Your eyes open slowly, cautiously drinking up the room as morning beats desperately against the shades.
You roll over to the touch of soft skin and velvet lips as eyes smile and welcome a warm embrace that becomes closer and closer until the boundaries between flesh are ethereal.
That's how it's supposed to happen, but instead I found Gretchen hiding under the covers, demanding that I not look at her.
"Why can't I look at you?"
"Because I'm ugly" she replied.
I laughed, but she did not. I tried to tell her how beautiful she was but she disagreed. I tried to pull the covers from her face, but her grip only tightened and she informed me that I would not be allowed to see her at all today.
I tried to pull her towards me with randy playfulness and she resisted with all her might. It became rapidly apparent that this was not her idea of a joke. Soon after she was crying and I'd officially reached befuddled.
Gretchen had woken up, convinced that she was ugly, and now she was determined to play that part. Her depression was undeniable and her self-loathing was resisting every cure in my bag.
It was almost an hour before I convinced her to finally allow a kiss, longer still before I actually saw her face. The effort was rapidly draining my energy and dramatically affecting my mood.
Nine blurred into eleven, eleven to one. We'd spent nearly half the day in bed negotiating how attractive she was, and despite the overwhelming evidence, she was somehow winning the argument.
My position, that she is both stunning and breathtaking, was firm and steadfast, but the situation was depressing me to no end.
I'd found the chink in our armor.
I've always maintained that a person's behavior is a result of choice, not compulsion, and thus mental illnesses are due to a lack in willpower to resist our naturally destructive urges.
Scientific studies have shown that the brain chemistry of highly creative people and manic depressives are generally identical. It seems obvious that the manic depressives posses exactly the same creative capacity, but lack the willpower or the desire to channel it towards something productive.
Instead, they apply all their creative energy into self-defeating behavior and self-loathing thoughts.
I am sitting with a girl who has told me over and over how amazing I am, a person who literally cries when we're not together, this should be her happiest moment. I'm the long distance love she never gets to be with, and I'm naked laying in a bed with her. I'm her saint, her savior. She should have a smile plastered across her lips. She should be bouncing with laughter as her fingers maul my body. She should have joy pouring out of her ears, but all that we seem to share at this moment is depression and sadness.
It makes me realize that as stable as I am, and as much as she is desperately in love with me, it's never going to be enough to anchor her completely. The fact that she should be happy isn't enough to make it true.
Love isn't a wonder cure. It's not a miracle salve. It doesn't feed your belly, it doesn't strengthen your bones and it doesn't forgive your past transgressions.
It heals nothing. It does nothing.
Health can only come from within, comfort exists only with acceptance, and little is truly predicated on the presence of another.
So what's the point of love beyond procreation?
Perhaps it's just an encouragement for us to seek out each other. Perhaps it's just a tool to expose us to all these other personalities and viewpoints under the safety of intimacy. To see our qualities reflected in another's eyes. To recoil at faults we see in others, perhaps noticed only because of their existence in ourselves.
Perhaps we're driven to be close to other people, not so that we may grow to like them and accept them, but so that we may grow to like and accept ourselves.
And there she is, hating herself with all her energy, and I recognize that part of myself that I forgave so long ago.
If I'm so okay with myself, if I'm so completely secure and adjusted, then maybe it's destiny that this fragile creature was placed in my arms.
