I find myself speaking this phrase that has come to haunt my very existence. A phrase that has become a running joke with my friends. I speak those bitter words and I am terrified to find that I am actually starting to believe them. I am becoming the person I feared I would.

My friends speak of their love with such hope and warmth in their eyes. Their love shines so bright that I feel like I need sunglasses whenever I am around them. Their love is so infectious that you can't help but to be happy when they are around.

But I have become the girl who hates love.

And to say I hate love and actually believe it is such a dark feeling. To sit in my own thoughts and know that it is so far from the truth, yet be stuck in that phrase like a fly in a spider's web, struggling but never finding a way out.

I tell myself that I am okay with being the girl who hates love. That, maybe one day, I will find that person who changes my mind. But maybe that person would never come. Or she would, but it would be too late.

But then, I find myself sitting in a dimly lit bar with a smile on my face as I watch my best friends dancing and laughing and having the time of their lives, knowing that what they have is the best love anyone could ask for.

I find myself sitting in that very same bar, two shots too many, with a smile still on my face. This time, not because of my friends, but because of her.

Sitting in that dimly lit bar, my vision blurred from the drinks, I find myself leaning into her without hesitation. The butterflies I get travel from my stomach to my head; and the noise from their wings, at just a whisper, almost seemed to say:

"Maybe love wouldn't be so bad after all."