I'm not gonna play.

The number of articles about this is mindboggling. The amount of advice I have been given on this is a complete brain-screw.

How to play guys.

Girls these days have been manipulated into thinking that unless you act like you have the sex drive of a menopausal nun or play an incredibly complex cat/mouse/goose/fox/donkey chase you're never ever ever gonna get a guy. Guys have nothing to hide. Why do we always have to pretend, lie, act, play? I'm not gonna play anymore.

I had my first crush when I was eight and it's been hell ever since. There's nothing like a crush in the same room to suck what little confidence you have as a spotty teenager. Getting what I want is like trying to catch a whale with your bare hands. A boyfriend is probably as useful as a hand-caught whale.

I don't understand why it's so hard. Boy meets girl, my ass. It's more like rolling a weighted dice. And my dice, like Guildenstern's coin, is defying the laws of physics. Not good enough, not good enough, not good enough, not good enough.

You know what? I'm not going to do all the work anymore. I don't want to keep thinking of boys like wild animals that need ensnaring. I'm tired of slippery eels of boys, I'm tired of being the hunter chasing the deer that belongs to Caesar, or in my case, fucking Aphrodite. I'm tired of feeling insecure and flustered and humiliated all the time. I'm tired of compromising, I'm tired of chasing, I'm tired of playing. I'm tired of boys, BOYS! laughing at my efforts to just say what can never be said, to be what I am never meant to be.

When it comes to love I feel like a liar, an actress. Not even a particularly good one, either, and that's the sad part. I am not even good at the charade. I degrade myself to the most filthy things for what? I don't even get the blood money.

Come to me. Cut the crap and I'll love you until the day I die. But what you see is all you get, because love shouldn't be a masquerade, and love shouldn't be a crusade or a victory march or a public execution. My life used to be a lot simpler before I dreamed of boy meets girl.