Hot Revolver

Hot Revolver

Sometimes when I look at him, I can see the man I fell in love with. Other times, all I can see is the pain I've found and endured in his love. Often, I recall comments I've overheard people make on love throughout the years, that it is hard and cold and sometimes painful, but mostly can bring you joy. They were wrong. And they were right. But that's a contradiction, you say. Well yes, but I can explain. They were wrong because love is so much more than three little words and almost equally impossible to describe, and yet, it is also nothing less.

Love isn't always the happiness of a heart overflowing with delight. Love is sometimes deceit and lies and unfaithfulness. Sometimes it can be about a person showing you one side of them, giving you only half of their heart instead of everything within them. Love is finding the other half of yourself in someone else, both the good and the bad, and finding ways to change and improve. Love is being completely blind to the world, to everything outside of your bubble of happiness and living your life in complete bliss and harmony. Love is fighting and laughing and fighting some more. And love is sometimes tears and heartache and even unfair or one-sided. And sometimes we continue to settle for the wrong kind of love.

My story is about a man I met when I joined the Army five years ago. Oh, he'd been a sight to behold. Arrogant and cocky, he believed he was God's gift to women and flaunted that in every poor girl's face which had both the bad and good luck to fall into his web. Myself included. It was peculiar, that his overconfidence in himself is what attracted me to him the most. I couldn't get over the way he thought he was IT or his attitude that he didn't have a care in the world and went for what he wanted. His self-esteem was both remarkable and shocking to me, and my brain and my heart became engaged in a battle of determination to dominate the other. A part of me wanted to scorn him, to tell him what I thought of his behavior, and show him that he was wrong - that no matter how tempting, I wouldn't fall victim to his charm. And yet, another part of me wanted nothing more than to bask in his attention, to absorb all of the forbidden moments of whispered endearments and the sizzling contact of skin sliding against skin. He was my hot revolver.

What I mean by hot revolver is that no matter how dangerous he was for me (and I knew it), there was absolutely no way I could turn away. He was captivating and magnetic, like the air I breathe, like the sunshine warming my face on a summer's day, like the needle that feeds an addict their drug. And so much more.

There were times when I wanted to hate myself for how much I loved him. Nothing is worse than feeling trapped in the love you have for another person. Like a butterfly stuck in a spiders web. Unfair and heartbreaking. But the most unnerving thing of all is: I can't be sure if I was the butterfly or the spider web. As inconvenient and bothersome as not having the willpower to walk away was for me, I took an odd and perverse pleasure in knowing that it seemed just as difficult and impossible for him. There were times, I assume, we both wanted nothing more than to forget the other existed.

Now, I can almost take humor in our attempts to avoid one another, if they weren't so pathetic. They had been weak, half-assed attempts to try to deny the electric spark we both felt for each other and only served to do more damage than good. He tried to avoid his attraction by not allowing his friends to invite me to party with them (at the time, we shared the same circle of friends) and I tried to control mine by telling myself that I would refuse to answer his phone calls when he'd call after hours (because I knew he would). And because he always did, as annoying and maddening and infuriating as it was, I always answered.

In the end, I'm eternally grateful that I did answer those late-night phone calls from him and that, as hard as he tried, he couldn't resist the urge to call me. Because, if I wouldn't have answered, or if he hadn't called, the fumes burning beneath our spark would have died away and we wouldn't be where we are today: still deeply in love and happily married. Although we have both endured and caused the other pain over the course of our relationship, I wouldn't dream of having it any other way. Besides, we all need our own personal hot revolvers.