p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"When I first met him, he had wings. He had magnificent white wings and a cocky attitude with eyes as a sea of /The second time I met him, we were in my bed. His magnificent white wings turned pitch black and he seemed more vulnerable, more alive even though he was /The third time I met him, he was alive again, crying on his front steps and asking if I was the angel./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"This probably would make no sense to you unless you knew the whole story from the beginning. But that would mean trying to find the beginning. It could start the night Marco got in the car wreck. Or the night he died in the hospital. It could start at the point when he broke me from my sulking and mourning. All was in the course of a month or so./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"This whole story started with love and ends with it. Maybe that's the way to start it. Maybe you would be able to understand then./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Love is a hard thing to comprehend. I asked Armin what essentially it was. I even went as far to look it up myself. Chemicals in the brain. That's all it is. Biologically, love is a powerful neurological condition like hunger or thirst, only more permanent. We talk about love being blind or unconditional, in the sense that we have no control over it. But then, that is not so surprising since love is basically chemistry. While lust is a temporary passionate sexual desire involving the increased release of chemicals such as testosterone and oestrogen, in true love, or attachment and bonding, the brain can release a whole set of chemicals: pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin and vasopressin. However, from an evolutionary perspective, love can be viewed as a survival tool – a mechanism we have evolved to promote long-term relationships, mutual defense and parental support of children and to promote feelings of safety and security./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"We can't control who we love, or how we love someone. The chemicals just get released and then bam. Love. Crazily drunk in love with people we probably shouldn't./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"I loved my best friend. He was a swell guy. He saw the best in everyone, always smiled. He had been with me since we were in elementary school and protected each other. We did everything together. Our first kiss was each other, our first time. We were experimental and hormonal teens. But Marco understood me. And I understood him. He was with me the first time I drank, and I was there when he took his first driving test, the first out of five. He was there when I first got a girlfriend and then left her because girl's weren't my liking. I was there when he met what he thought was the guy of his dreams, and then was tossed aside. Everything. We experienced love, lost, pain, triumph, and happiness together./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"And in a way, we experienced our first major loss together./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"I remember standing in front of his grave for hours with Armin after the service, crying our eyes out. The blonde and Marco were almost a thing before all of this happened. They loved each other, it was painfully obvious. And Marco was going to confess to him the night that he got into the accident./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"He was coming to pick me up from work; my car was in the shop after something in the engine blew up. And he had been doing so for the past few days. Marco never said that it was a problem, that was Marco. He liked helping people. But on the way, some other kid ran into him. The kid was speeding and wasn't paying attention; he died before an ambulance could arrive. I didn't care to learn his name at the time. It didn't seem relevant./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Marco held out for three days in the ICU. Armin nor I could go see him, family only the doctors said. It's written that he died peacefully in his sleep. I wouldn't know if that's true or not./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"And because of this loss that the three of us shared, we fell. Marco fell from the world of the living. Armin and I fell into a depression./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"I don't really remember how Armin got out of his rut. But eventually he did. Me on the other hand, hand to be kicked in the rear end a few times./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The first time I met him I was in my own rut. I hadn't done anything other than mope around the house, mindlessly watching television and eating. I admit this wasn't the best of me. The apartment was a mess, I was a mess, and I couldn't be bothered to clean anything up. I was failing classes and my parents hadn't spoke to me in a while (or rather I haven't spoken to them). I couldn't get the thought that my best friend was dead./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"On one of those days, when I was just wallowing on the couch he appeared. I didn't see him come. I didn't even notice him until he spoke./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""All you do is just sit around and watch tv. You're a boring job, you know that?"/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"That's when my eyes fell on Eren /That's when I met the person that was going to flip my life upside /That's when I met my guardian angel./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"This probably would make no sense to you unless you knew the whole story from the beginning. But that would mean trying to find the beginning. It could start the night Marco got in the car wreck. Or the night he died in the hospital. It could start at the point when he broke me from my sulking and mourning. All was in the course of a month or so./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"This whole story started with love and ends with it. Maybe that's the way to start it. Maybe you would be able to understand then./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Love is a hard thing to comprehend. I asked Armin what essentially it was. I even went as far to look it up myself. Chemicals in the brain. That's all it is. Biologically, love is a powerful neurological condition like hunger or thirst, only more permanent. We talk about love being blind or unconditional, in the sense that we have no control over it. But then, that is not so surprising since love is basically chemistry. While lust is a temporary passionate sexual desire involving the increased release of chemicals such as testosterone and oestrogen, in true love, or attachment and bonding, the brain can release a whole set of chemicals: pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin and vasopressin. However, from an evolutionary perspective, love can be viewed as a survival tool – a mechanism we have evolved to promote long-term relationships, mutual defense and parental support of children and to promote feelings of safety and security./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"We can't control who we love, or how we love someone. The chemicals just get released and then bam. Love. Crazily drunk in love with people we probably shouldn't./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"I loved my best friend. He was a swell guy. He saw the best in everyone, always smiled. He had been with me since we were in elementary school and protected each other. We did everything together. Our first kiss was each other, our first time. We were experimental and hormonal teens. But Marco understood me. And I understood him. He was with me the first time I drank, and I was there when he took his first driving test, the first out of five. He was there when I first got a girlfriend and then left her because girl's weren't my liking. I was there when he met what he thought was the guy of his dreams, and then was tossed aside. Everything. We experienced love, lost, pain, triumph, and happiness together./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"And in a way, we experienced our first major loss together./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"I remember standing in front of his grave for hours with Armin after the service, crying our eyes out. The blonde and Marco were almost a thing before all of this happened. They loved each other, it was painfully obvious. And Marco was going to confess to him the night that he got into the accident./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"He was coming to pick me up from work; my car was in the shop after something in the engine blew up. And he had been doing so for the past few days. Marco never said that it was a problem, that was Marco. He liked helping people. But on the way, some other kid ran into him. The kid was speeding and wasn't paying attention; he died before an ambulance could arrive. I didn't care to learn his name at the time. It didn't seem relevant./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Marco held out for three days in the ICU. Armin nor I could go see him, family only the doctors said. It's written that he died peacefully in his sleep. I wouldn't know if that's true or not./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"And because of this loss that the three of us shared, we fell. Marco fell from the world of the living. Armin and I fell into a depression./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"I don't really remember how Armin got out of his rut. But eventually he did. Me on the other hand, hand to be kicked in the rear end a few times./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The first time I met him I was in my own rut. I hadn't done anything other than mope around the house, mindlessly watching television and eating. I admit this wasn't the best of me. The apartment was a mess, I was a mess, and I couldn't be bothered to clean anything up. I was failing classes and my parents hadn't spoke to me in a while (or rather I haven't spoken to them). I couldn't get the thought that my best friend was dead./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"On one of those days, when I was just wallowing on the couch he appeared. I didn't see him come. I didn't even notice him until he spoke./p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;""All you do is just sit around and watch tv. You're a boring job, you know that?"/p
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"That's when my eyes fell on Eren /That's when I met the person that was going to flip my life upside /That's when I met my guardian angel./p