Sad, beautiful, tragic
By MOLLY THOMPSON – mmtthompson@ucdavis.edu
I am the poster child for a specific subset of my generation: those of us who grew up with our heads in the clouds. We spent our youth running through backyard fields — in our minds, frolicking through fairytale kingdoms. I worshipped the Pevensie kids in “The Chronicles of Narnia,” and I was wholly convinced that I would grow up to be Annabeth Chase from the “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” series. I spent my formative years immersing myself in Taylor Swift’s discography, meaning that the brain I grew into is practically forged from the lyrics “How You Get the Girl” and “Sparks Fly.” To my very core, I’m a hopeless romantic.
I’m a daydreamer — I love grandeur, idealism and melancholia. I love riding the train just to stare out the window and lose myself with a carefully curated playlist. I love falling asleep to fictitious scenes of my own design, as I play them out in my mind. I love fantasy, glamour and revelry. Let’s call a spade a spade: I’m absolutely delusional.
Modern collegiate culture, as much as I love it, decidedly does not cater to my illusory tendencies. Romance used to mean idealistic (of course, it still does in the literal sense), but now it seems to encompass flash-flood flings, petty games and the hellish fate of being left “on read.”
Before I get too far into this, let me get off my high horse for a second; I’m not trying to place myself above all of this. I’ve spent as much time deep in the throes of timing my texts to save face as the next girl (reader, there was no face to be saved). But that doesn’t mean I don’t still yearn to experience the thrills that inspired the entire “Speak Now” album. Yes, yearn. It’s ostentatious, I know, but it’s true. C’est la vie.
So, what’s a girl to do when current societal expectations don’t match her level of delusional fantasy? God only knows I’m less qualified to provide advice than commiseration, but I do have thoughts on the matter.
Firstly, I think the biggest thing we all need to do is take a deep breath. There comes this fear of missing out (FOMO): of never being able to fulfill expectations. I get a periodic sensation of falling behind because I’m not as engaged in the contemporary (or any) dating scene as much as I perceive my peers to be. But even if that’s true, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The way that I try to see it, not having a lot of romantic prospects or experience (even if it doesn’t feel like a choice) isn’t a reflection of one’s lack of value or desirability, but rather a result of having high standards and specific intentions. You’re not undateable, you’re choosy. And honestly, that’s a point in your favor. You’re not wasting your time or losing out on missed opportunities — it’s quite the opposite. You’re saving yourself from situations that aren’t actually what you long for while keeping yourself open to the opportunities that will fulfill your heart’s desires. After all, if you’re involved in a relationship — or even less dignifying, a situationship — just for the sake of it, you’re going to miss out on the other shooting stars that could have swept you off your feet.
The beauty of being a daydreamer is that no one else will appreciate the idealism of romance as deeply as we do. Details — as small as a poetic combination of words or eye contact with the perfect charge of lasciviousness — hold so much more weight when you’re afflicted by chronic flights of fancy. The thought “Why me?” (or maybe worse, the “Why not me?”) can be devastating, but the depth of it will be rivaled by the starburst of elation when your time finally comes.
To love deeply is to wallow profoundly, but it takes a certain type of person to find so much joy in the first place. Most of the time, the experiences I feel like I’m missing out on don’t yield that — I’m just waiting for my moment. The best thing about being a hopeless romantic is that, when the hopelessness subsides, there’s so much space to be filled with rhapsody.
I think there’s hope in the “not yet” of it all. No, I haven’t had a whole lot of romance in my life yet, but how exciting is it to think that it’s all still to come? There’s so much to look forward to, like a luminescent glow of the rising sun peeking over the horizon.
A glass half empty is just as legitimate as a glass half full; A perceived lack of romantic attention can just as easily be the perfect canvas to be painted with the radiant purple pinks of future stories — a veritable cradle of endless possibility.
Written by: Molly Thompson — mmtthompson@ucdavis.edu
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