Romance? Love?

I wanted to write this during Valentine's day but then my mind was else where as you could see by my previous post.

I'm going to be 20 this year. 20!! Gosh I'm old...

I've been doing a lot of reading lately, mostly story involving romance. That's not new though since I've always been interested in those.

People like readings stories about what is missing in their lives. I remember vividly as I first saw this in an Archie comic book.
I wonder if it is true?

I'm at the age where most of my peers are dating or at least have dated. Me, well I'm happily single. Well, I think I'm happily single.

I like reading romance novel because truthfully, it is so sweet. Sure there are conflicts but in the end (normally except when you are reading Nicholas Spark's books though)there is a happy ending, a sweet victory for love. You get to be a spectator in witnessing other's journey for their other half and for me, that's very intriguing makes my heart melt in a gooey happy kind of way.

I see my friends around me, in their conquest of love, whether they are dating or pursuing someone. I admire their tenacity and most importantly their courage to take this leap of faith to trust the other with their heart. Their tone when they are talking about that person, the emoticons that they put in their sentences regarding that person, the way they blush, they seem to be immerse in their own world, albeit a small world of two but I have a feeling no one would complain.

To tell the truth I have never felt so strongly about anyone before like my friends had. Sure I had crushes but they were so much less intense than the ones my friends experience. I don't dream about them, I don't have the urge to talk to them after school, I don't grin like a love struck idiot when I think about that person. Told you, just small ones.

The only one time that I felt that my crush was different than the other was when I was 15. The girl whom I liked was going away to another country and I felt really sad. Well, the intensity of the sadness actually surprised me but then it wasn't like I was crying or depressed, just moderately sad, like someone banned me from eating ice cream for a month kind of sad. Before she left, I gave her a key chain shaped like a heart with a four leaf clover inside it. I think wrapped it in my confession letter but I forgot if I really wrote down I liked her a lot in that letter. That was the only one I felt the closest of falling in love.

Then again, I got used to her absence and I didn't cry or anything. I missed her a great deal though but it was like I was losing a great friend rather than my other half.

Here I hear my friend talking about their crushes and it sank it. "Oh, it is how crushes worked?" Because the way they described was so much more intense that I felt, more urgent, more eagerness oozing out of their words. I don't think it was lust, I think it was love, albeit I'm still not that sure what kind of love it was but it heck wasn't the love I've felt before.

I know reading too much romantic novels is a bad thing because it fills you up with ridiculous ideas of love and romance. No one can be perfect and no one knows about all the right things to do. Even so I still find myself deeply immersed in this illusion, not wanting to break free.

Love...