My worst fear is love.

And before you get me wrong, or begin to say things like, "But love is beautiful," let me spare you the effort by telling you that I was once a poet.

Yes, a poet. And not just any poet. I was that sort who would babble about his lover's hair, and how he envies the breeze caressing it...

Or his lover's smile, and how the sun is nowhere compared to its brightness...

Or maybe his lover's skin, and how its warm touch is a cure to all maladies...

I was the damnable sort who swam in a sea of sentiments and dwelled on its rocks. The damnable sort who sought strength from the fantasies and daydreams of his bewitched mind. In other words, I was the damnable sort who knew how to feel. And hence I became that damnable sort of a maudlin fool, and the wreckage of a person I am today.

But let's not go astray from the point - and forgive me if I tend to do that a lot. I said I fear love, and trust me, I do. However, as you might have guessed by now, I was at one point hypnotized by its spell. Believe it or not, it was the only thing that filled the void inside me, the thing that shaped my life, the purpose of my whole existence, without which I thought I'd be but an empty shell. And it remained so until I discovered its horrifying truth: I found out that love was a lie.

Yes, a lie.

A lie that lures you with sweet words, and seduces you with promises that will never be kept. A lie that smiles in your face, then stabs you right in the back the moment you spin round. A lie that charms you with its melody and sweeps you into its arms, and when you are close enough, its embrace crushes your flesh, your bones - it crushes your very soul, and leaves nothing of it but a handful of ash for the winds to blow as they please. You lose everything, and the pain never stops afterwards. You keep bleeding, but you never die.

Now you may be thinking that I am exaggerating. I don't blame you. But let me ask you three simple questions:

How many words are uttered and silenced in the name of love?

How many tears are wiped and shed in the name of love?

And how many hearts are healed and broken in the name of love?

So don't you think that a thing capable of causing two contradicting actions to take place, such a vulgar paradox, deserves to be considered a lie? Don't you think that, at the very least, it deserves to be feared?

Add to that the fact of how love stories always end.

Betrayal, indifference or death. One of them strikes, and it always does.

I myself have undergone the slow torture of the second, then been stabbed by the blade of the first, and currently I have been waiting with open arms for the third. It should be the least agonizing of them all - or at least that's what I hope.