Retrograde to Romance

Today I had a compelling thought. 

I was watching The Time Traveler's  Wife, and as usual when I watch any love-story film, I was completely immersed. I'm constantly influenced and impacted by love of all kinds; fictitious, real, old, new, unexpected, but most of all, grand. And as I shifted from a beautiful scene to my reality- sending a text in bed- I felt very odd. The idea that I could just send a message with words as boring as "idk the one you wore during Thanksgiving", just seemed awfully wrong to me. 

My mind couldn't grasp how such a banal text could exist in the same world as this intricate whirlwind of love on my screen. 

Now I fully understand that to some, movies are movies. They are sugary cotton candy and none of it will ever be real. 

I also fully understand the gap in generations and society and the huge leap technology has made for humans and I do not condemn that in any way. I love my iphone as much as the next person but gone are the days of raw feeling and telling people things in person. It was just last night when the person right in front of me sent me a message that made my heart jump a little reading it, it made me emotional. It was beautiful and hard to say but that is what is missing. Staying up late waking up for a phone call on a house phone Sixteen Candles-style is what we are missing. Deep conversations with words you've painfully felt for a long time Pride and Prejudice-style is what we are missing. Melodramatic Twilight conversations and hangs from The Notebook are what relationships are missing. Too much Instagram and Facebook and emphasis on the perfect couple picture, capturing everything for the world instead of one-self is what has watered down everything that is love. Humans are what are responsible for feelings and romance.. they are after all, the masterminds that result in such grand stories. If they exist in minds, they exist in the world. Technology has done nothing but cut up and slowed down all raw feelings, through apps like Tinder and Grindr and dating websites, cheating websites, Facebook and Instagram in which we not only judge by appearance, but it puts everything else on hold. Have you ever met someone and not thought of them as attractive but after getting to know them, you develop a liking.. Where's the Tinder button for that? 

So I had a thought that maybe I shouldn't have to text every second, maybe I could hold off for longer. Perhaps not be as drastic as cutting off my phone and connecting a house land line and waiting up all hours, but something as simple as waiting to get a phone call so we could talk about the day would change a little something. Maybe I could get picked up and rush to the driver's door and smile instead of having nothing to talk about because we'd been texting all day. Maybe things would be more magical if we didn't try to make everything so fast and cold and quick. Maybe taking time during those moments which we normally try to speed up are what is secretly hidden, what that mystical movie power is secretly made up of. 

I don't know how long I can go without falling back to our advanced-to-the-world but retrograde-to-romance ways but I'm sure willing to try. 

Like Albert Einstein once said, "If it's not like the movies- that's how it should be."

Wait, no. That might have been Katy Perry. 

A Rose By Any Other Name

At an attempt to keep my private life private on this blog, I've refrained from writing about anything too specific pertaining to my relationship. But a huge milestone is upon my boyfriend and I: 5 years ago we started dating. And yet, as I read that sentence aloud, I find a very troubling problem with the wording.

First of all, my "boyfriend" is not really my "boyfriend". He is a person who I met in high school, who's layers have been shed and coatings have been built. He is the chill factor in us. He is a dreamer, like I am. He is an introvert unlike I am. To himself, unless sought for, unless he is interested in what you have to say. I am very outgoing, he says I speak to other people too much when we are out, I am "too friendly".. He likes quiet places. I like loud places, with chaos and loud music and a swarm of humans. He goes with the flow, almost always my flow. I am a planner.. I do it months ahead, I do lists and itineraries, I take care of tickets and expense planning. He flies with it. He is unsure of many things pertaining to himself, unlike I am. I have a set view on how I should be, a strict view; a modern day, casual, Texan, family-oriented, messy, traveling, yoga-doing, peaceful, giving Carrie Bradshaw. He is very passionate like I am. He has a free heart. He is an artist, I am a writer. I'm very aware of my world on paper, he is very aware of the world around him. He is who i called the other day, tears welling in my sockets, stressed beyond belief about school. He is who dismissively tells me I'm overreacting and not to stress.. And to digress, I need "dismissively". I need "chill-factor". I need the quiet sometimes.
Without him dismissing my stressful call, I would probably drive myself crazy. He knows me and knows that dismissing me is the only way to calm me down. He walks me through the process of calming down and knows the perfect tone to use with me, knows that any crack in his facade could lead to a surge of tears. We both have a mutual understanding that this is what needs to be done. And I appreciate it beyond words.

I am dramatic. Not to belittle my emotions that day, but I'm very poor with emotions. Bad, good.. They wash over anything else. I'm always very white or very black.  I'm seldom gray and when I'm gray, I pick a side. He is very white and black as well, but when it comes to stress, anger and sadness, he's dealt with it better than I have. I'm very manic and he is better at hiding his emotions or back seating them.

My boyfriend is not my "boyfriend" and I say that only because when I tell anyone that he is my boyfriend, I see a picture of sweaty-palmed us walking through halls with bright red lockers in the background. Sweaty-palmed us with no actual real issues other than which color we'd wear to prom or who we had dated prior to each other.

This is why I will never have a label for him. Our relationship goes beyond anything I could ever pick a word for. It's been a high thing, a low thing, a middle thing.. At first not even really a "thing" at all.. Just some "thing." My boyfriend, keeper, lover, best friend. Still, he's never been my Elvis, it's never been a blind love. It's always been exactly what it looks like. We've made mistakes that I don't really consider mistakes and we'll make many more mistakes in the future. I'm counting on it. I never signed up for anything perfect, I thrive in chaos, in learning and in the abstract of humanity. He is the blue I never knew I needed and if he could play the violin, I could name all the American presidents names backwards. He is the rain that ruins your plans. The overcast skies that turn everything completely upside down. The best-ever rainy day, a floor length pink chiffon dress and black suit running into the woods together hand in hand, milky mud below them and a blue fog around them.

I'll always be picky about words because that is the nature of any writer but maybe I could call him my fiancé just because I like the way the "é" sounds creamy. I also like the term Valentine but that's probably just because I'm obsessed with anything that's unorthodox and fascinated with the macabre tale from which the term originated. Maybe I also like the fact that I could use temporary terms for something that isn't defined by time or space. I'm running by my own rules. Maybe I could be his forever fiancé and maybe I'll just call him my blue valentine.