i love you i love you not

when does one become that woman who can no longer feel the butterflies?

how does that happen?

how many lovers would it take to get there? how many broken hearts?

how many i love you’s does one spend a life time to run out of them?

how can one ever say it without feeling it? is that why they have shades of i love you’s? i like you, i want you, i’m into you, i’m found of you, i need you, i feel you, i care about you, i miss you, i adore you…how do you know which is which? how do you know one is more or less? how can you ever be sure?

i feel sad.

empty.

it feels like i have my pieces in my own hands and i don’t know how to put them together anymore. they don’t match. and there are so many of them that one does not know where to begin. i don’t even know if i still want to begin.

all i know is, i was once this kid who believed in love. i believed that love could conquer all. no matter what. i had hopes back then. i was young and inexperienced. i felt that i could turn the world upside down for my girlfriend if i really wanted to. and the nice thing is, i actually wanted to. it felt like i could. it really did. it felt just right.

then someone broke my heart and told me love did not exist. she said it was all a fantasy. some phenomenon that i created in my mind and believed in and tried to make her buy into it. i tried hard to change her  mind. she said she wouldn’t. and we broke up. i felt really sorry for her, almost pitied her for being such a non-believer. love was my god and here, there was this atheist that was already in hell. i could see that she was not happy and i knew why she was not and i knew what could help her and yet i did not know how to convince her properly.

then someone else broke my heart and made me realized that the first one was not the only one that believed love did not exist. to my luck, this one was really good at faking i love you’s.

then someone else broke my heart and then another did. that was before the other who did. then came the other who did….they were all good in what they were doing. i can’t blame them, for they did have an idea and they followed it compassionately. or simply, they had no idea about what the hell they were doing and they did not give a shit about me.

now, i don’t know what to believe anymore. i still have hopes for love but i don’t know how to trust anymore.

im 31 and i don’t know the difference between a real i love you and a fake one.

when somebody says i love you, lately i just smile. i give this little smile that is almost invisible. i know it’s not nice. i know it is not romantic, but i can’t help it.

even if i could close my ears i would still hear all the i love you’s.

and the fake ones always scream louder than the real ones.

always.