Tori Blas

Professor Dressel

English 103

18 February 2019

For You

There are roughly 7.5 billion people on Earth and 365 days most years. Most humans

have the average lifespan of 80 years, give or take. From their first to last breath, they want to

accomplish so much like it’d change the fact they’ll be nothing but a blip in the history of

everything.

In their inevitably short existence, among their goals is to find love in broad sense. More

specifically, they want soulmates. They want a happily ever after with the ‘love of their life’.

They want someone to complete them as their other half. If a thought like that were true, then

every person is useless without their true love because half of a whole doesn’t function at all.

In their pursuit of love, humans have believed that some ethereal being will help them

and to this day, they still do. That’s why I’m here. From their wishful desires came beings who

aim to guide them. They gave birth to gods. Each of us have different places in their lives, and I

have love although I wouldn’t call it that myself. I would call it connection. Humans crave more

than anything a way to connect with another human. They justified this craving by calling it love.

The system they call ‘soulmates’ is more of fractures of each other. They tend to click

when meeting one another because when they’re reborn in the next life, they have a little bit of

another soul within them. They don’t complete each other but fill in the gaps of longing. This

kind of love can be romantic, and I guess like that, you can see them as soulmates.Yet in my
time, more often than not this love is platonic. Sometimes, this line can feel blurred with love

and sometimes out of desperation people try to build a romance from it. If they feel loved, then

that should be enough.

That should be what’s important, feeling loved and cared for. That’s what I want them to

find. I give them nudges in the right direction to find someone they need, but if it’s not someone

they want they treat it as a stumble in the wrong direction. People don’t listen as well anymore.

They used to take anything as an omen from god, but as the time passes they’ve grown less

reliant on me. I’ve learned that although I know what they need, they decide what they want and

sometimes they’re two different things. Most people now do what they want as opposed to what

they need.

It was a hard idea to accept before. I was created from their want for help and slowly they

seem to need me less and less. Why would I try to help when they don’t listen to me anymore?

Well, because that’s how it’s always been. Our sole purpose is to be there for them. It doesn’t

matter if they worship us or not or even care about our help. In the end, they’re ours and we are

theirs. Even when they don’t love us, I love them. I love them a lot, actually, even though loving

them hurts.

People want others to give them love and to give others their love. So many of them think

that the only way to do that is in romantic connections, but I’ve seen love grow from many

places. From friends and family and the self. They may be ignorant sometimes, but humans are

wonderful. They’re each unique and worthy of care and attention. Sometimes I wonder why they

have a hard time seeing that themselves. Is that why they want a true love so bad? So that
someone can love them instead? If they don’t love themselves, then why would they believe

someone else would love them even more?

One day, they won’t want me anymore. Maybe love will be easier to find or they’ll trust

themselves enough to find it on their own. I’ll be there for them until the day until I’m no longer

here. I just hope they know how much I love them and, how much they deserved to be loved.
Analysis

My narrator is a sort of Cupid who’s coming to the realization of people no longer

needing/wanting him or his help. He knows he was made for humans to help them find love and

has spent centuries trying to do that. Over time, however, he’s seen the shift from being

dependant on otherworldly intervention to more self decisive thoughts. Knowing that he exists

because of the desire for help, he doesn’t know if he’ll be around much longer if they don’t want

his help any longer. Before he’s gone, he wants to let people know what he’s tried to do for

them, and what he’s learned from being around them so long.

Before I had written this in way where he’s more mad and insulting of humans like he’s

resisting the change, but I didn’t like the tone of it. To me, it sounded a bit condescending. I

wanted him to sound more mature so he became more serious, but I didn’t want him to sound

ancient or stuck in the past so I gave him more modern sounding speech. If he had more proper

or intellectual speech like an old educated scholar, I felt like it could take away the emotional

potential of the piece. I also wanted to show that he recognized the changes in time. He would

reflect the people and their needs so he would sound more like the average person instead of

someone above them.

The tone of this is a bit nostalgic or melancholic for him as he’s trying to talk to the

people who need to know what love can be. The audience is supposed to be the people who still

believe in things like true love or soulmates which is why I tried to reference it in the text. I also

wanted to address the idea of self love and loving yourself before expecting others to love you. I

thought this would also be something this audience might struggle with or think about. Media

whether it be consumed through books or movies or any other outlet, portray love as romantic or
something that lasts a lifetime. Disney especially paints love as something that happens easily

and to be desired so it shows kids from a young age that they will or need to find someone who’s

perfect for them.

He’s talking also in a way that’s not towards anyone in particular. While it can be aimed

at those who need this message that they’re loved, it’s also the monologue of a man that’s

accepted the inevitability of his ceasing to exist which is unique in the perspective of a god

whose known his own life with the purpose of being needed. He’s known his life to be needed by

people and death as something that he wouldn’t experience. I’m now portraying a god in a very

human like perspective. He’s not above people. He’s not certain of the outcome either which is

why he says things like “one day” or asks himself questions. He doesn’t know when things or

happen or why exactly. He’s written to be in a vulnerable state just like the people who he wants

to hear his message.

Within this story, I tried to create its own lore where gods are born from people’s needs

and rebirth is a thing. It’s a less complex version of the story idea that I’m working long term on

because I loved the idea but had no space to develop it fully. They’re ideas that aren’t too hard to

understand as long as I didn’t detail too long. In flash fiction like this, you want to make complex

things simple which is what I tried to do.

The message, I hope, is affective. It’s source should be a respectable one of the voice of

Cupid. That appeals to ethos. It also touches on pathos a lot with just the idea of love, but also of

how sad his tone is and how he loves them as his obvious reason. I just think it’s unique because

it’s coming from a god who’s not the old kind of wise but omniscient, and one who’s vulnerable
but not given up on life or at rock bottom. His attitude mirrors those of who want to be loved but

aren’t sure what to hope for.

Bibliography

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Cupid.” ​Encyclopædia Britannica​, Encyclopædia

Britannica, Inc., 5 May 2015, ​www.britannica.com/topic/Cupid​.

Tanaaz. “The Difference Between Soulmates and Life Partners.” ​Forever Conscious,​ 21 July

2016, foreverconscious.com/the-difference-between-soulmates-and-life-partners.

“True Love: What Love Is and What It Is Not.” ​PsychAlive​, 13 Dec. 2016,

www.psychalive.org/true-love/​.