Best Friend

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable.  It opens up your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, and then one stupid person, no different than any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you.  They didn't ask for it.  They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you.  It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'maybe we should just be friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart.  It hurts.  Not just in the imagination.  Not just in the mind.  It's a soul hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain.  I hate love.

---Neil Gaiman