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.