The Many Perils of Love at First Sight

The Curse

From my point of view people who dream about "love at first sight" are out of their damn mind. Black Widow said it best when she said, “Love is for children.” No matter how many times Disney or the newest teen romances tried to shove the idea of perfect, fairy tale love down my throat its lack of depth tasted bitter. I never thought Romeo and Juliet was a romantic tragedy. I couldn't get why Prince Charming was who all the little girls sighed over when all he did was notice what was skin deep. Yeah, as a kid I was a happy fucking ray of sunshine, but people are stupid and I just hadn’t learned not to point it out.

When I was twelve I told my best friend all that and it made her cry. At the time I just couldn't understand the importance people placed on that illusion. I was a product of two extreme environments that stripped all these misconceptions from my eyes so that I could see the cold, apathetic truth. True love didn't exist. Affection, warmth, love, desire, you could feel those for people, but there wasn't some magical fate bound answer to what everyone's heart had been trained to seek. Which made me loathe the curse and my parents more than I had the time or energy to truly explore.

Most people don't know anything about the curse, just as most people don't know the world isn't nearly as mundane as they think it is. If they can see through my facade at all, most people just think I'm a product of a broken home, a failed marriage, and that some day I'll get over it and realize that it's not an uncommon predicament. I choose to think I have an unfiltered and completely neutral view of the world. I don't have those stupid rose colored glasses that make the people that I'm attracted to into perfect little snowflakes. I've seen the look of love in the eyes of people around me. They look at their "true love" as if the sun shines out their ass and they can do no wrong. It takes a few years for things to settle enough before their view of "true love" is turned on its head, but some still cling to it like a security blanket, hoping what they have will grow into something better. That they’ll learn to love what they have or that the yearning for something more will fade. I prefer my perception of things, I prefer not to lie to myself.

The idea of this ‘true’ love rebels against every instinctual tug in my soul. In this rebellion against what I've been taught, what's expected of me as a woman (and a Scarred One at that) I feel the smallest spark of freedom. It's the barest taste of power in a life that I have little control over. This defiance against my inborn nature creates a state of sweet suffering that fuels my existence and spurs me towards true freedom; towards the chance to escape the fate my curse has bound me to.

You see, my family suffers from a very unique burden. Every other generation, at least one child is born with a small scar right over their brow and across their forehead. In the beginning, it doesn't mean much. You're little and you play with your friends and explore the world around you like a normal child. When I turned five, though, my grandmother sat me down and had a very long talk about what it meant to be a Scarred One in our family. I spent my summers with her learning more about our family history and the complex and sometimes tragic relationships involved, but nothing really sunk in until after I'd turned the puzzle in my head for ten years. I was staring at fifteen candles on a white sheet cake and the world seemed to snap into brutal, angry focus through the tiny flames. I felt hot, and cold, and angry.

One day I would meet a man and I would fall in love instantly. It bothered me, the nature of this curse. It was unfair and cruel. My curse would activate on someone I didn't have a choice in and I would be compelled to be near them, to become their family, to bear his children. It was fate showing up and forcing itself down my throat. It would take away my ability to walk away, to make my decisions freely. I only had the ability to follow this strong instinct, which made me feel like one day this thing would make me less than human. I hate my curse. I abhor the spiritual bindings I had to wrap over my face to keep it in check. And I loathed how complicated it made loving the people around me.

Real relationships and love were so were so damn intricate, much more so than something like what I was genetically predisposed to. There is so much depth and layering and fucking politics in the social dynamics of two people coming together. It's that complexity that became my idea of love. It is an intense longing that became these beautiful notions and covenants that I knew built over time between people...and it was nothing I would get the luxury of building on my own because someday I would meet some random bastard who would trigger the curse and seal my fate as a true Scarred Mother.

I knew one thing with every ounce of my being. If I wanted a true chance at happiness, I, Sarai Mayfield, needed to do what none of the other Scarred Ones had done in the past and break this stupid curse. After years of searching for an answer and trying to overcome the damn thing on my own, I realized I just wasn't strong enough. I was twenty-five and too afraid to let myself have feelings for the romantic partners that helped me stave off loneliness. I was tired of constantly living in fear that one day I would not be able to make the choice for myself. I was desperate and willing to look down every path to find the answers. And that's when the warlock stalked from the darkness at just the right moment.