How much relies on butterflies?

We didn't know what we were talking about when we talked about the "future." Still, we have exchanged countless late-night phone calls and inbox-jamming emails concerning hopeful prospects and possible perfects, all the while excusing away the blatant fact that he is so not right. Last night, watching the 1997 blockbuster rendition of Romeo and Juliet, we found that most of our youthful optimism about love has been replaced by cynicism. We took turns exchanging sarcastic remarks about the ability Hollywood has to set ridiculous relationship standards, while clouding the realities of life. Seeing as how life is not a movie, we are beginning to put things into perspective, asking ourselves, "what is it that matters, and what doesn't?" How much of it, we ask, relies on butterflies? 1. He remembered what I wore on the first day of school and he was the first artist I envied. It was my erratic behavior at the end of each night when he drove me home that made him hold me so close. I broke his ribs and his windshield, but not on purpose. I was simply breaking things in order to break free, although I didn't know why. I had no intention of fighting the emotion I had lived fourteen years to at last feel; yet when I felt it, I was terrified that it could be at once so powerful and yet so fleeting... 2. We had fights. He knew I hated it when he rolled his eyes and I knew he hated how I always ran away; but we mistook the passion we had when we made up for something far more significant. We were sixteen, and sixteen year olds know so much about love, we reasoned. 3. "Why do you love me?" I would ask through pitiful tears from the bathroom floor. And when he gave replies such as, "I love you because I'm meant to love you, Claire," the butterflies would turn to rocks, tumbling around in my stomach and making me heavy with all the reasons why I am inadequate and will never offer enough. It was painful, being that selfish. 4. I clung to him tightly, riding through open fields to the bluff, and then he watched nervously as I frolicked along the edge of the cliff. My recklessness suprised him and he admired that in me. We admired each other. I think he was drunk on the phone the night he said it, but then it developed into a habit. And so, love became our reason for everything. 5. I doubt I will ever forget the morning we sat on the cold kitchen floor, eating brownies and talking breathlessly about the future. I watched his face as the rising sun crept in through the window blinds and painted stripes across his forehead; and I told him lies. Lies about love. No more than a week later, I fell to the ground, face in hands, and sobbed miserably; but for disappointment, not for affection. And, so "love," this supposed emotion, this created feeling is something hopeless romantics and commitment critics alike long to experience but are terrified to delve into.  Love, however, in its pure form - in a body pierced for my iniquity - has become confused with sugar-coated pop songs and saccharin-sweet chick flicks to the point that "love" is no longer love. It's like a big bowl of  candy corn: all flashy and seeming like a fantastic idea until the aftermath. The more I experience it, I'm afraid, the more sick I feel. Time and again, we are surveying the wrong source. The butterfly-infested, self-pleasing, movie-material love can be most closely associated with the anticipation of a junk food feast. In the end, the excitement of it all was the only worthwhile part of the ordeal. Thousands of empty calories and all that  is wasted, and a few hours later I'm crashing from a sugar high - hungrier than before. Not only did we have no idea what we were talking about when we were talking about the future; we also had no idea what we were talking about when we were  talking about love.