Relationships, a River

When you meet someone, you’re jumping into a river.  The river runs with chemicals; they affect your emotions.  The water feels good; the water is happiness; it is pleasure.
Soon, as you float along the river, there is a fork.  To the left, a wide stream flows fast and deep into the great unknown.  To the right, a slight trickle flows over gently sloping ground, far into the distance until it disappears into the distant mist.
Here, a decision is before you: the slow, waning stream with not quite enough water to satisfy, or all that beautiful, gushing fluid in the main rush?  The current pulls you to the wide and the fast, so of course that is where you choose to go.
It is pleasure beyond measure, plenty of water, plenty of love.  But your gushing river rounds a corner, turns sour, and pours into the ground, disappearing.  No more pleasure, no more love.  You can’t go back now, but you think about what could have been.
You could have fought your way down the trickle, drinking up all the water you could.  It would have been long and hard, but in good time you would have reached the sea.  There it is: the sea of limitless pleasure.  No boundaries, only happiness.
“I don’t know what his price would have been, but it would have been worth it.”