Have I Ever Been In Love?

(The Account of a Pocketbook Love-Nut)

Mood: Reflective
Music: Little Wonders by Rob Thomas

The answer is no.

Why?

Well, you have to have a clear definition of what love is before you can answer that question. The question is similar to the question, Have you really lived?

I am in a philosophical mood today because it is 5 in Sunday morning and I have to accompany my sister to take her SATT at WVSU. I also have to check my results for the M.A. Ed.

What is love?

Reading a lot of romance pocketbooks really ruins a person’s proper perspective of love and life. I guess I got a nasty overdose of romances recently and I have come to understand that those books are actually out of this world-modern-day-fairy-tales and like fairy tales; they are so untrue and focused on an overabundance of clichés.

Oh well, they are entertaining and rather enervating.

Well, to a pocketbook junkie like myself, love is:

ü A never ending love-affair
ü A rare, overwhelming emotional upheaval that turns your world upside down
ü An exciting roller-coaster ride
ü A happily-ever after entanglement with a single man
ü Is possible only with a rich, handsome man who is always caring and understanding
ü Starts with clanging bells or a bang

My teacher’sin highschool used to warn my mother about my propensity to read English romance pocketbooks (mostly harlequin/mills and boon titles or zebra romances or whatever there is basta mabasa).

They told my mom that my reading interest would get me knocked up and before she knows it, I would turn up on her doorstep with a baby in my arm.

Boohoo.

Well, Ma’am, I am twenty four years old now, a college graduate, with an odd career path, while working on a masters degree and very much unpregnant and unattached… and yes, I am still reading my romances and I have a growing collection at home that sort of frightens my mother. Very sorry to disappoint and dash your I-told-you-so dreams…

In fact, in a wondering voice, my Mom said that my reading kept me absolutely out of any possible and pissible relationships.

Why?

Reading made me lazy. I spent most of my time tucked on a comfortable chair reading a book. It also made me fat and has thus made me the anti-social that I am today.
A classmate said reading made me set impossible standards about men and relationships that sort of turned me against the real word.
Reading pocketbooks and seeing life convinced me that the kind of love I want and need for myself only exist in the pages of books. As one character in Home Alone 4 said, everybody’s parents now get divorced. Whew. She was so right!
Reading satisfies me. I feel no need to seek things out since I could read them anyway. I cry with the characters, fall in love with them, laugh with them… In fact, favorite authors have become like friends to me.

I used to wonder if the old maids I koew turned to reading as comfort for the lonely times they have. I did not realize that reading has turned them into what they are.

Of course, I still want to get married someday and have a family of my own. But, if it will not happen to me, I know I will not feel sad and bitter.

That is one things I promised I will never be, a bitter, self-pitying old maid. I have a lot of things to do and I would be glad to have the freedom to do them too. If my prince never arrives…that is.