Luena: Her Mindscape

A lovesick girl strives to comprehend romance while floating above the surface of unrequited affection.

My understanding of love is what I observe in plays; themes of desire, devotion, misunderstanding and heartbreak are what I am used to in the romanticism of thespian art.

However, in reality, these themes are unbearable to feel vs to read and watch.

A child's first observance of love begins with their parents; growing up with devoted parents was a privilege, so you can imagine my disappointment when they divorced when I was twelve. Their separation taught me how fleeting love is, which explains why so many poets, playwrights and authors spend their days and nights writing neverending stanzas, dialogues and paragraphs on the subject.

They want to love, wish for love to prolong, but in actuality, it doesn't.

So, I have a whole life ahead of me to comprehend the depths of love's ocean, but as life would have it, in the most unanticipated way, I fell in love with my best friend, Damìan Moreno-Jones.

Damìan and I have been friends since we were toddlers. I appreciated him like a brother for a good portion of my life and grew up to have someone I could rely on, but along the way, he became more.

When I lay in bed before dreams whisk me away, I often ponder on the moment he became my first love, but as I replay the movie of our long life together, every moment seems to disintegrate into one. I don't know when my feelings for him began, but since then, my affections have never stopped, even though I sometimes try not to feel them.

It's probably not healthy allowing someone to take up so much space in your mind.

To some, it may be pathetic.

To others, it may be a phase.

But to me, it's the life I've lived up till now.

I can't help it because he lives on every planet in my universe, and the only thing stopping my love from blooming is the fact that it is one-sided, and he doesn't have the faintest idea how I feel.

As my favourite poet, Khalil Gibran, once said: "Love that does not renew itself every day becomes a habit, in turn, a slavery."

That's the irony of love, isn't it? Falling for someone that doesn't see you the same and may never see you the same way.

I guess that's why it's called falling in love.

How long will my affections burn? How long will I be able to endure such sentiments that I wish a part of me never caught?

He is my best friend, and I fear the day that I may mistakenly cross the line in letting him know because if it doesn't go the way I've longed for, I may end up losing the one person in this life I've spent a portion of my life loving.