It’s no secret: I’m a romantic.
One look at my bedroom gives me away. My walls are plastered with movie posters, from “Titanic” and “Say Anything” to “Romeo and Juliet.” My desk drawers overflow with poetry-filled notebooks. Roses adorn every nook and cranny, and my bookshelf holds not one but four copies of “Anne of Green Gables.”
This is the way I was always going to be. I’m a romantic by nature, made hopeless by society.
I must have heard the story of how my parents met a million times growing up, and I loved it every time: a true tale of love at first sight. The kind you only find in fairy tales and old movies today.
My parents showed me what love should be, but it took me years to understand that what love should be and what love is are often two very different things.
What happened to John Cusack holding a boombox outside your window? To having someone see every one of your flaws and being loved more, not in spite of but because of them?
The last boy I dated couldn’t even tell you the color of my eyes.
I’m starting to think social media killed that kind of romance, the kind that defies the stars. Instead of grand gestures, we post cryptic song lyrics on our Instagram stories. Instead of meeting people organically, we quick-add on Snapchat.
Unfortunately, it must be said: sending me random snaps of your shoulder does not a love story make.
Hopeless or not, I don’t want to change, and I’m not sure I could if I tried. I’ll keep searching for the kind of love I see in the movies, the kind I see in my parents, for as long as it takes. In the meantime, I’m coming to terms with the fact that my life is not a romance movie.
And guess what? Neither is yours.
A person’s life cannot be contained within one genre, and it cannot be condensed into a couple of hours. As the main character in our own lives, we are given the opportunity to experience all of it: comedy, drama, horror, adventure and, yes, also romance.
I may be a romantic and an apparently hopeless one at that, but I am so many other things too. And this, above all: to myself, I am true.
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