DO NOT FALL IN LOVE WITH ME

Do not fall in love with me. I beg you. Do not do it. Love is a proven form of insanity. It will change you. You will lose your mind. Do not fall in love with me. Do not do it. The world needs common sense in order to move forward towards the progress it dreams of. Do not fall in love with me. Do not do it. Because then you will grow accustomed to me. And I will become ordinary. I am a goddess of love. Let us just talk.

Last year, another of your brothers in destiny made the fatal mistake of falling in love with me. He met me by chance on a street along which I was passing, following my destiny. He stopped me and asked me what time it was. It is a banal question, is it not? I answered him. Then he asked me to write it on a piece of paper so that he would not forget it. He took the piece of paper with trembling hands and asked whether I would walk down the same street again the following day and whether I would be wearing a watch. I said that if my destiny so decided, I would pass along that street again because I loved the beautiful flowers growing there.

The next day, my fate decided that I should walk down the same street again. There I met the same strange man, who introduced himself as a gardener. He explained that during the night he had studied botany and gardening so that he could transform the street along which I passed into a rare example of horticultural art. He kindly showed me all the side paths, where exotic plants, bushes, trees and flowers had miraculously sprung up overnight. A choir of birds sang amid all this divine splendour. The gardener was as courteous as a gentleman wishing to impress his lady. But at that moment I did not need such an enormous dose of splendour. Suddenly, I felt that I was becoming ill. The kind gentleman asked whether I felt well, and I complained of a headache. I hoped that this would extinguish his enthusiasm. However, something else happened. He said that he would take care of it. And I remained calm.

Do you see what love does? Do not fall in love with me. I beg you. Do not do it. Love is a proven form of insanity. It will change you.

The next day, when my fate decided to lead me through that paradise again, my unknown gentleman was already waiting for me. He greeted me politely and asked, with anxiety in his eyes, how my headache was. Oh, God, forgive me for being unable to step out of my role as the goddess of love. The kind gentleman explained that he had spent the whole night studying medical books, searching through ancient recipes and conducting experiments in his kitchen laboratory. In a single night, he had become an alchemist and a sorcerer, mixing different substances in order to discover the rare and unique remedy that would cure my headache. Having told me all this, he took from his bag, with trembling hands, a little box with a golden key. For a moment, I seriously thought that he was going to ask me to marry him because it looked like a ring box. But he said that the box contained the magical powder he had prepared during the night. The powder had miraculous powers. I only had to take it, and I would never suffer from a headache again because it was a miracle cure. I told him that he had spent the whole night studying medical books in vain because I already felt better. But now I needed to pray. He thought for a while and then left. And I remained indifferent.

Do not fall in love with me. I beg you. Do not do it. Love is a proven form of insanity. It will change you.

Then the strange unknown gentleman, in his desire to please me, began transforming himself into whatever I needed. He followed me everywhere, explaining that the world was a wonderful place because I was part of it. He said that he had been born to serve me and that this was his mission. Then everything else followed. He studied all the religious books in order to find the most suitable prayer to soothe my heart. He prayed with me so that light might enter my soul. I told him about all my sins, and he comforted me by saying that he would take care of them because his mission was to serve love. I told him about all my former admirers, and he looked like a saint who had willingly chosen terrible suffering in order to save love. He became my shadow, my guardian. He was ready to protect me from all the evil in the world because love had commanded him to do so. He was changing the world for me because love is madness. Meanwhile, the world beside me remained a cold place that needed something more than a game.

Do not fall in love with me. I beg you. Do not do it. Love is a proven form of insanity. It will change you.

He decided that I needed music and poetry. Overnight, he learned to play the guitar, and the following night he devoted himself to practising poetry. He wrote beautiful poems and sang them passionately beneath my window like a troubadour. Even the birds stopped singing and listened to his declarations of love. But I still felt nothing.

I happened to tell him that I was cold and that I could no longer feel my heart alive within me. He became so worried that he had failed to serve love properly that the next day special lamps appeared along the same street, radiating warmth. Then I told him sadly that I could not bear such heat, so he installed fans to disperse it and bring coolness. I did not mind being the goddess of love.

He could have become a successful scientist, gardener, doctor, poet, musician or even a saint. He was a saint in my eyes. He could truly have changed the world. Instead, his personal God commanded him to try to enchant and fascinate me. I wanted him to stop serving love. I wanted him to stop loving me so that I could find someone else whom I would love. But he could not understand the difference because love is a blind madness. Because love is a fierce fire, and once you burn within it, you can never understand how it is possible for the other person to feel cold.

Do not fall in love with me. I beg you. Do not do it. Love is a proven form of insanity. It will change you.

One day, following my destiny, I decided to take another road. And there I met you. From that day onwards, I was no longer the goddess of love. I became a martyr. And my dream began following the force of gravity without resistance.

You do nothing special for me. On the contrary, you avoid me and even hide from me. You do nothing properly. You are rude and clumsy. You do not write poems for me, and you do not sing songs with a guitar. You do not compliment me, and you are not kind to me. You do not plant flowers or study medicine for my sake. You are not a saint. No, you are very far from being one. You are anything but a gentleman.

You are afraid of me because you are afraid of yourself. You never look directly into my eyes. You avoid my gaze, and sometimes you even blush. At times, you disappear for a long while, and I do not possess the powers of a goddess to make you appear again. But even when you are gone, you are everywhere within me. My whole body knows you because it carries the memories of the dream. The dream has the power to gravitate towards whatever offers it no resistance. I am a sinner. I am not a goddess.

Then you appear, and you do not know what to do with yourself. You promise me nothing. You do not even want to allow me to see you again. You have no idea how to impress me. And I do not want anything special. I only want to talk to you. But the words can barely leave my mouth, and perhaps you think that there is nothing remarkable about you that could impress such an important goddess of love. You are not a brave knight. On the contrary, you try so hard not to reveal anything about yourself that one misunderstanding follows another. You do not want me to see how difficult it is for you not to surrender completely.

Do not fall in love with me. I beg you. Do not do it. Love is a proven form of insanity. You will forget whether it is day or night. You will forget to eat. You will forget that the world around you exists. You will see me everywhere. You will forget to pray. Love will change you. And then you will change the world around you.

“It is late,” you whisper. “It is too late for my salvation.”

(Elena S. Lyubenova)