Love. Love. Love

Love can be verbal or abstract. It can make one feel like they’re floating in paradise, or make them blind to what’s in front of them, which could be disastrous. I ask myself, am I ready to love?

For the past month, I have been watching romance movies and reading romance books, trying to find something common in how the main characters find love. While the women are different, all of them are career-driven, smart, beautiful and most certainly have different opinions about the right guy for them. I see them walking on unchartered grounds with their hearts on their sleeves. Others build stone walls around them with spikes sticking out of them. Some don’t see what’s in front of them, while others turn the other way because they don’t feel that they are good enough.

Now, I’m not an expert on love, and I know I’m only 19 and, as a result, some people will say it’s alright for me not to know anything about love because I have never fallen in love. But that’s absurd! I’m a lover of romance and I mostly write stories about people falling in love. While that is true, though, I still don’t know love in feeling. I only know it through what others have told me about it. I know it through the words that writers use to describe how their characters are feeling; through the melodies of R&B songs; and through the abstract photographs that depict what love should look like. One day I might find out, but right now I’m only questioning if love is for me.

So let me paint a picture in your head. We have Cindy. She is the epitome of beauty, hard-work and love. Cindy goes on a date with a guy she met at a coffee shop. They hit it off on their first date, and, five dates later, Cindy is in love. As a result of this, they decide to get a title for their relationship status: Girlfriend and boyfriend. Little does Cindy know that she is setting herself up for heartbreak. The guy turns out to be a complete disaster; a cheat.

Now, I know you don’t go into a relationship guaranteed everlasting love, and that there are never any warning signs. However, should Cindy have fallen in love? Why did she take it to the next step of titles when she had only been on five\six dates? In the end, she never recovered because she was in ‘love’ with him.

The common thread with these romance movies and novels is that they all have happy endings. In real life, though, one might not recover from loving someone blindly. That heartache leaves a dent in your heart, and I have seen it. Not the dent itself, but the aftermath. People become shallow and build spiked ten foot stone walls around them as a way to help them survive. As soon as someone else tries to break that wall with a sledgehammer, they recoil. They don’t give it a chance, and never repair their dents.

I want to know how it feels like to love someone so deeply that their flaws look beautiful in my eyes. To love without fearing that something bad might happen. I am still too young (or so say my aunts), but shouldn’t I get over the inevitable heartbreak now, when I’m young and dumb, than when I’m old and wise? I don’t know, but this is just my opinion. Whenever I give a friend advice about their relationship and how to overcome breakup, I’m brazen because I don’t know what it’s like to have your heart handed back to you. If I had that experience, my knowledge would be greatly appreciated. I want to love, but is it really for me?

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