How To Be A Romantic Realist

How to be a romantic when you're also a realist :

1. read a lot of fanfiction. 

2. be very very VERY spontaneous

3. lose your rationality

4. deprive yourself of sleep so your brain doesn't catch up with your heart

5. find romance in every single tiny little thing. 

6. wear sunglasses. A lot. 

7. don't keep a diary. 

8. or rather, keep a diary, but write about stupid romantic notions that excite you

9. read a lot of chick lit

10. watch chick flicks

11. practice giggling before you sleep

12. look in the mirror every night and tell yourself three girlish romantic things before going to sleep

13. try not to get your heart broken. 

14. try not to let it overcome you when your heart gets broken

15. don't wait 

16. just jump into it

17. pray a lot

18. cry a lot

19. keep emergency stashes of ice cream, preferably chocolate flavoured

20. don't drink your sorrows away; they just come back two fold

To be honest, you don't need 20 how-tos to be a romantic when you're also a realist. 

You only need one. 

One person. 

Romance can be reality, but how many of us are that lucky?

My First Kiss

 It was wet. 

It was heartbreaking. 

It's probably terribly cliched of me to say I can't think of my first kiss without feeling the shadow of that heartbreak, if not the excruciating pain of heartache. 

My first kiss was wet, because I couldn't stop crying. It was something that was doomed from the start, and me trying so hard, flailing to keep whatever I could. I was...not chosen, yet again, yet all I could feel was my heart rending into two when I still turned my head, when I still leaned in. 

People might call me crazy. Stupid. Naive. 

I am, all of the above. 

But I was also hurting, curious, and absolutely devastated. Fully aware of what I was walking into, but torn, nonetheless. 

So, yeah. When people talk about first kisses being sad and painful, it's usually becuase they didn't pan out to be anything. My first kiss was sad and painful, because I was already told nothing will pan out from it. 

But we deserve the love that we accept, and the non-love that we accept too. 

I still don’t regret any of it. If anything, it taught me everything that love can be and shouldn’t be. I never thought I would be strong enough nor mature enough to handle this with grace, not had I thought myself capable of love in such a setting. For if I could love someone in this way, despite being torn and hurt and battered by the waves of back and forth; surely, someday, someone would be capable of loving me the same. 

What I Miss(ed)

 Was watching a few rom coms these past days, aimed at various ages. 

But damn, different age groups have such different experience in dating. And, me, pushing thirties, still find some of the younger boys cuter than should be. Absolutely adore it when they rub the back of their necks when they're awkward or shy---damn thing makes something in me flutter like old ladies' plastic bags. 

And yet, these are the little things that you see only in younger age groups. Even the movies reflect real life. 

I suppose older men tend to lose these little quirks as they grow in confidence and experience. And at my age, most men are already more men than boys. 

But damn, wouldn't it be nice to experience the awkward straightforward passion-driven stupid courage boys have when they're feeling strongly about something, someone? Instead of the baggage-loaded, hesitant, jaded, heavily-debated guarded men of my age?

But then again, I've always been attracted to cute boyish specimens; and then lament the almost inevitable relative immaturity. 

Life's hard. 

I just wish I had the experience. The awkward flex. The shy glances. The super-cliched things in teen romcoms. All those things I missed. 

Instead of all these things I miss. 

I wonder if people feel emotions the same way as everybody does. If one feels certain emotions more intensely than another. 

I've been listening to James Bay a lot more than I should recently. Inadvisable move, I know. My head always tells me something my heart never wants to follow. James Bay's Bad always makes me cry these days. But then again, most things tend to coat me in this thin layer of melancholic not-sadness nowadays. 

I can't stop seeing these deep pools of sadness in me, their surface calm and still, like a mirror, or frozen ice so clear you imagine you can see the bottom of the pool. But the waters are deceptive--one simple mis-step and down I go, all thoughts of resurfacing gone. 

It makes me wonder how other people process their emotions. If they feel this much too. If they can't put words to their feelings, and yet feel like it's overwhelming but not really at the same time. It's this thin coating of grief and despair, not really that overwhelming in intensity, but so all-encompassing that it leaves a coating on everything you touch, or see, or feel. 

I'm okay. Most days, I am. I laugh, I smile, I joke. There's not an ounce of deceit in my joy. 

But when night descends and I'm alone with my thoughts, the sadness covers me like a worn blanket warm and comforting in its familiarity. 

That's usually when my masochistic side rears up and start playing songs that reopens the scabbing wounds that time is so frantically trying to heal. 

I don't even know what it is I'm grieving, or why this tendency to sink deep into melancholy. 

am I grieving the loss of a person?

is it the lack of companionship?

is it losing that magical feeling of being understood?

was it love?

or was it simply lust and jealousy 

Sometimes I wish I'm not self-sufficient enough to not need anybody in my life. I want so badly to have it become a need. But my pride stops myself from lying convincingly to myself.  

Interludes

It's been more than half a year. You've moved on without me, and I-

I sort of moved on.

Well, if moving on means once in a while I sit in the quiet darkness of my car, in the passenger seat, trying to both remember and forget how it felt to taste your breath, to taste anyone's breath. If it meant feeling completely fine and developing new crushes and then going home and wonder if he's ever gonna make me feel the way you made me feel. If moving on means once in a while I wake up with phantom fingers on my waist with the ghost of warm breaths on my neck.

If moving on means occasionally, in the middle of a conversation, I get hit by the realisation that I'd probably wouldn't ever get that magical feeling of having someone understand and still accept how depraved and terrible I can be, that incomparable feeling of complete unapologeticness and freedom.

So, yes, I guess I sort of moved on.

I've moved forward, away from you. But that doesn't mean I've stopped loving, even though I"m not exactly sure what it is I still love. I suppose I love the feeling of being in love, and being cherished. I moved away from you, but I suspect I moved closer to love. How else do you explain this constant yawning emptiness that yearns to be filled that didn't use to be so prominent?

For someone who doesn't even know what is love, I'm using the word a tad too much.

Perhaps I should just stop wondering so much, and just let things be.