I am not a big fan of love stories, love songs, or anything generally sappy.. All things in that particular realm makes me want to retch.  I just do do love.  Can’t business with it. However, this wasn’t always the case. There was a time when I was in love with love. 

 cheesy!

Flash back to my late teens and early 20’s. I was a loveaholic. I read all sorts of cheesy chinchy romantic novels. Like.. Terrible ones. Harlequin romance novels to be exact. I would voraciously consume them as if they were sustenance for my very life. Any and all romantic comedies I would drag my poor boyfriend Drexel to. I so feel bad for him because he was forced to watch Legends of the Fall more times than any man should. I just loved love. I lived and breathed love. Valentine’s day was my favorite holiday. The entire apartment would be decked out in pink and red. It was like some sort of Vegas Drag Queen explosion of sparkles, sequins, crystals and over the topness all dedicated to.. LOVE and I was in love with it. 

Somewhere, along my pathway I got jaded.  I learned that men were not like those heroes in the novels. They do not have all the answers and don’t rely on them to save the day. I could save my own damn day more efficiently than a man ever could with much less bitching.  There was no way to keep up the romance which movies and fairy tales driven by dominant culture and pushed by consumerism. Every day wasn’t Valentine’s day, a wedding day, Christmas, or my birthday. There are no happy endings, which wrap up a tragic event which will enviably happen. Tragedies could carry on strong for months years even with no end in sight, unlike in movies and books where they are all neatly packaged up with a positive conclusion after a period of mild suffering. Real life is messy. Real life doesn't always reward the heroine. Yep By my mid twenties I was completely jaded. That is when it all came to a screeching halt for me. Love didn’t live here anymore.

I stopped watching romantic comedies. They were replaced with morose foreign films, which I deemed more realistic as they usually lacked happy endings. I started listening to other genres of music. If a love song came on the radio, I would quickly change the station mumbling this is bullshit underneath my breath.  The grunge movement was going strong in one ear and misogynistic rap in the other. Those sappy novels and books of poetry were dropped off at the thrift store and novels by Anne Rice dominated my bookshelves.  I would sourly and bitterly have all sorts of biting comments about love and people in love. Calling then Sally Candypants and negating their feelings as a fleeting stage.  My disbelief in love is epic and unwavering. Yeah. I gave up on love. I learned that love was an abstract. An ideal. An intangible. An unobtainable fantasy. 

Now.. On the heels of a totally disastrous marriage, I am craving love and romance again. Like.. Seeking it out. Trying to surround myself with beauty. Surrounding myself with love. All things positive of love and light I am gravitating towards. Perhaps I have been in a dark place too long and it was only a matter of time till I return to my natural stasis of being cuddled, kissed, hugged, and loved. 

Today I move forward towards love. The feeling of cotton candy on your tongue and butterflies swirling round your head. Twirling till you get dizzy and falling down on the most plush of fresh cut grass. The sweet tang of lemonade and the rush of being on a roller coaster. The wonderment of children listening to a good book and the freedom of bubbles blowing in the wind. To feel light as pink balloons in the breeze. The smell of white flowers and dances of ballerinas. The sound of rain on the roof and fuzzy warm slippers on my feet. Hot chocolate in my tummy and lips swollen from passionate kisses. The feel of gossamer kisses on my skin and a melody in my heart. Poetry imprinted in my soul, which burns like molten lava, yet never hurts.   These are the feelings I seek. To me that is what I recall love feels like. I am ready to feel it again.  I have lived through the tragedy so now I want my happy ending wrap up. Complete with a pink sparkly bow.

FIN

Secretly I never gave up on having my own personal Love Jones experience.