this made me cry TT__TT as someone who feels similarly about the concept of romantic love but is also enamoured by the place it takes in nearly all the media i have ever loved and consumed, i absolutely adore how you think about romance. i love how you let yourself be taught by others on what love is, how you let romantic love be this loose, continually evolving definition in your mind and marvel at all the different ways people live it. i find that i struggle and get stuck on the fact that "this is something i don't experience" so much that i forget to admire and let myself learn about just how beautiful and complex and surprising romance can be in the people and stories around me.
the trope of the "single spark" of human-to-human connection snowballing erratically and helplessly into this oversized infatuation someone ends up carrying around with them has always baffled me to the point where i read it with the thrill but also implausibility i'd use to read fantasy, but seeing the way you reframed it here is just so heartwarming and dare i say... loving. i love this: "The process of making romanticization into romance!" and this: "the high of knowing there is someone out there different from what you’ve always known." what a beautiful reframing of the "interesting..." trope!!! the fact that it is rather that you're re-discovering yourself through the unknown of another person's connection with you!
i loved this so much, thank you for your beautiful writing as always. i feel very healed and warm inside after reading this :)
your writing is always fun!! :] and that’s okay because it’ll probably take me a while to get ‘round to reading it anyway! the line about finding a thousand more reasons to love someone so long as you’ve found one just made me wanna cry a little bit so it feels like i should at least give the whole piece a chance <3 thank YOU for replying aaaa!!
i've been meaning to read this for some time & i'm so glad i finally did. it's funny how i always read things exactly when i need to hear them the most.
i relate so much to what you said in so many ways. in how romantic love seems like this thing that exists outside of myself, even despite my proven ability to live inside it. like i'm a giddy toddler shaking a snowglobe and observing shoujo protagonists hold hands for the first time, a million times over. i could certainly psychoanalyze this, and there would be truth in saying i'm the way i am because of what's wrong with me.
the weight of romance feels less tangible in my hands than any other love; and there's many reasons that could make their case for why i feel that way, even when i have such affection for it in the stories i read, like yourself.
i love the way you compared love to language. because it is. not in the "five love languages" way necessarily, but in the way that it's something that builds and changes and shifts (and sometimes withers and dies) over time. when you talk about your perception of romantic love... it resonates with me so much because of how simultaneously distant and intimate i feel with it. and how i don't exactly understand why we think of romantic love as this great big, the-very-most-important, put it on a pedestal, commemorate it with a statue type thing; yet i still do understand why it means so much to everyone, especially because it means just as much to me. except it doesn't. but actually it does.
very confusing and not at all.
ahhh i hope my comment doesn't read like nonsense, so i'll stop here. but this was lovely, your writing is so nice & evocative. it was a joy to read this <3 thanks so much for writing
this made me cry TT__TT as someone who feels similarly about the concept of romantic love but is also enamoured by the place it takes in nearly all the media i have ever loved and consumed, i absolutely adore how you think about romance. i love how you let yourself be taught by others on what love is, how you let romantic love be this loose, continually evolving definition in your mind and marvel at all the different ways people live it. i find that i struggle and get stuck on the fact that "this is something i don't experience" so much that i forget to admire and let myself learn about just how beautiful and complex and surprising romance can be in the people and stories around me.
the trope of the "single spark" of human-to-human connection snowballing erratically and helplessly into this oversized infatuation someone ends up carrying around with them has always baffled me to the point where i read it with the thrill but also implausibility i'd use to read fantasy, but seeing the way you reframed it here is just so heartwarming and dare i say... loving. i love this: "The process of making romanticization into romance!" and this: "the high of knowing there is someone out there different from what you’ve always known." what a beautiful reframing of the "interesting..." trope!!! the fact that it is rather that you're re-discovering yourself through the unknown of another person's connection with you!
i loved this so much, thank you for your beautiful writing as always. i feel very healed and warm inside after reading this :)
your writing is always fun!! :] and that’s okay because it’ll probably take me a while to get ‘round to reading it anyway! the line about finding a thousand more reasons to love someone so long as you’ve found one just made me wanna cry a little bit so it feels like i should at least give the whole piece a chance <3 thank YOU for replying aaaa!!
this was so fun to read! gonna go read truth or dare now because you’ve intrigued me <3
i've been meaning to read this for some time & i'm so glad i finally did. it's funny how i always read things exactly when i need to hear them the most.
i relate so much to what you said in so many ways. in how romantic love seems like this thing that exists outside of myself, even despite my proven ability to live inside it. like i'm a giddy toddler shaking a snowglobe and observing shoujo protagonists hold hands for the first time, a million times over. i could certainly psychoanalyze this, and there would be truth in saying i'm the way i am because of what's wrong with me.
the weight of romance feels less tangible in my hands than any other love; and there's many reasons that could make their case for why i feel that way, even when i have such affection for it in the stories i read, like yourself.
i love the way you compared love to language. because it is. not in the "five love languages" way necessarily, but in the way that it's something that builds and changes and shifts (and sometimes withers and dies) over time. when you talk about your perception of romantic love... it resonates with me so much because of how simultaneously distant and intimate i feel with it. and how i don't exactly understand why we think of romantic love as this great big, the-very-most-important, put it on a pedestal, commemorate it with a statue type thing; yet i still do understand why it means so much to everyone, especially because it means just as much to me. except it doesn't. but actually it does.
very confusing and not at all.
ahhh i hope my comment doesn't read like nonsense, so i'll stop here. but this was lovely, your writing is so nice & evocative. it was a joy to read this <3 thanks so much for writing