It seems like every time I turn around I'm faced with some happy couple kissing or staring at each other lovingly, and it just makes me want to cry. It's not that I'm really jealous of them, but I guess I am because they have something I want so desperately and can never seem to find- love.
Seems like I should have already fallen in love and had my heart broken at least once by now, doesn't it? Hell, when I was a kid, I figured I'd be married with a house full of kids with lots and lots of love all around me, inside me. Seems like not much of the figuring I did back then came true.
Well, I have my career, and god knows I'm on the top of the world right now, but it's just not filling all the holes inside me. I really thought that once I was the best that I wouldn't need anything else, that the love the fans give me and the accomplishment would just be enough. Now that I'm faced with it, it's not, not really. I mean, I'm probably the luckiest man on the planet, and I really just don't feel like it because I don't have anyone to really share it with.
Oh, I have friends and I even have a few lovers, but they just aren't...Well, they just don't love me like I need them to, like I want them to. And I don't love them like I want to love someone. Not through any lack of trying on their part, but somewhere inside me I just know they aren't the "one". I know there's someone out there just waiting for me to find them, and I just can't let myself miss him.
Except that I think I've found him. I see him everyday practically, though I'm not really sure he notices me at all. I want to approach him, but I just have so many douts about myself that I just freeze when I see him. Or I flee. I actually debate between the two sometimes, whether it's better to freeze or flee. Silly, I know, but I just can't face him.
I have to face him though, we're friends. Not best friends or even close friends, but more than acquaintences. We hang out sometimes, but there's always a drove of people with us, so I can just intertwine with everyone else. I'm not used to hiding from or behind people, but I just can't get my hopes up over him, y'know? I mean, I know I love him, but I'm just to afraid to approach him with it. Who needs all that shit piled on them, right?
Only he feels the same way, and the happiest night of my life was when he asked me out. God I'm glad he had the nerve, because I know I would still be where I was when he met me, I never could've known what love is.
Okay, I know that it could be argued that I have been in love and loved before, but that's not really what it was. Is. Whatever.
First of all, we had to love each other because we're brothers. Not that Jeff and I ever really acted like normal brothers, but that's really not the point, is it?
From the time we were little it was obvious to everyone that Jeff was the spokesman for the two of us, and that was okay with me, I never really was very outgoing. I never even really questioned following Jeff's lead, because he was much better at decision making than I was. As we got older, though, it became clear that Jeff didn't just want to control what the two of us did. No, he wanted to control what *I* did.
I loved Jeff. I knew that from the time I could form a conscious thought. All brothers love each other, I know, but even then I knew it ran deeper than that. I tried for the longest time to ignore what I knew I felt, but as we got older it became harder and harder to ignore. Especially when he made the first move.
I was nineteen and he was sixteen. We had just come home from a party and I was getting ready for bed when he came to my room and shoved me on the bed and started kissing me. In the back of my brain I knew what was about to happen, but I didn't stop him when he flipped me over. This is what I had wanted, what I had -needed- for so long, that the complete wrongness of what he was doing didn't even occure to me.
And it should have. I should have realized that all he was doing was asserting control over me, proving to me that I was nothing without him. And I truly believed I was nothing without him. For years and years I've believed that all I lived for was Jeff. I told myself that he raped me and hit me because he loved me. I ignored all the affairs he had because I knew I wasn't good enough for him, not good enough for his love. It was all okay because he loved me.
And in his own way, I think he did. I think he still does, but somewhere along the line I knew deep inside that it wasn't the love I craved. I didn't want or need the scars to prove that I could be loved. I didn't need to be controlled, I needed to be myself.
I'm not real sure when it hit me that I wasn't in love with Jeff and I was in love with Hunter, I just knew it hit me. Like a ton of fucking bricks it hit me, and for the longest time I had no idea how to react. I felt like I was betraying Jeff, like I had lied to him. In a way I still feel like that, but I know it's okay for me to love someone else.
And it is okay, Jeff. It's okay that someone smiles and compliments me instead of frowning and degrading me. I know you don't understand that he loves me, because he doesn't mark me, doesn't have me on a literal leash, but I really don't think you understand what the true concept of love is.
You think you do, you tell me almost everyday now how much CJ loves you. You say you've found someone that understands you and your desires, can saciate a need that I never could. You say you've found someone who completes you.
What I want to know, Jeff, is how the fuck *didn't* I complete you? I was your dog, Jeffery, and I didn't fucking complete you? That's not love, that's insanity. That's abuse and ridicule. That's control.
Well, Jeff, Hunter doesn't control me. And he makes me happy because at this exact moment it is love. It is perfect. It is flowers and picket fences and a dog running around the yard, and the PTA and all that shit we all laugh about and all I want more than breathing itself. This is all I've ever wanted, and even if it doesn't end with "happily ever after" this is what I want right now. I want to be in love.
So tell me, why can't I?
