Musings of a Lover Girl

I’ve been bitten by the yearning bug and it shows

Hello friend,

Lately, love of the romantic kind has been elusive. I wish I could say that it didn’t bother me, but it does. I’m just a girl, raised in the same concoction of Julia Roberts movies and cheesy rom-coms of the early 2000s. I thought that by 27, I’d have found someone to love.

I once read a poem about having a train station heart, and it brought me down to my knees. I felt surgically cut. Like a scalpel was running down the top layer of my skin into the layer of fat underneath, piercing through the fibrous muscles and straight into my internal organs. My insides were laid bare by a few words that encapsulated what it felt like to be in your 20s and desperately yearning for love.

I’ve always been a hopeless romantic, although lately it’s been inching closer to being more hopeless than romantic. I catch myself feeling like there’s something severely lacking in my life because I didn’t fall in love with someone before I turned 22. I feel as though I missed out on a formative period where everyone was supposed to find the love of their lives. I was too busy getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder and watching questionable TV.

People like to say don’t worry you’ll find someone in the wild. I think those people found their other halves that way. It’s not that I’m losing faith, I’m just living in a small island that feels a bit smaller as most people my age are pretty much taken.

The dating apps don’t help either. Every participant develops an abhorrent personality because none of it feels real. These apps were designed to gamify dating and reward detachment, something even I’ve been guilty of. It’s hard to get attached to an image on a screen, people don’t feel like people. They are more like Pokemon cards to collect. 

I want to connect. I want to look at people through my (prescription) lenses and see the flaws that you can only appreciate when you meet in real life. When you give each other space to just exist with bare scars and comforting silence. I want to sketch this person in my head and know every blemish on their face. I want to fall in love with every twinkle and crinkle in their eyes. I want to know who they are. 

So maybe I’m still a little bit of a romantic.

For now, while I’m daydreaming about the possibilities of connecting intimately with my dream life partner, I will also choose to connect and romanticize the people whose faces I can see. I will laugh with my whole body underneath a smiling moon with people who choose me for nothing more than my company. I will eat good food and share my thoughts and silliness with people who give me space. I will sing and scream and find the rhythm embedded in my bones. I will fill my life with goodness, love and intimacy. The kind that engulfs me.

And I hope, desperately, that when my person comes, I will continue to have the bonds I’ve cultivated before I ever met them.

To daydreaming and still living,

Dhan xx