While I lay here, crumbs of Cheetos on my face, obnoxiously orange fingers and all, I wonder why all these people, kissing, hugging and just being with their significant others annoy me. Well, there is the indisputably obvious fact that I’m alone. But that’s not their fault. They found love, which is, sadly and weirdly, what I’ve been looking for ever since I was in grade 7. And you may then ask why I’ve been looking for “love” since grade 7. Well, that’s because I wasn’t the kid outside playing sports; I was the kid who stayed inside listening to what Avril Lavigne should have been singing about now, given the fact that, at the moment, at age 27, she freakin’ runs around in her bright pink streaked hair singing songs clearly written for Miley Cyrus’s first album. So, I sat there and I read unrealistic teenage romances with happily-ever-after endings and watched sappy romances with, yep, you guessed it, happily-ever-after endings and while I loved Clueless, and even though “As if!” became a staple reference for me in my later years to lighten the mood in tense situations, these stories didn’t really help my perception of how “relationships” and “love” work in modern day society. It’s much more complicated and MUCH. MORE. DIFFICULT.

So now, when I watch these movies or read these books again, I really do wonder if characters like Cher and Josh lived happily ever after. I mean for all I know, Josh could’ve fallen out of love two weeks later because he’d realize that Cher was a spoilt and annoyingly clever biznatch and that they WERE indirectly related which would then lead to Cher becoming chronically depressed and chopping off all her hair, dying it black (circa Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married) and spending all her time doing hard drugs and eventually ending up homeless, doing the odd job here and there, barely making enough, and scraping food off of two day old paper plates with half eaten burgers glued to them. She’d eventually die.

It could happen.

Right?

So, yeah. This is what I’ve become. A flippin’ pessimist. I mean, the very core of my existence relied on my absolute love for these eventual “happily-ever-after” endings and now, now that I’m seeing a painstakingly constant array of couples walking around in their “imaginary land of loveee” while I eat my feelings in a disgustingly delicious array of junk food including but not limited to Mini Eggs, Cheetos, Dr. Pepper and Nerds, I’m killing off random fictional characters I used to love, who I can safely say, have made me who I am today.

Oh, and “one-nighters” most definitely don’t help with the loneliness. Well, that’s not true. They don’t help with the loneliness in the long run. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say it better than Frightened Rabbit in Keep Yourself Warm:

Oh, you won’t find love in a, won’t find love in a hole. 
It takes more than fucking someone you don’t know to keep warm. 

A conspicuous and blatant slap-in-the-face song is all you need. Someone singing out what you’ve been thinking but not willing to admit. Had I not heard the song on shuffle today, (thank you iPhone for always being wonderfully relavant to my life) I honestly wouldn’t have been writing this out right now. 

So, when you’re missing a piece of yourself, aching, gut wrenching emptiness begins to take over and until you find the link that completes your very soul, the feeling will never go away. Most people find a way to fill this void with material possessions, affairs, food, all of which I’m quite guilty of myself. But I also bear my soul, with words, for all to see. - Jennifer Salaiz

I write. I bitch, I moan and voila, I’m cured.

Well, that is, until next time.