I don’t believe in love because one of my earliest memories connected to it is the day my dad moved out and my mom’s new boyfriend moved in. The same day I realized my dad would never again tuck me into my bed, the same day I realized he would no longer be there when I woke up or had a nightmare or wanted him to push me on the swings in the backyard. Remnants of him disappeared so fast I questioned if he ever lived there to begin with. To this day my little brother doesn’t remember a time when our dad roamed the halls of our first childhood home. Most days I envy his ability to look back and not remember the life before. Most of my memories are stored into my head as before and after the breakup. I have to rack my brain to remember if my dad was on that trip to the beach I remember so fondly, or if my stepdad was the one watching my siblings and I build sandcastles.

I don’t believe in love because I watched my dad break his own heart over and over when it came to my mother because to him she was the only woman that mattered. To him she hung the moon and painted the stars and brought sunlight to his life. I remember him listening to here without you by three doors down on repeat. I remember how he didn’t have an apartment at first so he stayed on my grandmothers couch. I remember being happy to play with my cousins when we visited my dad but not understanding why we had to go to my grandmothers every time he picked us up.

I don’t believe in love because my dad and my mom had a fairytale love story, one of those ones you only see in movies. The type that seems like it was pulled right from the script of a romantic comedy, like the universe was hell bent on them saying together, even when everything in the world was trying to keep them apart.

I don’t believe in love because both of my parents got remarried to people who were never comparable to each other. There are still days where I catch my dad staring at my mom with love in his eyes, it’s been sixteen years but I swear he’d take her back in a heartbeat if she asked. Sometimes I catch her looking longingly at old photos, her thumb gently tracing the outlines of my dads face from when he was younger and life hadn’t hardened him into the man he is now.

I don’t believe in love because on the night of my 21st birthday you looked at me from the passenger seat of your car and smiled shyly as you told me you liked me but three days later you told me that we just wouldn’t work out.

I don’t believe in love because after you told me that you liked me back you said that if I had said something three months earlier we definitely would’ve been together. I don’t know how I tainted myself in those few months but my biggest regret will always be being too big of a coward to tell you before I did.

I don’t believe in love because you shattered my heart and gave me false hope and stopped talking to me for two months without a single explanation as to why but I can’t stop looking at you like you hung the moon and painted the stars. You still bring sunlight into my life and I’m finally beginning to realize why my father still looks at my mother like she’s the only girl he’ll ever truly love after everything they went through.