I Don't Believe...

He's in love with a dancer... She's a water baby with skin as pale as the moon. I love to dance but I'm not a dancer and my skin isn't pale like the moon. I'm a water baby but he doesn't know that because I won't let him see me be in love with anything... Because then he might see that I'm in love with him. I can't let him see that because I don't believe in love... And he might just change my mind. 

I don't want my mind to be changed because I can't stand to love alone again. They say it is better to have lost and loved than never to have loved at all... It is worse to have loved alone than to never have loved at all. I don't love him because if I did, he would hate me and I would be left lonely... Lonely and loving the man who changed my mind.

Even if I did love him, how would I know? Would he make me happy just by saying hello in that ridiculously mesmerising voice of his with his head cocked to one side like he was curios about me? Would I want to spend every waking minute of my incredibly dull day with him even if we did absolutely nothing? What would I do... if I was in love with you?

You're in love with perfection... So loving you would be stupid because I can't compete with that no matter how hard I wished to try. I've been trying all my life to be her... even before I met you. I suppose I had forgotten just how much I have wanted to be her up until I realised how you still continue to feel about her. Who am I to think that I would ever be good enough when standing in the shadow of the world's most perfect person. It's a good thing that you don't make me happy, it's a good thing I don't feel anything for you at all.

If I felt something - anything at all- it would hurt to deny it, it would hurt to push aside my feelings for the sake of my own safety. I would feel crushed just for not being able to try to tell you how I feel... The answer is simple and the truth is unavoidable. If I felt something for you, it would hurt knowing that you'd never like or love me and that I'd never be good enough for you... But I won't get hurt because I don't feel anything... and because I don't believe in love.

When I say I don't believe in love, I mean the emotion... I believe in the choice to love but I don't believe it occurs on its own. So I will never love you because I will never choose to... Because loving you means getting hurt... And I can't do that again. I can't risk it and I won't because I don't want to waste my life being sad any more. Believing in the existence of love as an emotion would require me to accept the fact that I could get hurt without having chosen my own emotional responses. I refuse to relinquish control over my life, over my body... Especially to you.

If I came to love you and if you controlled me... That would be the end of me. I wouldn't survive your inevitable leaving... I wouldn't be able to pick myself up and move on. My heart has been broken too many times and for unnecessary reasons so now any reason or person that would cause my heart to break again has already been deemed unnecessary. It's good that I don't feel a thing...

... And that I don't believe in love.

--J.