addicted to love

When I'm alone, I like to watch romantic movies. Perhaps I do it because it takes away the loneliness. Or perhaps it's because that's when they work best.

When I was younger and used to spend a lot of time with my aunt (some 10 years ago before she got married), I used to wonder why she was 30 and still single. There were some quite obvious reasons, she has a sharp tongue and she's a fussy woman, but I decided it was because she'd indoctrined herself to have stupidly high standards and also to look for something that didn't happen.

She used to read a lot of Mills and Boon books. She had boxes of them, a standing order in fact. She'd lend them to me, and I wondered if she wasn't waiting for this dream guy to come and sweep her off her feet in real life. I understood perfectly well why she liked them. Despite their formulaic nature, they are almost like a sugar rush - the agonising wait for the protagonists to finally come to their senses and admit their undying love for each other. And then it does, and it's happily ever after and you can convince your aching heart that love really must exist in the world and that one day, it will happen to you.

These days I am a lot more cynical. I look at my uncle, the last person in my family to get married. Having had been (sort-of) heartbroken by a girl my age a couple of years ago, he gave in to the pressure of my grandparents and his own laziness to meeting women the conventional way, and married a girl 14 years his junior. They were introduced to each by family, matchmaking meddlers who had his best intentions at heart I guess. Yeah sure, he is now 34 and married, with a gorgeous little baby girl conceived a month into their marriage. Do I think they love each other? Hell no.
Do I believe that they will? Yeah probably. It's possible for love to develop over time, and in his case, even if it goes a bit wrong - she is unlikely to leave. My uncle is financially sound and will ensure her a very comfortable life. So what if she's barely 20?

I feel sorry for her though - to be married so soon without even having lived and loved properly. To have experienced the joy and pain of wanting to be with someone so badly and deeply. To think about them almost every waking moment of the day, and to drift off to sleep with them in your thoughts. To spend time with someone and relive those moments over and over when you are apart. To be constantly checking your phone or email for some sort of word from them and the feeling of elation when there is.

In the last few days I have wondered if that'll be the reason why I'll never be happy in my life. This need to feel touched, moved by love. That aching feeling inside my chest that makes breathing almost difficult. Is it possible to sustain this in a relationship?

I just finished watching a movie that made me both laugh and cry. It was a romance, and a comedy, and a bit of a drama. It's called My Sassy Girl Strangely, it was a guy who recommended it to me - a korean guy - presumably because he totally fancied the girl who plays the main character in it. It did fantastically well in both Korea and Hong Kong in 2001. And in fact, Dreamworks is in the process of remaking it.
It's a wonderful film that I was very touched by. So much so that I spent the latter half in tears - and some of that was from happiness. It's not often a movie can do that. I'm sitting here now listening to a beautiful variation of the Pachelbel's Canon in D by George Winston that was featured in the film. I'd love to be able to get the sheet music and learn to play it. This piece will probably always remind me of the film now.

I feel very lucky. I have the choice and the free will to be able to live my life the way that I think it should be lived. This year I chose to break up a four year relationship against the advice of some. My mum told me that women have to make sacrifices. That if you can find someone who loves you, it should be enough. My ex told me that if we broke up the life that I knew would fall apart. That I was giving everything up on a whim. A sensible compassionate voice in my head told me that I shouldn't watch so many romantic movies. But I couldn't ignore the ache in my heart. I believe in love. I can't help myself. If you can't be with someone who fills that gap - then why bother?