How to Love Claire Mason

Irony

Oh, the irony! The fucking irony in life, how it slaps you in the face and knocks the wind out of you so fast you can't see it coming.

But when you do see it, you laugh. You start laughing a painful, choked-out sort of laughter that almost always precedes tears. Then next thing you know you're in a heap on the floor and the world is spinning and everything, to you, every memory you can reach back and find, is ironic. So ironic it sickens you. A hurtful, back stabbing sort of irony that makes you wish you'd seen it coming.

Well, at least, that's how I feel now.

All I ever wanted was to be beautiful and to be loved because of my beauty. I sure as hell got what I wanted. They loved Claire Mason's face. They loved her hair. They loved the way they could transform her into the girl she wasn't. They loved her body, the way she kept it nice and fit and thin out of fear, and the way they were allowed to use it because of her fear and her longing. The fear that no one would ever look her in the eyes and say, "I love you, Claire," without meaning "till next Tuesday". The longing for that unrestricted, unconditional love that she went fishing for each time and then ended up with only a bite. She looked for that love. She heard that love, in their words. But with words, to her, there always seemed to come an hourglass, a restriction on the amount of time they would hold meaning before they expired, before the feeling behind them had evaporated like ice cubes on hot pavement. Because they didn't love Claire Mason, only the idea of her, nothing else. Which means they didn't love me.

What have I, Claire Mason, become?

An object of sexual attraction? Me? Isn't that what I wanted?

No there's more than that. I don't want to be just wanted or desired. I don't want to be the object of someone's infatuation anymore. I want to be...something. Something more than that, more than a doll, more than a toy. But I've never reached that standing, with anyone. Maybe I don't deserve to. Maybe I, Claire Mason, am not meant to be anything more than an infatuation. And maybe, they know. They look at me, and they see right through me. I'm an open book I myself am unable to read. They flip to the right page on the first try and it's called How to Love Claire Mason. And there is a word on that worn blank page, a single word they can all understand and obey no matter who they are or pretend to be: Don't.

He, he did it well. Played the part of the poor boy who couldn't help but become infatuated and break my heart once he slept off the spell one night. As if I tried only to seduce him. As if that were my purpose. As if I were only a pretty face to occupy the screen of his phone till he got bored, like a Playboy Bunny or something.

I wish it was the summer, so I could see you in a bikini.

Not "because I want to last till then with you", not "so we can spend everyday together". But so that he could see me exposed, as if he hadn't already stripped me of my dignity and made me most vulnerable. What he said made me anxious, partly because I automatically bit my lip and worried, "Will I still look good and thin enough by next summer?", and partly because I began to question my standing with him. Was I only a body, a mannequin, a piece of eye candy he wanted to dress up to his liking, to satisfy his every fantasy? What was I really, to him? I still can't say for sure. The best damn answer I got is "something to be seen in a bikini and touched because she believes she is more than that". That must be another dirty secret they know that I am only now figuring out: Keep her believing she is something to you while using her for what she really is, which is nothing but a plaything. She will give you all the codes, all the access, as long as she believes it's all for love.

I am so easy. I never wanted to be easy. I thought the right love would come hard but swiftly because it'd be what I deserved. But no. I never waited. I took a breath and dove in at my first chance and something tells me now I must be drowning.

I am so fucking easy.

All I ever wanted was to be wanted. I thought that would make it all okay again. And that everything would follow after and fall into place. But being wanted is fucking meaningless. It doesn't get you anywhere. It makes you easy. So then I wanted to be needed. But I never was. People don't leave you if they need you. It's a lot easier to part with what you want, to leave it behind in the trash, especially when your desire wanes. And everyone's did. Burned out like a candle, one I was so naive in thinking would never go out. His was worst of all. It burned the brightest, the most intensely, and went out the most suddenly, like in the movies where the lights go dark and the candle flames vanquish with a sharp gust of wind no one let in. I didn't let in the gust. I wouldn't have dared, not when the flame was at its brightest, when I had everything to lose. But he, he blew it out. And in that act his lips betrayed me for the final time.

It would have been different, if he needed me. You can't walk away from what you need so easily. It'd be like ripping a hole through your own chest. Something would always be missing, hurting. The thing is, I could never hurt them, not him or a single one of them, not truly, because they never needed me. Once the well of desire that pooled within each of them ran dry, I was no longer essential to their lives. I never had been. Then again, isn't it a tragedy to be needed without being wanted? As if you were an IV or life support, a necessity that could not be denied only because it was just that, a necessity, not because it was desired, appreciated, or adored. A crutch of sorts. There has to be a balance, between the love and the lust. Between being wanted and needed. I don't want to be either by itself, not really. I may have wanted to, at some point, but it was a naive, misguided desire. Now, it'd be better to be any of those things than what I am now. Which is, precisely, for lack of a better term, nothing.

I, being nothing, could never hurt them. I was brushed off with careless ease, a rude comment uttered by a stranger on the street. But they, they hurt me. Not only because I loved them with a truth that could not be denied, but because I needed them. I grew up waiting for the Prince Charming of my dreams to make me feel beautiful and loved and all that waiting and hurting turned to a thirst that could not go unquenched. I needed them to feel sane. To feel like there was a reason, a justification for all the pain. As if a boy could validate, could reward years of pain, if only he stayed a while. How long is a while? How long is enough to say they loved me? That I haven't been so ironically objectified for the body I fought so hard to love yet destroyed in the process, believing, hoping someone else might love it for me. How long does it take, for it to be love and not lust, for that is the balance between wanting and needing. Love. Is there an hourglass on it?