Tell Me

[Pale light diffuses throughout a bedroom and reveals a waifish girl of seventeen, her knees are pulled up tightly to her chest, her arms wrapped around them, chin resting on her demin clad knees. Her eyes wonder and then focus briefly on the camera, she addresses the audience through said camera.]1

Delia: I don't think they'll ever understand, I don't think that they can  understand. They tell us that it's all just a game, a lie, that we are fooling ourselves, that it can't possibly be love. They call us cute and pat us on the head, chuckling to themselves over the antics of today's youth. They don't beleive we can love.2

I think maybe they've forgotten what it was like. Maybe they've forgotten what it was like to be young and in love. Maybe that's why they can wake up every morning and waltz off to their dead end jobs and not care. I think, that maybe, somewhere along the way they forgot how to feel.  3

Or maybe they were never like us, maybe we're just freaks, abnormal and stupid, but love dosn't stop for freaks, we fall anyway. And I think it's harder for us. I think maybe, because we are so young, because we were raised on fairy tales and romantic comedies that we are somehow destined to love harder and fall faster. 4

We've been taught, practically from the moment we popped out of the womb, that love is all  roses and chocolates, fairy tales and glitter, diamonds and champagne, that there's always a silver lining, a happy ending, a handsome prince on a white horse. And we become reliant on this, we start to believe, we think fairy tales are real.5

We fall in love, we think we are invincible, that we can never be hurt, and then we get slapped across the face. Then we get our hearts ripped out and stamped on, and no one believes us. They tell us that we'll get over it, but they don't understand. How can they not realize that 'it' was our best friend, our true love, our reason for living. 6

They don't get that a single glance, a single smile, a simple hello can brighten our day, and that in turn, a single gesture, an ignored comment, a forgotten promise to call, can bring us to our knees in tears. 7

They say it's mellow-drama and teenage hormones, maybe it is, but maybe, just maybe, it's love. To me it was everything, to me it was most definitely love. It couldn't have been anything but love. Nothing else hurts that badly, and nothing else is worth all that pain. All I know is that when you are with them, holding them, touching them, loving them, it's worth all the pain in the world. It's worth every broken promise and every sleepless night, it's worth every bad poem and every burning tear. One second with them, a moment in their arms is worth a lifetime of slit wrists.8

They say we are too young to be in love, that it isn't real. Look at our scars, at our blood stained papers, at our poems and songs, look at our lives and tell me, tell me that it wasn't real.9

[Angrily she continues to stare into the camera, then with a with a sad shake of her head she looks defiantly away. Camera fades to a still black and white photo of Delia and fades into the next scene.]10