Love and Other Dramas

(Somehow friends always come to me with their love woes.  While I love that they open up to me, I don't really know why they do.  Last time I checked, I have not done anything spectacular to qualify me as The Love Guru or something.  It also bothers me that they seem to get all the juicy romance dramas while all I'm stuck with are my same old stupid work-related problems.  Not fair!  Hahaha.  I recently dug this beauty up for one such love struck friend.  It's by Neil Gaiman, one of my all-time favorite writers, and who's in My List of Men I'm Allowed To Have Extra-Marital Relations With.  This is for you G, K, E, A, T, and R - amor vincit omnia.)        

"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 someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so 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 a simple phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' or 'how very perceptive' 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 body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."

- By the character Rose Walker in The Sandman #65, written by Neil Gaiman