Some part of me has always, for some reason, been attracted to things (people, places, objects, noises, ideas--anything at all) that can manage to get, and keep, my attention for any amount of time. I’ve always been attracted to things that are not as they seem, to things that appear one way but, in all actuality, are completely the opposite, and nobody else seems to be able to tell the difference between the two.

I’ve always been curious, always searching for something that I can’t quite reach, that I can’t put a name to, always reaching for it no matter how far away it may be. I’m a bit of a masochist, I know, because I get involved with things that I know will do nothing but hurt me in the end. After all, I’ve been trying to make friends, haven’t I?

But isn’t it true that is just the way that some people are? They just do things that can hurt them, over and over and over again, until they get hurt so badly that the only reason that they don’t do it anymore is that there is no possible way for them to continue. Though, if there was a way for them to continue, you can be sure that they would be there, right this moment, hurting themselves over and over again. Because it makes them feel that they are actually, for a brief moment, alive.

I am one of these people. Time and time again, I do things that I know will hurt me. But I don’t care that I’ll end up getting hurt because, somehow, I am happy while I’m doing whatever it may be. I am happy, whole, complete. I am alive. Even when I realize this, I cannot stop myself from doing it, can’t stop myself from getting hurt, from hurting myself, from continuing this act of insanity.

The things that always attract my attention, and keep it, are always the things that will hurt me. They are always the things that will rip, tear, shred my heart into pieces; the things that will always wound me the most yet heal me just enough to keep me alive. They take me to my breaking point and then, somehow, they always keep me from going over the edge. Just enough to break me, but not enough to shatter, and they always know just how to put me back together.

This is my life, this is how I live, and I never notice that I am breaking until the last moment, when I am too far gone to care, when there is no way to escape. I never realize that something is wrong until I have broken.

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…

This time, though, even if all of the King’s horses and all of the King’s men fail to put Humpty back together again, there is always the wicked witch who works wonders by convincing Humpty that she is good and kind.

It is then that the poison is fed and the wounds are patched up, and Humpty is convinced that he is perfectly alright. His wounds are healed and he is whole and unbroken once more. The witch binds Humpty, though, and Humpty can never leave. But Humpty never realizes this trickery, not even when it is too late to be saved from the one who had saved him.

Humpty has been given love, for the first time, and that is the poison that will eventually destroy him. There is no stopping it, no saving from this new sensation that has never before been felt.

Everyone says that love is beautiful, love is grand, love is the best thing to ever happen to them. But have they ever been completely destroyed by this thing that they call love? Have they ever been so head over heels for a person that they didn’t pay attention to the tiny voice that should have been there (though maybe it wasn’t, because sometimes even that can be tricked into thinking that everything is alright), telling them that “there’s something wrong with this situation!” Or did they just completely and utterly ignore it, believing that everything was perfectly fine, everything was okay, there’s nothing wrong here at all, so just shut up you stupid little fly and let me live my own life, after all I know better than you do?

And it’s not just with love. It’s with friendship, with trust, with kindness. Everything that might possibly be good--it’s all a lie. It’s just a trap that somebody had set to draw you in, capture you and keep you forever or until your usefulness has been used up.

Because, in reality, nobody cares about you. They care about what you can do for them, and that’s about it. I mean, why else would people ask for favors and then have to pay them back? It’s so they can be assured that, when they really need help, somebody would remember what they did to help and come to save them.

Keep your friends close but your enemies closer, right? That’s why, more often than not, your best friend is your worst enemy. They know everything that could hurt you, everything that could destroy you, and when they decide that you aren’t worth anything to them anymore, well, they throw everything away. They spread your darkest secrets in the wind, so everyone can know them, and your heart gets stomped on by the one person that you believed you could trust. Because after getting to know the enemy, they became your closest friend, the only one you could trust, the one close enough to yourself that you begin to believe that they are another you. And you love them.

And that is when they betray you. Splat! Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall once again.

This time, when the King’s horses and the King’s men come to scrape up the remainders, Humpty shoos them away, keeps them from getting too close. Humpty, untrusting, lies there on the cold concrete floor, reaching and trying to pick himself up, refusing help from everybody who offers.

He no longer trusts the kind-looking witch who passes by and asks in her sweet, saccharine voice, “Do you need any help, darling?” He no longer looks into her blue eyes, clear and bright as the ocean that reflects the sun’s light, no longer falls in love with her soft, warm hands as she daintily picks up his pieces and smiles sweetly, saying, “Come home with me. I’ll get you all fixed up.”

