You Should Date Someone Who Doesn’t Love You Back
By Ari Eastman
They will hold your face with both hands, the assuredness in their touch contrasts so tragically with the wavering in your voice. Strength was always such a common part of your vocabulary, but now you fold like a rag doll into their arms. You don’t want to call it weakness, but what is it when a single look can slingshot a grenade to your joints, bring you to your knees, hungry and full of wanting? Is there a word for this haunting? You know they are not plagued with this feeling, and it makes the wanting even worse.
They stand upright, posture that doesn’t bend or break. A Redwood tree, you Willow, you. You’d be embarrassed to see a polaroid of you two together, the body language of one so desperately in love and the other, the other just a person. Someone who is simply there. Your stomach hurts thinking about the visual, a joke. Are you just some punchline? This punchline, feeling punched in the chest.
So you pull back when you see the growing distance. You stand side by side, but there’s an entire ocean between you. You’d dive in, you’d risk the hypothermia or riptide, whatever. You’d do it at all. But they pull away first in embrace. They only ever dip toes in, testing the temperature of the water. They have a life jacket on standby.
