As a young girl, a child you can say, I was all about romance and love stories and as lovergirl as any maiden. Generous, profuse in the way I poured love into life and others.
Then there was a phase - inevitable in the coming of age seasons of our lives - where I stopped listening to love songs, stopped watching the romcoms and reading the novels. To some extent, I may have done the usual thing that men especially so love to do - escaping the painful initiation of heartbreak with, “I think love isn’t even real, and...” *insert a thousand empty intellectualisations that are just excuses to avoid feeling it all as a natural part of the human experience.*
I’m only now realising that the REAL adult thing to do is taking full responsibility for the opening of my heart, because no one else can, will or should.
The real adult thing is to take responsibility in our own remaking, our own recreation, as many times as it takes, like working with clay. We’ll never get it “done,” nor “right,” in this lifetime, honestly, and we’re only here to enjoy the creative process. Over and over again, because what else is life if not midwifing our rebirths and evolutions, especially those brought by lovers in different seasons, who enter our lives for fated reasons?
The real adult thing is to recognise how I create my life, through the stories I hold within and call “reality.”
The real adult thing, the brave thing, the tenacious thing, the unbelievably courageous thing, is to take responsibility for the quality of my life by taking responsibility for healing, softening and opening my heart, and realising my heart’s precious worth in being maintained, nourished and taken care of so.
The real adult thing is attuning to the love stories, the romance, and being the embodiment of love on earth anyway, instead of attuning to a million reasons to keep being brittle, bitter and rotting inside my hard, hurt shell. Instead of amplifying yet another mindless man-hating conversation.
I am realising now that the child wasn’t the lovergirl in me,
And that it wasn’t exactly “grown-up” to be stagnantly marinating in cynicism brine, protecting myself from “unrealistic” things like romance.
I realise that it is only a petulant child that would sit there, bitter, waiting for someone to come in and convince her - against her locked latches, against her every wrestle and tackle - that love is indeed real.
That kindness, softness, romance, care, they’re all real.
Like a lovely friend, Aleesha Simone, recently said in a thread on love, having an open heart is not for the weak. Only a petulant child would sit there, dried up, closed off, arms closed, posture crouched, heart closed, refusing to allow love in - in an elaborate tantrum as expression of their wounding.
I often wonder why we only ever think that pain, darkness, grit and hardship are “realistic” or “real,” and this especially comes up for me in the way we look at art and media. Why is it only “real” when there’s a woman being assaulted, crimes being committed, or someone’s awfully poor and going thru the wringer?
Beauty is also real. A cat purring is also real. Having a laugh in the kitchen after a tough day is also real. Every sunrise and every new moon being a new beginning is also real.
Every playlist that heals you. Music, roses, rabbits, whispers, kisses, synchronicity, the exchange of a cheeky, knowing look, an inside joke, a perfectly ripe fruit, a moment of belonging, every magnificent textile ever handwoven and hand embroidered for months on end. All real. That glow in your heart when you walk back home from meeting a friend, and all the problems of your life seem more like black spots on a windshield and less like black holes that will definitely consume you. That feeling when you see a message waiting for you from that one person and you just know this one likes you back. They’re all real too. Every moment of your heart slightly bursting with joy is as real as every misery humans have ever endured.
There is so much softness, love, nourishment, nurturing and goodness in this world that is just as real and authentic and realistic as the suffering is.
Why don’t we think it’s real enough when we encounter joy? Synchronicity? Delicious anticipation?
The grit, the courage, the radical act of self-reverence, is to be open to love again, and to keep our heart soft for ourselves more than anyone else - even in a world full of contrast and weirdos and dusty ass boys who seem to know no more about courtship than Liking your story (!??)
This finite life of mine deserves to be lived in the frequency of romance, beauty and love. It’s boring, tiring, draining, immature and just silly to try to make ”not needing/wanting anyone and not believing in romance and love” a Grown Up, Cool thing anymore.
Why do avoidants of all kinds - avoidantly attached people, avoiders of intimacy, avoiders of love - and especially the ones with the willingness to access only as much emotional depth as a rain puddle, get to have everything they ever do labelled as Cool, anyway?
It’s just so weak to be resigned to bitterness, cynicism and sweeping blanket statements that the entire world (or dating scene, or population of men) is bad out there.
And I’m beginning to feel like the bravest, most grown up, most “I choose my life’s unfolding, I create the trajectory of my reality instead of being a passive victim to life and my life happens for me and not to me” thing I can ever do is to listen to all the Hindi love songs again, finally read Song of Achilles, sit with my heart chakra, be someone who loves love and watch the romantic happy endings, because they’re all very real. Love is real, and it’s everything, and I don’t need anybody to prove that to me, because I intend on being the very embodiment of love myself, first.
This reminded me of a quote I love “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time”
There is so much beauty in being open to love, romantic and cosmic ✨
It’s too beautiful :’)