He has learned better, so he reaches for his own broken shell and tries to put it back together again. This time, when he’s fallen, he gets up and walks away. Pieces of his shell are falling apart, dropping onto the ground beneath him and he’s full of cracks, but he’s walking away by his own power. He will not be tricked again, he tells himself, and he believes it to be true.

Everybody watches, in awe, as he walks away, but none of them see when he collapses just beyond their vision, behind the fringe of trees that welcome him into the forest. They don’t see him clutching himself and shaking so hard that it hurts, weeping and bleeding everything that he has left. They do not even begin to imagine how much pain he is in, they don’t even contemplate it and go on with their day like nothing extraordinary has happened.

Nobody sees as he gives in, accepts the only other kind hand that had been offered to him since the witch who had poisoned him. She is dressed in red and he doesn’t look at her face. All that he knows is that she is warm and alive and her hands are the ones who bandage his wounds and wrap him tightly in a blanket so he shall not fall apart so easily again.

He does not even notice when he falls in love with her, too, the same way he had fallen for the witch. (And the poisoning is complete--he is hers now. He won’t get away.)

He does not notice when she begins to heal him, to make him trust her. When she gently applies ointment to his open wounds (and it seeps into them, poisoning his blood, turning it dark and toxic--) or when she laughs in his ear so sweetly that he is not sure that she isn’t an angel, he does not realize. He is falling farther and farther into her trap (and angels aren’t all that sweet, really) and he takes that one extra step and falls head first.

He won’t realize until later, though, when her grandmother finally comes home. Or, when she wakes up. When she’s no longer sick. One of them, or maybe all of them. The truth, of course, is that it’s none of them. The little girl in red with whom he is so madly in love with has been lying to him this entire time.

The truth is that there is nobody else there but them. They are not waiting for anyone. It was all a trick, a trap, a scam. It was concocted just to keep him there and make it so he would never leave her. After all, she’s a young girl (--she can’t be more than 17, but she’s so tiny and he has not yet looked at her face. He believes it is smooth and flawless and that she is beautiful--) and it is dangerous to leave a girl all alone in the middle of a forest, isn’t it? Who knows what kind of beasts lie in wait for her to be completely alone so they may pounce and devour her whole?

No, she will not let him leave. But it doesn’t matter; he does not want to leave. Not yet.

Not until he realizes that he is getting gradually weaker and can’t remember who he was before he met this girl. Not until he trusts her wholly and completely, not until he offers to step outside, all alone, into the forest and protect her from the beasts that have come to harm her.

When he turns around to tell her he’d be right back (with a smile so full of love that it makes me absolutely sick), he sees for the first time that her face is that of a wolf, and that she has become ugly, ready to pounce and attack him. He runs before he can contemplate the whys of the situation and realizes, once he leaves the forest, that he has been trapped once more. But this time is different, he knows. This time, he did not fall.

As he remembers the witch and the beast-girl who have both tricked him, he grins widely, glad. He is confident because he has survived one and escaped from the other. He vows not to fall again.

It is then that the poison--carefully fed to him over the course of the year he had spent with the girl he had fallen in love with, the year spent believing he was protecting her--took it’s effect.

The fall was from low on the ground; he had simply stumbled over a stone when the wave of dizziness and nausea hit him and he landed in a puddle of fresh vomit and cracked eggshells.

He had not yet escaped, then, if she could still do this to him. That is what he thinks, what he believes. But he did not remember the feeling of helplessness that overwhelmed him in that moment from before; he had not felt it the other times. His eyes searched and searched, desperately flickering from side to side and he finally realized why he felt so helpless:

He was completely, utterly, undeniably alone. There was no King, there were no horsemen, there were no servants or witches or animals or any being that could help him. There was simply him, his broken (but not yet shattered, thank god--) self and his own vomit. And then, there were the tears that fell from his eyes and the burning sensation of the acidic liquid hitting his eye from the splash caused by his own tear.

And he could not move, could not get up to leave, to save himself. There was nobody to save him and he could not save himself, so he lay there, acid burning his eyes, and waited to die.

In his last moments, he knows that he is free. His thoughts are his own because it is only he who would tell himself that this was all his fault; that he had done it to himself. Over and over again.

After all, when Humpty Dumpty falls, his last fall is the worst of them all.

And this is love.