Meeting A New Romantic

A few weeks ago, the strangest thing happened to me: I fell in love. We feel like a fairytale, but I am not one to dream about storybook love. The dreams I’ve returned to for years have no romantic plot lines. Prince Charming is a nameless side character if he makes an appearance at all. Sure, dreams are silly and inconsistent phenomena, but, in my sleep-induced delusions, a few elements persist.

I dream about selling novels to publishers on thirtieth-birthday-eves. And of being where the news is, ready to make sure future history books remember it. Often, I fall into a daze on the M101 on my way home from class, thinking about what it would feel like to pay the rent talking about poetry. I think about the poets who convinced me to see the future in nightingales and Grecian urns. I listened when one told me that the west wind would carry me to the east coast. I’d always dreamed of being stranded in New York City.

Once when I was walking through Soho, I passed by a wedding dress shop. Then, on that day, I closed my eyes and saw my face on the mannequin in the window. I saw flower petals fluttering mid-air and felt the breeze in my loose “casual” hair. But the vision faded when I reached the next storefront. A citrusy air wafted out of a slightly propped-open door, and suddenly I was dreaming of smoothies.

I’ve been in love before, so I knew that when I fell in love again, old stolen glances and yesterday’s rum-fueled twilight dives would play on loop in my head. But the last time I was in love, I didn’t know that a person could love more than just people. I didn’t know that I would fall deeply, madly, in love with Socratic conversations about the English Romantics and whether Othello is a statement or a facade. I couldn’t imagine getting a love-sick-like rush from reporting on the fight to protect public housing. The last time I was in love, I wouldn’t have thought to dream of anything but the people I was in love with.

At that period of my life-- back when my idea of the perfect day was gossiping about boys over Takis and instant ramen in a parking garage on the California coast-- I wasn’t in love with my life, or myself. Then, it was always someone else that brought light to my life. Though my best friend’s laughter and my brother’s taste in music still brighten my every day, I do not want to be that girl again.

I won’t lose the passion I found in this life I built all on my own.

The person I fell in love with is worth setting some of that passion aside. We are worth the hours I’ve lost with great literature and my probably-evil black cat. But we cannot be who we are together if I lose sight of who I am alone. So, as I sit on the corner of Mercer and W 4th Street, I’ve decided I won’t. I’ve decided that I will continue to write like I did before love poems began falling out of my brain and onto every nearby slip of paper. I will sit on downtown street corners, drinking smoothies I cannot afford, and spending my words on the people who pass by, and the thoughts they inspire.

I am 21 years old and a recent resident of a city that’s claim to fame is insomnia. I study literature and journalism when I am not busy serving drinks at a jazz club downtown and being a friend. I love being slightly sunburnt, the smell of jasmine, and dancing whenever and wherever music plays. I’ve had the best and worst days of my life in dimly lit parks. And, now, because of them, I feel capable of being in love and writing about everything else.

Signed,

A New Romantic