barbed wire

I am afraid that I don't know what love is. Any kind.

Is it love that makes me hold onto my brother so tightly I know that he is suffocating but I can't let go because that would send me into freefall?

Was it love that made dad raise his voice over mine and say no, no no, you're too young to know what you really want... He says it is.

I can't picture mom and dad in love.

Is it love that makes me sick inside? I cling to my friends like barbed wire and sometimes I wonder if I do more harm than good. Is that love? They say they love me. I don't always believe them.

Is it love I feel when girls I barely know touch me in the dark on a twin-sized mattress? When I scream and curl my fingers into bedsheets but run if they reach for me a second time.

I want to be in love. Sometimes I think that I am. Sometimes I can't differentiate between barbed-wire-friendship-love and I want you to kiss me after three shots of vodka at your birthday party or fuck me til two am in your empty apartment. Maybe I want both. All. Everything.

Maybe I want nothing.

I want to be in love. Or maybe what I want is to be loved. To be wanted.

But for all that I have seen of love, it never seems to last, because I know a girl who has fallen in love a million times and gets hurt every one of them. But she keeps falling. And 40% of marriages end in divorce.

I want love but I am terrified. Terrified that I do not know how to love properly. That love for me is synonymous with pain and barbed wire. And maybe I can unlearn it but maybe I ... can't.

But most of all, I'm terrified that even if somehow I fixed all of these things, I still wouldn't recognize love even if it was staring me in the face. And by the time I saw it for what it was it would be too late.

Because I'm not so sure I know what love is.

Any kind.