Romantic love, the stuff of great cheesy movies has been a thing that fascinates the fresh youth.

I do suppose that with age and experience people get a much more realistic grasp of the idea but that comes when one takes the time to notice and learn that relationships do take some level of mutual connection, respect, space and commitment.

But love in our youth has been so tarnished by misrepresentations that it could have easily passed off the fleeting horizon that escapes just as you thought you had reached it.

In teenage years as well as our early adulthood, love is the magic word that can easily spark conversation, albeit in a wishy washy sort of way, especially if one has never experienced it directly and that if it's available for the taking, one would take it as if grabbing for an aromatic chocolate cupcake recently baked.

I remember not one or two, but a little too many borderline-fantasy talks with my best friend in college about how she would meet the perfect guy that will leave her more than just smitten. My stories were meticulously detailed you'd think it was real. I'd love to think that we had a real good blast concocting tales of her upcoming love-dive and the great things that it surely would bring. To say that it was silly, was a sillier understatement. We lived for these mental excursions.


Now you mustn't feel like I've set the tone that I have quietly fallen out of love, with 'love'. It's just that I do not view it as something so magical that it seems to reside in the realms of that secret space inside my skull that by the time it gets real in reality, it pales by comparison.

It was the notion of it, the abstraction of love that nagged at me during my youth. Blame it on the movies, gut-killing sappy love songs and a little gift of melancholy, I was in love with an idea that laid hibernating in the quiet space in my mind. I had no business in the practical aspect of relationship building, who was I kidding!

It's almost ironic that romantic love takes precedence over love for all aspects of our lives when as kids, we were taught to love people who love us, games and hobbies, cartoons and old wrinkly people. To the young and hormonally-driven, it can be a time of all sorts of intense emotions. It is a time of the many firsts and thus, has our hearts and minds in a state of hazy compulsion so much so that when we love, we love extremely. We hate with equal, if not more, animosity.

Emotions that we thought never existed suddenly paid us a bitter visit - jealousy, vengeance, insecurity, and all of their fear-instilling buddies were within seconds away, to our greatest fright. How could this be - we were so pure, so extremely innocent and angelic.


Smacked in the middle of it all then was loathing. Thoughts running back and forth telling us 'we don't deserve to be loved', 'who could ever truly love us if they really see us for what we were' and etc. It was romantic love that we desired, not these angry ghosts of hellish emotions. Somehow though, through no apparent faults of ours, we were channeled to go through a twisted dark period of catharsis instead of experiencing the much-popularized happy-ever-after.

Before long, the mental drain would conclude our love sick state and indifference coupled with mellowness would set it. Love was delicious as long as it stayed in the limits of the mind, tended by sweet fantasies and that was it. I had planted the stories of love only to sweep it back under the rug to safeguard myself from experiencing it in a real way. Reality carried way too much and that was scary. So I shied away from all of its harsh rough-edge glory, peeking at it a snippet at a time. I bet you did too.

Image Credit:
About Love by Irene Sheri
Shadow Of Love by Irene Sheri
Mellow Yellow by Bobbie Mac