I Read a Story About Love – Teddy Burnette

October 23, 2022

I read a story about love and told my friends it was performative. I read a story about heartbreak and let my friends know that I found it to be pretentious and overdramatic. I read a story about anger, hatred and self-annihilation, and praised it for its realness and ingenuity, and I let my friends in on a little secret and alerted them to this new talented writer in the arena and these emotions that were brought about because of this talent. I read this story and did not tell my friends that these emotions, of anger, hatred and self-annihilation, were simply the emotions I could remember with the least work and effort. These emotions came back and successfully erupted in my mind far quicker, and with more efficiency, than any other emotions, and for this reason, which among others, could be the fault of laziness, this story by this talented writer struck such a chord with me. 

I read a story about love and told my friends I was in a malaise. I read a story about heartbreak and let my friends know I worried I was cursed to boredom, that entertainment and creativity had left this world. I read a story about anger, hatred and self-annihilation, and spoke to my friends of the hint of sun shining down on the world just now, in this cautious moment of optimism. 

I read a story about love and told my friends that it was melodramatic and dated, that it failed to show the necessary fluctuations in life. I read a story about heartbreak and conceded to my friends that this story was a bit closer to what I was looking for, in my laziness, because the ending was waiting for me as a dessert would after a meal. I read a story about anger, hatred and self-annihilation, and found myself drooling over the darkest depths the talented writer had found, and I cried laughing at the moments when the narrator of the story was at their bleakest point, with seemingly no shot at survival, or even want of survival. 

I read a story about love and told my friends that there’s no chance this is a true story, and if I could find more energy, I would be able to identify why this story before me was false, and how clearly true my life is in comparison. I read a story about heartbreak and admitted to my friends that I had never experienced it. I read a story about anger, hatred and self-annihilation, and wished that the story would never end, that the talented wordsmith had no choice but to continue, endlessly, until I had been sated with the stories I found real. 

I read a story about love and threw the book aside and declared to an empty room that this had crossed a line, that to write a book on one topic, if it is not to be anger, hatred and self-annihilation, is one step too far. I read a book about heartbreak but barely read more than a sentence or two. I read a book about anger, hatred and self-annihilation, from front to back, and then read it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again and again and again.