The Notebook?

The Kissing Booth?

Love Actually?

To All the Boys I Have Ever Loved?

I just don’t get Romantic movies.

I swore to myself

That I would never watch romantic movies when I was young

Because I think they are unrealistic.

In the same vein of my discomfort with choking goodness,

My first 11 or so Christmases were spent in the dining room, Secluded from my family sharing gifts in the living room.

When I would see all of the gifts that the generous old man in red brought me,

I would feel like I needed to perform and foist a grand expression of my gratitude.

To the dining room I went,

To react and be thankful in my own time.

Even if it was the perfect gift, an American girl doll that looked just like me

But with actually matching socks and flaxen hair,

I didn’t like having to meet that gift in front of other people.

So, imagine the transformation I am forced to reconcile

When I am 17

And have a boyfriend who brings me unconditional roses each month.

I don’t know why I was so afraid and uncomfortable--

Being in love is more than a romantic movie

More than Christmas.

I wish I would have let go,

Let myself feel all that I had needed to feel when I could have felt it.

Dating doesn’t make me feel the wave of discomfort that I had always feared.

And, I don’t feel like I am aging either.

I was always afraid of that.

That somehow, by sitting in the front seat of some good intentioned high school boy’s minivan,

I would instantly be one of those girls in romantic movies

Who nervously take off their unflattering glasses before going on their first date.

I would be acting my age,

Acting like a casi-adult.

Yet, I am somehow young.

I feel like I am finally learning how to be a kid,

How to live a blissful childhood

That I never allowed myself.