Chronology of female love. (for G, the Wiser.)

when i was younger, they said love was easy.
they said love comes to everyone, because there is someone for everyone.

they walked in gaggles of giggles, and they gossiped about the people on tv. no, not the detectives, or the single women fighting battles in men's worlds, but the rich families where everyone slept with everyone else, in the pretext of looking for love. that was when they believed that love was a thing of forever, and sometimes those sluts who looked for love in everyone's bed, or on everyone's couches, or everyone's kitchen tables, saunas, boardrooms or balconies, well, just sometimes, they got in the way of love.

that was also when their hackles went up, and they got so offended, when the pimply faced class hero, touted to be the next, and most successful sports captain, went up to one of their dreamy, pretty selves, loved and adored like rockstars, and proposed his undying love.

at that time, all of us - the class hero, the girl he claimed to love, who sensationally slapped him for his forwardness, her adoring gaggle, and the rest of us who usually watched their antics wide-eyed - we believed him when he said he'd love her forever.

a few years passed, and they all wondered if it was a bit of a war. some of them were still the adoring gaggles, but some others had become the adored, with everyone including the geeks and the sidekicks turning to look as they passed. but the class heroes (yes, there were more'n one, and of course, they were best friends) now no longer got slapped. and their pimples soon disappeared, and they read out poetry they wrote, about their infatuations, for girls they met at the swimming pool. the sidekicks too, got lovesick letters, and there were loudly exclaimed "ewwww's" when the senders were discovered. that was when my uncle, he pulled me aside one family evening, and sternly forbade me from accepting anything shaped like a rose or a heart. i do believe it was the 13th of february, and he considered his advice fair warning.

eventually, we got past the back stabbing, and the boyfriend stealing, and the unanswered questions, and finished school. we all believed then, that now, love would be easy. and love would come to everyone, because it's a big world out there, with more than the 20 boys in class, and more importantly, the 10 acceptable ones.

that was when we lived on wishful thinking, and believed we would be friends forever. eventually we grew up, and stopped talking. eventually, we grew into sheep, or into individuals, and eventually, we had nothing to say to each other over coffee. except reminiscing about who we loved, and how we loved.

no one talked about anything current. except the headgirl of our year who will eventually marry the house prefect she was seeing since back then. it was accepted, and understood, that if you were happy in a relationship then, well, it wasn't going to last, because there really were many many boys in school, and now that you're in the big world, there were only some, because now, more than ever, it applied that there was someone for everyone.

we fell in love, we thought, when we didn't have a choice. we handpicked for ourselves, our personal objects of attraction. we teased, and we taunted, and we turned coy like fucking ingenues. we thought we were so bleeding original. we thought we were the cat's whiskers, until they broke our hearts. or we grew tired of them. there was only so coffee, and hanging in canteens that we could bear before fickleness overtook and our gaze looked elsewhere even as we proclaimed undying love.

then came the rare specimen, and lust hit like a sucker punch in the gut, and we were left all but gagging, at whatever drew us most. soon, the source of attraction shifted base to the mind. there were friends, brothers, who we'd adore - one for his body, the other for his mind. and eventually, we'd put out for the mind. we would want to talk for ages, we would get breathless, with the theories, and the philosophy, and the all out war on capitalist madness, while we still thought us to be silly, and female, and mush-brained in comparison.

we built our worlds around them, those who lured us with their minds, who controlled our thoughts with their words, and only because we let them. we weren't those pea-brained blondes we claimed to be sometimes, but for them, we'd be that. we'd do that. we'd put them on that pedestal, where they could do no harm, and set them up for a fall. we'd think them flawless, incapable of doing any wrong, and they never even asked that of us. we'd let tiny slip-ups pass, covering up for their god-like status, unwilling to disappoint ourselves. we never realised they hadn't asked for us to call them gods. aye, and did we not love them, for having settled their gaze upon flawed creatures such as ourselves? and thus we set us up for another fall, because when they made that one mistake that mattered the most, we could never understand how we could still love those that had fallen from grace.

but we moved on, because most times, we didn't really love them, just worshipped them, for to love, is to see, and understand flaws that exist in most of us.

so we got a little wiser, and we moved on, and we pulled on our armour a little tighter.
for what is love, if not fighting all battles.