What we can't have

People always seem to want what they can't have, but why is that? What makes the forbidden so appealing? I mean it can't just be a coincidental that people tend to be attracted to things they can't have, because something that happens on that big of a scale. It seems to be part of human nature.

Perhaps it goes back to Eve wanting to taste the one fruit she was told she couldn't eat, but that just begs the question why she wanted to. Throughout my short life I have seen almost everyone I know crave something that they couldn't have at one time or another, myself included. In fact, I have spent almost half of my life after something that I was clearly never going to get. I got so caught up in wanting this thing, or should I say person, that I convinced myself I was in love. Now I certainly loved this boy, I had known him for the greater part of my life, almost all of it in fact, and I certainly cared for him. So, as I said, I did love him, as anyone loves a friend for that long, but was I in love?

This is something I have struggled with for the past couple of years. It is less important to sense my motivations now, because I have found someone else is perfect, and even when he isn't, I think he is. So whether I am really in love doesn't seem as pertinent. Yet, the question still plays at my mind of why I thought I might be. Was I simply giving in to my humanity and going for what was forbidden as everyone else does, or was I protecting myself? If I only ever chase one boy that I know deep down I will never have, then I don't have to open myself up to people that I could have and that could hurt me.

So I guess I see the human instinct to go after the unattainable as split into two categories: the feeling of breaking the rules when we finally get it, as with teenagers that date what is forbidden, and simply put, because we are cowards. We are simply hiding. So have I been hiding all these years, or was it real? I may never know, and perhaps I don't need to.