Maia's Deck

"True love is the one that made you lose control."

"True love is the soul's recognition of its counterpoint

in another."

"Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love. "

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens 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, then one stupid person, no different from 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 simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just 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."
Spoken by the character Rose Walker in Sandman #65

I have not experienced love. At least not of the good kind. But I have known a soul-hurt, real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. And it really does leave you crying in the dark.

And then you hope that someone will come along. Someone will make you stop crying. But at that moment when you are about to let go, you know that the world might crumble around you again and that you might be left crying in the dark, so that even when all the signs say that, that person wouldn't, the fear has left a splinter so deeply that you just couldn't bring yourself to be at least a step closer to that kind of pain again.

It happens over and over and over again. Until it happens to be that it has become your own fault why you are so defensive and frightened.

They ask you why you are so distant, cold and unfeeling and all you can do is smile, hoping that the smile says "I'm not," even when your mind is screaming, "Why not?"

A love that was lost,

who should listen to the tales?

If the man is a fool,

who speaks in old cliches?

Wasted words of regret,

Who should listen to the cry

If the soul has been broken

What is left to dignify?

Who should listen to the fears

of the one that's left to fall

If the tears all have fallen

then what's left to save at all?

--Lj