by Alka Merlin

I was asked to write an article on love being torture. I got so excited about the idea I nearly peed in my pants. I never thought that writing this article might actually be hard for someone who is known for having issues with love and anything that might encompass that feeling/occurrence/word/disaster. So what did I do? I drank some beer. I reminisced. I drank more beer. I thought of relationships past. I drank even more beer. I started getting irritated. I drank my last beer. I was ready.  

We fall in love. We get our hearts broken. We hate our hearts. We promise ourselves we will never again fall in love with another “lying, cheating asshole/bitch.” We go out and spend a month’s salary on alcohol. We cry.  We move on. We fall in love again. We have a lot of sex, we gain/lose 10 pounds, and we stop wearing sexy lingerie. Eventually, we realize that our significant other isn’t all that great to begin with. The man/woman clearly has issues that we cannot even begin to comprehend, but we put up with it because we love him/her/it. Then, one day when we wake up with a sick feeling in our stomachs that’s telling us “you deserve better than this.” Then we cry. Not because this is another “love gone bad” but because we know that there is a very good chance that we will spend the next few weeks with our broke asses permanently attached to a wobbly barstool, drowning our sorrows in hard liquor and confessing our undying love to some stranger sitting next to us.

Has any of this ever happened to me? Hell yes. Here are a few examples of why I think Cupid should be shot.

When I was four, I fell in love with a boy in my preschool class. We held hands and ate lunch together. One day, I saw him eating lunch with another girl. That was it. No warning sign. No goodbye. No “I like her better because she lets me eat the entire contents of her lunchbox.”
In middle school, I developed a crush on my best friend. He was 10 and had no desire to “be” with me. He wanted to build tree houses. I wanted to kiss him.

In high school, a cute boy from Baltimore asked me out. Last I heard he was dating a girl he started seeing while he was still in a relationship with me. I don’t know much about her, but I do know that she loves to cook for him. I happen to love ramen noodles. He loves a chef whose entire sexual past mirrors that of a cheap hooker. Clearly, this was not meant to be.

At this very moment, I am in love with a very cute boy who makes me laugh. He seems to like me despite my cynicism and tactlessness. I plan on keeping this one. And I will fight any bitch with a lunchbox full of fruit loops and homemade cookies who comes near him.

Cupid doesn’t always get it right. There are times when I thank that obnoxious little brat for sticking his nose into my business. And then there are times when I would like nothing more than to rip his heart out of his chest and stomp on it a little. Then feed it to my neighbor’s Doberman. But it would be wrong to say that love is torture. Love isn’t torture. The indescribable stench on the tram is torture. Being forced to listen to a Britney Spears CD is torture. Watching your boyfriend spend two hours doing his hair while you shoot daggers at his flamboyantly gay shirt is torture. But love? No, love isn’t torture. It’s just a pain in the ass.

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