Amore Muore

Part I: Amo
I got a hug. When I was 17, I got a hug and at the time, it changed everything.
I had just finished performing in a show and I was making the lonely, familiar walk
down the hallway which runs from our backstage to our auditorium lobby. The white walls
heightened the isolated feeling as they converged to the opening where others families and
friends waited to congratulate them. I prepped for my routine of weaving through flower-
bearing masses to find my spot on the wall. I would lean against it and try to camouflage
with the colorless brick until my parents texted me they were outside waiting.
It was rare for me to find a familiar face in the audience. A girl emerged from the
corner ahead and dashed right past me, eagerly searching for her friend. I heard the excited
squeals and laughter from backstage; typical post-show hype that seemed foreign to me.
Just as I passed it, the door that lead from the theater house creaked open and my best
friend, whom I hadnt seen since the week before stumbled out and headed towards
backstage.
I met my best friend just this year, and we became really close really fast. At least it
felt that way. I never had been close to any one else, so this seemed real. Had I finally found
what love was? I was raised in an ambiguity of emotion; my parents never directly vocalized
opinions, unless negative, and that made me feel as if-- somehow, I was handicapped in the
area of compassion. Futile attempts were made through my freshman and sophomore years
to befriend the intimidating Theater Seniors, with their established cliques, and I spent
many rehearsals hiding in the scripts story, instead of my own. No one had ever had a crush
on me which I knew of. Other girls would whisper and squeal when they heard Intel that
the boy they liked, liked them back. Or worse, laughed cruelly when they heard a boy they
thought below them liked them. But I didnt have those options. I never heard of a single boy
like liking me. I felt unlovable.
This prior inability to find love had been frustrating, but I knew I could not be a robot,
devoid of feeling. I was perfectly capable of every other emotional high and low, and I had
felt passion and love every time I stepped onto a stage. Passion is a love for something; but
could I open up and feel love, for someone? My passion drove me to work hard and achieve
my goals, but at the end, if no one was there to share my joy, was I missing something? The
unstable bond with my family made me doubt my expectations on how love should be
expressed. I would attempt to define and feel love through the characters I portrayed. I let
their stories and journeys of scripted love melt into me.
I turned to start again down the hall but was pulled back by arms thrown around me;
my friend called out for me, spinning me around and into a hug. In their frenzy to find me,
he had failed to recognize me at first glance. In that hug I became a prisonerI caught the
disease of love. Suddenly, I was okay with the fact that the people I was born into and bound
to by blood were absent. I had found a friend that supported me. Love did not have to be an
elaborate fictional story. Love could be as simple as just wanting to be with someone, and
wanting to support them through any dream they pursued and every moment, high or low.
You keep your passions to yourself, but compassion took passion and added the company of
others. I let myself open up and allowed people to care about me, not a character or role. In
this bleak corridor, in the simple gesture of a hug, and in the person I opened up to-- I
thought I had found love.
But our love was not the same.
I think I was born cursed. I will always careand love things and people more than
they love me. My love will always be greater. It was so easy to say he loved me from afar.
That he was in love with me only when there was nothing else to do and no one else to see. I
was clearly not the first priority. To only be loved when its easy for them made it harder for
me. But like I said, Im cursed in this way I was sick with the poison of love and I will be
until I die.

Part II: Mort

You know that thing they say when talking about death?
 That people will miss you and will care when you are gone.
That people do notice your absence?
Well, neither of those were true for me when I died a few years ago
I died many times actually. When he couldnt look at me for fear that hed be to
blame for my pain. When she finally heard how she had made me feel my whole life. When
they wouldnt let me come back until I was cleared of disease. The disease of sadness. Of
loneliness. Of loving things more. Of pretending. I was cleared within minutes, but I wasnt
clear. I kept pretending. I was still plagued by the symptoms and riddled with suffering.
I would float along the mortals, a mask upon a hollow form, filled only by tears and
hurt. The death was slow and painful, aching with the rise and fall of sun, expedited by the
moon and vaporizing my inside by the tick of the world turning.
When I passed into another world, no one said a thing. I had been leaving for so long
no one for sure knew the exact moment I changed forms.
And then I was gone. As if the person I was had made no impact on those around me.
As if suddenly people were happier without me.
They were.
Gone are the days of no one noticing if I was there or not. Gone are the days of
moments lost in time because they were forgotten by all but I.
I look back now and hold memories precious and dear to me but others cease to
remember and so they fade as if they never happened, much like the human I was.
I have faded so far that I am beyond the recollection of others. From dust to dust and
so I was now like a breath of air. They took me in momentarily and let me out, not giving it a
second thought. Not noticing the very thing that let them be capable of noticing things. Air
cannot truly be seen, and neither could I.
And life went on. Like every morning the sun must rise, I had to move forward on my
journey, as did those who once knew who I was. I lost myself far before the world lost me.
And when I was gone, things finally changed for the better. They smile and talk and
laugh and feel relief. The person who once was my best friend the one who had killed the
me that he knew was long out of my life, just as I was out of his. She found a new project to
pour her life, devotion, and blood into. My family is at peace with meand they hold me and
smile when speaking to me. They kept finding people to help. To fix. Just to find solace in
their salvation when they are really just saving themselves from themselves. I found new
love once I had let the old poison die and be buried miles under ground, and burned away as
if it never existed at all.
They are all happy now. They now beg me to stay. They say they will miss me. But
they arent talking to the girl who died. No one misses her, myself least of all. They are
speaking to a new spirit in the old form. I inhabit the body of the girl who lived here past, but
I am changed.
And I am happy too.

Part III: Vie

Love can die but love is what makes you alive.