When your heart is in someone else’s plans, they perceive you as that missing piece of their puzzle. You are the solution to their years of searching. You are the key to their completion. They see you as the answer to their prayers, the end of their loneliness, the antidote to their misery. You become their goal. The one thing that must be attained, in order for them to feel sustained.

Society calls this love, but I don’t think it’s true. That cowboy who needs you to become a willing participant in his plan is just a wanter. He is hungry, and knows very well that an angel like you could make many men feel satisfied. If it was love, it would feel different. If it was true love, it would be mutual, if it was pure, there’d be no hunger to satisfy. You, the prize, is wanted by others, so to protect their prize, they must secure a deal. Every wanting human will use the best tools they have to secure you. Ugly old men use money, pretty women use looks, smart humans use their exceptional wits, the sly use their cunningness. Wanting humans manipulate, trade emotions, play mind games, run to make you chase them, disappear to create the illusion of being the wanted. There’s always a ploy, a dance, a mating game.

They teach us to play the game. There are rule books, experts on the subject, even courses you can take to learn how to outwit a shiny angel, stalk them, pounce, bring them down, bite into their neck and suffocate. Once the hunted stops twitching, it can’t run away, so the hungry feel secure. They call it love, and they insist its true. After all, they caught you, surrounded and captured you, they won the prize, and they earned the right to parade the trophy. They have validation, but do they have you?

They say time and attention are all it takes to capture an angel. But only the starving have time and attention galore. They have nothing else. It is the full people, the angels, the ones with a soul and a pulse who won’t trade their life for someone else. We are food for the starving.

So many times, my heart was part of someone else’s plans, and I too blind to see how neatly I fit into their future. They all love my mind, my depth, my soul, and they want a piece of it. As if it is possible to actually own it. As if it is possible for my life to be theirs. They just want to be the possessors of something shinier than the other cowboys can wrestle down to the ground. A bigger prize. Only the biggest prize will prove the dimwitted cowboy is a man.

How many times have I escaped the grip of a starving cowboy? I’ve lost count. How many times have I wished for an angel, fallen for an illusion, only to find I’ve been captured and put on display for other cowboys to see.? Somehow I manage to escape, but It always ends the same.

I’d rather love a dog, than its master. A dog has a soul, the master just feeds off the creature’s undying love and attention. The master can only provide food and basic sustenance to keep it alive. The dog can’t go anywhere. There’s a chain around its neck. They admire its loyalty. They call that love too.

Are there others out there who know how to love? I’m sure. But right now I’m tired, and I need to rest. A empty cowboy tapped into my soul and drained it again. I’m weak and I need to retreat. Only solitude, nature and silence can restore me. Out there in the wilderness, where no one dares to fall asleep is where I find peace. Trees talk, water calms me, and the wild beasts protect me.

By now I have so many scars on my face I no longer look like much of an angel. In front of most cowboys, I refuse to glow. I turn my light switch off, so they can’t see me. I’d rather they think I’m an empty vessel than a warm blooded human. I study people for a long time before I show who I am. Unless they have a soul too, they are not worth standing next to. Dimwitted cowboys, starving cowgirls, the hungry, the zombies, the soulless. Everyone’s the same.

S