The thud of my heart pounded in my ears for no apparent reason.  The moonlight flooded the hallway with an austere light against the rows of metal lockers.  In every corner I seemed to see the worst—potheads, drunkards, rapists, and perhaps worst of all, pairs of young lovers twined about each other lost in the intoxication of their clandestine meeting.  More than anything these illusions of twilight served to remind me of my solidarity.  

It is easy for one to get lost in their loneliness, mind racing in morose self-pity and postulating ridiculous scenarios in which it might be siphoned away.  I walked back to my car and got inside.   A despondent voice wafted hypnotically from my stereo, lulling me into a state of calm contemplation.  I looked out the windshield at the dark, deserted road before me.  It reminded me of some clichéd scene from a horror movie: a young woman parked on the side of the road in the moon’s eerie light, completely alone in the world save her parents from whom she found herself rapidly detaching from, with little left to live for save hope of the impossible, in the perfect, vulnerable position to be meekly whacked, gutted or any other vile act that psychopaths and malevolent spirits spat out of hellfire were prone to committing.

If I had any belief in the afterlife I perhaps might consider suicide.  Certainly the Greek Elysium or spheres of Christian Paradise boded better life than this.  However, I was jaded in devout atheism.  After all, why should the hopeless abandon their obstinately bleak outlook for fanciful tales of eternal life?  Nay, should true happiness be found, I was convinced that it lay in more earthly pleasures.

It was not that I had never been happy.  Quite the contrary, I perhaps took more out of life’s simple pleasures than most.  I took unprecedented joy from the feel of the sun’s lively fingers tracing patterns on my bare skin, of the high of accomplishment after months of diligence, and the pure beauty of a conversation revealing a human connection defying any scientific law formulated by analytical old men devoid of any emotion.  I merely longed for that which I had never experienced, that I yearned to feel, and ached to attain.  

Of all the elusive, mystical forces that plague the universe I was convinced that true love existed.  It seemingly defied my logical outlook on life, yet some odd instinct within me convinced me, beyond all reason, that it was true.  I couldn’t help but be seduced by the lyrical beauty and blazing passion of it told of in the pages of my favorite books, of lines of epic poetry, and in the lyrics of timeless ballads.  However, all of my pitiful endeavors at romance were as fiery as a wet match.  It was the consequence of this unwavering belief in love that I would engage in the one-sided adoration which would slowly suck away the joy of other small delights, in all-consuming obsessions that would ultimately crash and burn.  

I sat there in the dark, letting this all flow over me in lachrymose waves of unrelenting truth.  Between my fingers I caressed the smooth petals of the delicate rose I held there.  With sudden resolve I tore a petal from the fragile bloom. He loves me. Mercilessly I ripped off another. He loves me not.  Again and again I cruelly tore at the flower, systematically destroying something that had once been beautiful.  In my head I repeated my mantra he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me…until my hands were empty, and ended with a resolute he loves me not. Around me, crimson petals littered the floor, the bloody battlefield of unrequited love.  Suddenly I looked up, seeing the abandoned road before me in a new light.  With newfound determination, I turned the key and started forward.  That which does not kill us, truly does make us stronger.