Hopeless Romantic

As we prepare to close out this month of love, romance is still on my mind. Of course it is. I'm a hopeless romantic.

Have you ever thought about that phrase? I just ask, because that's what's keeping me awake right now. I should be sound asleep in bed, getting a good night's rest for what will inevitably be a very long day in the office, tomorrow, but I just keep thinking, "Why IS it so hopeless?" If you read my most recent post, you know that that mental hum accompanies me throughout every moment of my life, but it's times like these (wow, the grammar there)--it's a time like this, when I can't turn it down enough to fall asleep that I really wonder how people function without the mental hum. How do you people keep going, without the constant thoughts?? Do you sometimes just shut down and stop moving until your brain kicks back in?? Digression in progress..

So, tonight, instead of sleeping, I'm sitting in my bathrobe, with my glass of Pink Truck and the world wide interwebs, thinking about the hopelessness of romance. Why IS it so hopeless? I don't know that I'll have an answer to that question by the time I sign off tonight, but I'll at least be keeping myself amused by putting my thoughts into words. The easily bored, quickly distracted, and those who need a concise, three-point outline should check out now...

I know that I am one. A hopeless romantic, that is. Why such a downtrodden prequel to such a grandiose term? I think it works. It's desperate phrasing, and that's how it feels. It's a sigh on the end of a long kiss goodnight. It's a tear for the end of a love story. It's that final resolution of a dissonant chord that makes you kinda miss the dissonance, just a bit. That breathlessness that feeds on the anticipation of a touch is something physical, not just emotional. I don't know. Romance to me isn't the roses and candlelight. But it is. I mean, that's a kind of romance, the prequel to foreplay, I suppose. The seduction scene. But that's not ALL that it is. I see romance everywhere, and it's not all sexual stimulation and rushing endorphins. It's a jointness. Maybe romance is so hopeless because it's so big.

Ok, just TRY to tell me that any of these things is not romantic, and I promise I will immediately cease to hear your voice and mentally hum my way to a happier place than whatever you think you're selling me.

--At the end of The Notebook, as they fall asleep in each others arms...

--The man at the hospital physically feeling the pain of his wife giving birth...

--The young couple at the pricy restaurant. He's sweating with something sparkly in his pocket, and she's glowing, knowing that tonight's the night the story begins all over again...

--The scene in Fireproof where she stays home sick from work and he brings her soup...

--A gentle peck on the cheek over morning coffee...

--A small child who hands his mother a badly bruised dandelion that he picked just for her...

--The man who warms up his wife's car on a cold morning so that she won't be uncomfortable when she takes the kids to school...

--The moment at the end of a long day when there are no more words to be said, when just the knowledge that someone loves you is enough...


OK, so maybe romance doesn't equal love, but that's a part of it, right? It's not always the sexual or seductive, but just the patterns of loving in life. It makes me physically ache inside to see it, and I do know it when I see it. That's why I listen to love songs and watch sappy movies. It's a beauty that sparks a fond desire. But it's not just the desire to receive. It's that swell within your heart that longs to GIVE that to someone else, too. To SHARE that experience with another soul and know that no matter what else happens in life, THAT was real.

Romance isn't every moment. If it was, it wouldn't be special, and it wouldn't be hopeless at all. It is its very fleetingness that makes it so precious, so elusive, so finite... That's it. That's the thing. That's why. I did figure it out before the end of the post. Yay, me. Romance is hopeless because it slips away so quickly, in the bat of an eyelash. So those of us who are hopeless romantics live from romance to romance--not in a pathetic way (well, not always). It's just that those breathless anticipations, when you feel really alive, they help guage the remainder of reality... And the remainder of reality makes sure that you really feel those heightened timeless seconds.

Hopelessly romantic,
L~