Unromatically Romantic.

I've been labelled before-haven't we all? But Unromantic must be one I hold the greatest grudge against. That in particular, gently tossed at me years ago, felt like a baseball thrown at full speed into my nose. Unromantic- a label that would cause a serious allergic reaction to many an artist, I should think. For it evokes drabness, suggests a lack of creativity, impulse, life and spontaneity- everything an artist wouldn't be caught dead being associated with.

"That's UNTRUE." I defended myself, with great vehemence, as if it were slander.



But I could understand the misunderstanding, for my hatred towards love movies burns with a hellish passion which could spark a sodden matchstick into flames. I love a good story. And I'm an advocate for true love the way a tree-hugger may be for saving the earth. I would listen to a True love story any day, even gush and listen in wide-eyed wonder to it- but you'd have to chain my limbs and pry my eyes open with toothpicks to make me watch a Fictional love film without going into some sort of epileptic spasm.

Love stories, construed and weaved by pining minds which throw themselves into them with creative fervency, adding layers and layers of illusions, yearnings, lost hopes and fantasial endings seem to me a travesty of the entire notion of love itself.


I had just received news of another break-up a few days ago when a friend aptly declared this to be break-up season officially. I agreed, for I needed more than one hand to count the number of them I heard of recently.

It made me think, and only deepened my conviction that we're so young- just, so young. Often, I wondered if it were not so much incompatibility as much as timing which separated people eventually. I wondered if it were not the terribly prolonged period of courtship which led to both parties taking each other for granted, their sinking into a place of familiarity, losing the shimmer of captivation. With the season of break-ups coinciding with our turning 21, I wondered if it were not the milestone of entering a new phase of adulthood which made some feel oppressed, trapped and constrained by a clingy adolescent affection, which they wanted to grow out of. It made me wonder if entering adulthood made some long in nostalgia for the feelings of an enchantment long past, wondering if the present sullen stagnation were all there was to this grand thing called Love.

After all the imaginings, longings and expectations of our own versions of romantic love, adding to them ornate details from love movies and reading love novels of elope, heroism and extravagance, I wonder if one's own fantasial imaginings had brought us to a place of such colossal vitality and expectation that made our reality an utter disappointment.

And perhaps, that's why I don't fancy watching romantic fiction.


Just two days ago, as I walked along town as a volunteer to help share the Christmas Story with passers-by, I watched hand-holding couples as they walked by, some with bouquets, most completely oblivious to everything around them. Some had glazed gazes over their juvenile faces, full of the adoration only puppy love brings, where one revalues everything in the world according to the measure of response it draws from the other's well-loved eyes. I wondered if it may only be a matter of time before one of them felt penned in, tied down, stifled.

Once, a friend confronted me about this, as we discussed what it was that we were unready for. The answer surprised us. And I wondered if it were not the same answer to why so many teenage romances fall apart eventually, when the sparkling novelty of it all wears out. More than conflict, perhaps, was it disappointment?

Disappointment that reality didn't match up to the thousands of love stories one had read, watched, dreamt about, that no one told them the aftermath of "happily ever after", that no one expected that loving another could be so humbling, down-to-earth and plain.

I'd met couples who were off to a heady start, only to come to an abrupt end after the fire fizzed out. Once, a missionary told me, " We never thought we'd marry each other. We looked so unlikely- he's short, I'm tall, he never really struck me as good-looking at all, and I was going out with many other boys who seemed far more charming... but you know, when you're going to do mission work for the rest of your life with someone, it's not the heady feelings which'll see you through the tough times, but as plain as it sounds, the strength of your friendship and vision you share. We're best friends, and that's what sees you through."

I wondered, why the head-over-heels, crazy-in-love kind of experience often had such a short lifespan, why the long-lasting sort often had such a subtle, quiet face- and if they were mutually exclusive. I wondered if I'd be unlucky enough to land in the first, disappointed in the latter, and if it were possible to have both.


Disappointment. It is the discontentment which kills.


Love comes in so many forms, or so I've heard- in the way he does the dishes, the way she lets him drive without interrupting, the way he listens to her rant because it's the time of the month, the way she swallows her pride so they don't get into an argument. And I don't want any star-studded movie film or bestselling fiction book to define the shape of it for me, raise any expectations unintentionally, kill what already may be pretty darn close to perfect- just because my own love found doesn't look like what's on the big screen, or smell like half of the puffed-up dream I dreamed up from Disney.


Is it not more romantic to be content, than to constantly be reminded of the stark contrast between one's reality and fantasy on the big screen, albeit unintentionally? If love is so great, why make it fiction?


Maybe I'm afraid of disappointment, still. Maybe I'm not ready. Perhaps I don't even know what I'm talking about since I don't have first-hand experience. Or maybe, I'm just plain unromantic-


- though really, I hardly think so.