant for someone else and that nobody should be leaving this world by themselves, but it would be nice if it were true. nobody likes to be alone.
it's different for everybody: sometimes it starts when you're really little, like you're having snacks in the kindergarten room and the only boy who thinks you don't have cooties gives you his last cookie and you can't help but smile as the weird fluttering feeling jumps around in your stomach, even though you have no idea what that feeling is.
maybe it happens later on, when you're on the brink of ending childhood but you're not exactly an adult yet either. you're teetering in between the kid you used to be the and person you think you're supposed to become. you can't control your feelings, your thoughts, your body - everything around you is happening in a fast, colourful, noisy, beautiful blur and sometimes it's hard to just stop and think about just what exactly you did five minutes ago. you see him, her, whoever you think you're going to spend the rest of eternity with and it feels like someone's oversaturated the colour and cranked up the volume - blues, reds, yellows, oranges, greens, purples, pinks and all the other colours you can think of just bleed in and out of focus and the noises, all that feedback buzzing in your ears becomes rhythmic and musical and you dance even though you hate dancing and you've never done it before.
and then the cold, single, deep, unsuspecting stab of heartbreak wedges its way into your chest cavity and you find yourself on all fours in the middle of nowhere, feeling like the floor's going to swallow you whole. your stomach drops and you feel like you're on that first drop of a roller coaster but at the same time you know you're on solid ground. your head feels like it's been stuffed with bricks and your eyes are burning, red-rimmed and glazed over with the hurt, the ache, the pain you wished would never come. it's dark here, the colour's been sapped out of everything and your throat's raw and aching from all that hurt you've been trying to force out of your body that it's nearly impossible to cry for help.
and then you find a new face, and the scorching that's tearing you apart from the inside slowly warms into a soft, gentle, soothing, perfect glow.
it's like opening your eyes for the first time: everything's new and whole to you again. the colours, those wonderful, bright, raw colours come flooding back into your memory and you hear that wonderful buzzing in your ears again, and you're so tempted to dance, so, so tempted but you're afraid you'll look stupid in front of them. what if they don't like the way you dress, the way you talk, the way you look when you're nervous?
they illuminate the ground in which they walk in. you'd give anything, do anything just to see that smile, just to hear that laugh. when they speak their voice is the only thing you can hear - it's the only kind of music you want to listen to. they've impacted you so much, you can literally hear the little bits and pieces of your life shift around you so that it somehow all connects to that one person. somehow it feels like your world has shifted its attention from you to that one person; it revolves, exists around them and for some wonderful reason you like it that way.
it's scary, crazy, amazing, beautiful, frustrating and confusing all at the same time and the greatest part about it is that every time a new day begins you know they'll always be there to make it worthwhile to wake up in the morning. it's a wonder why you haven't developed bipolar yet.
i've never been in love.
but it's nice to think about sometimes.