Before Sunrise

At 16, relationships were simple.  You liked a boy. He liked you back. That was that. You threw yourself headlong into a relationship without so much as a sense of self-preservation, so sure "love" triumphed over everything. All the way it lasted, it was hyperreality. When you were happy, it had to be euphoria. You lit up like a candle every time you were with him.  Owned everything that was `you and him.' And, when he made you sad, pathos didn't quite cut it. You walked around looking like death warmed over.  Or curled into a ball and cried yourself to sleep. And, when it ended, which it inevitably did, you died a little with it. 


Or, at least I thought I did. Of course, I didn't.  All my angst was so beautifully choreographed in my head, I marveled at my own sense of drama sometimes. 


At twenty-two though, it's so very different. Now it seems, liking someone and having them like you back is not enough. It's not even a start.  Relationships, I'm finding out, are about everything else. Some of these I get, most I don't. My fears now are not the teenage insecurities I had then; they are more real, more rational.  Which in turn are compounded more and more by those I see around me. The bickering, the break-ups, the cheating, the compromises, the pain and the drama -- I'm not sure I even wanna go there.  


So, it's a weird place to be in, this.  On the brink of something new, at the tipping point.  Forced to choose whether to draw back from the edge and retreat to safe ground or let go and take the plunge. I'm scared senseless. But there's something else too, something that feels annoyingly like... butterflies?