Amid all these picture-perfect holiday scenes, it becomes easy to wonder if maybe you might have missed out on meeting your soul mate by even the most minute shift in circumstances. Like if you had caught that Metro you just missed by seconds the other day.

Sometimes I think looking for your destined love is like one of those trips on the Metro. Sure, it seems mundane to go through such a routine, but there is always that excitement about what might lie ahead once you reach the next station. Eve was the one woman who made me feel like the tracks of my destiny had led somewhere real.

I saw her from afar at Metro Center as she was cleaning gum off of the escalator. Sometimes, I think looking for your destined love is like an escalator. Your search starts flat and builds as your expectations elevate only to become level again once your search is finished at the top. It is your mentality on the journey between start and finish that defines how your journey goes. Sometimes, an escalator is longer, other times it’s shorter, but each time the ride is different.

I knew Eve and I had been placed as passengers on a journey together for a reason. It was as if the chewing gum bound us together as two electrons that combine to form one of those atom-molecule thingies. Sometimes I think love is like chewing gum. At first it is sweet and it makes you feel fresh, but the more you chew at it, the stickier it can get.

Your mother tells you never to swallow something so white and sticky when you are finished with it, because like relationships, gum must be discarded and dealt with properly rather than kept inside. Otherwise, your insides could stick together and you might end up with a spastic colon.

Sometimes I think love is like a spastic colon. The sensations of destined love can build slowly or quickly, leaving unexpectedly or wanting to stay for perhaps too long until it metastasizes into something that has taken control of your insides and you are left with excess emotions that you can’t secrete until it feels like you will literally burst.

I knew what I had to do. I had to burst the next time I saw Eve in order to show her how I felt. The next time I saw her at Metro Center, I waited until she could see me, and as our eyes met, I mashed my chewing gum into the escalator grate below me and smiled at her. I knew it would be a true symbol of my love for her and then she would come over and I could finally tell her about my feelings and stuff.

As she finally arrived, the next moment became proof positive that love can hurt. Eve swung her standing dustpan right into my shin. Instantaneously, I fell to the ground. While I had quickly learned that it was not meant to be, I also then realized that being struck by a blunt metal object and falling down is a lot like love. If you don’t get back up and dream unfettered for another day, dream wildly and passionately for another love, you will never know what you could have had if you had kept on going.

In the end, we are all people on the Metro, chewing gum with our spastic colons, riding the escalators to our destinies. Sometimes we get hurt along the way, sometimes we reach the top safely. But if we don’t keep paying our fare in the domains of destiny and love, we might just end up with bankrupt hearts.

Love is not for poor people. It is only for people who watch “Sex and the City” and are oblivious to its regressive themes as they run in counterpoise with most tenets of neo-feminist theory while infusing a sense of dependency on others as the only means of achieving happiness. But who needs self-empowerment anyway, as long as we believe in love, right?

-The writer, a senior majoring in Middle East studies, is a Hatchet humor columnist.