This Is Falling In Love With A Stranger

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“Let’s go outside,” He whispers against my skin, his hot breath burning in my face making my whole body shiver and my conscience almost give in.

After all, how could I not give in? I don’t like to talk about instincts, in my opinion everything is possible to control. Except of course, the toothaches and depressions. But how someday not fall in love with a completely stranger won’t be something so temptress?

I have lived so many romances. The ones that lasted years and my mother swore each and every one of them would be my last. The ones that lasted seconds, an eye contact when the both of us are waiting in the semaphore. The light is red, the cars are all in lines, and the stereo starts to play a well known song, – “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” by The Smiths, and it is your favorite. And you catch yourself smiling. When, in all of the songs in the world, your favorite would play in that radio station, in that moment?

It’s like life is smiling at you an naturally, you have to smile back. And then you look sideways and, in the car next to you, someone is smiling at you. It is a quick eye contact, a smile exchange, sometimes it can be intense, sometimes as shallow as a plastic swim pool, but you always smile back.

Those, however, are and will always be my favorites. Strangers. Of course there is nothing more romantic in this world than being a complete stranger to someone. They don’t know how you are at 3am, they don’t know how you like your coffee – if you even like coffee, they don’t know the reason behind that scar and that the story behind it is way more funny than tragic, they don’t know the many night that you were up late watching the same movies over and over again and that you simply can’t stand asparagus.

When you are a stranger to someone, there is not much to see, to analyze. Nothing leaves the exterior plan, almost like every kind of depth would just be too much. When you are a stranger to someone, the gold and old quote by Kurt Vonnegut make sense, and we became exactly what we pretend to be, after all, no one is going to take off our mask, no one will even notice we are wearing one.

It’s being a stranger that we end up acting according to inconstancy, occasions and chaos, we jump in uncertain opportunities that not always are safe, but it doesn’t matter because we never wait until the end to see what is going to happen in the following day. It is living the unpredictable, and almost hearing Robbie Williams’s voice whispering in your hears ‘Carpe Diem’ and actually deciding to seize the day.

Is getting to know someone that everything goes to waste. The charming words that once sounded extremely creative and unique, now they sound like cheap quotes and nothing but that. The electrifying touch, that once made you ignore your mother’s voice sounding in your head telling you not to speak or touch strangers, now it’s just a touch. And all the quirks that once seemed oddly lovely, like the way he used to eat olives and right after, take a sip on his orange juice, now are annoying and silly, ridiculous even. It’s noticing that everything is just a matter of time.

And here ends the theory. We fall out of love for the same reasons we once fell in.

Somedays I get really depressed for those reasons, empty even. For knowing that love is just an illusion, a showcase where the first impression is the one that with time turns out to be what it wasn’t, or better, what it didn’t seemed to be. And nothing ends in a poetic way. People have this stupid habit of wanting to turn everything into poetry. And all the tears were never, not even for a second, poetry worth. They were just wet.

“Shall we?” He asks one more time, this time squeezing my hand a little tighter, and I smile, knowing that if in the following day we met again and he did the same thing, that would be already in the top of the list of things that I find annoying in him.

But for today, we are just strangers.