1. Before She Met Him

12/3

I'm afraid of boys. I'm afraid of their dumb boy smiles and their stupid boy charm. I'm afraid of their recklessly mesmerizing eyes and their velvet boy laughs. I'm scared of their silver boy tongues and I'm scared to hear what I want to hear out of their careless boy mouths. I'm worried about clichés and I've talked myself into thinking that boys falling in love is completely made up. i feel like girls are the only ones who feel everything. I feel like boys don't know how to fall in love. I feel like I always fall for boys but they don't ever fall back (like a seesaw, but a broken one, you see?)

And I've seen friends fall for boys and get hurt because boys never meant those smart, brilliant words-genius, really-that hit our stupid girl ears. The aftereffects are nuclear. To teenage girls, anyway. They're a bunch of Einsteins, they've got it all figured out, and they have the ability to just absolutely destroy us with one little split (and we all feel like we're connected by our very atoms in the middle of relationships that are based on volatile emotions. We're not supposed to be broken apart, we're not supposed to be split, the wreckage is fascinatingly terrifyingly awe inspiring and at the end of the day they'll just look at us like we're another piece of history).

That's a little dramatic.

But I've never known love like that. I've never even seen it.

That's not true. I've seen it in my mom. Not in my dad. But he got her with his dumb boy charm that one time. And she left everyone behind, all of her family, she threw their words back in their faces, their doubts, their warnings. And he threw them back at her. Along with a ring that meant nothing on his stupid boy finger.

That's a little too real.

But that's what I've known.

I'm scared that I'm the dumb one for thinking boys could feel the same things silly girls feel for stupid boys. I'm scared to trust anything and I'm terrified to believe in words. I'm conditioned to recognize tired clichés but not trained to be impervious if they would pass that right boy's stupid lips and hit my wrong naive ears, heading straight for an innocent heart.

I'm scared of boys who make my heart beat fast. I'm scared to want a fairytale. I'm scared to need a boy to survive, to depend on him like that, to trust him with everything about me.

But I can't honestly look at a boy in a movie or read about him in a book or even see him in real life and I can't believe-I can't even fathom-the idea that they might even be remotely true. I'm scared of their ability to lie so handsomely. I'm scared of their beautiful laughter.

I'm scared of being cynical. And I've never been more scared of maybe being right.