the better story

In films and in books and in romance in general, love at first sight is a big thing. Two people see each other in a crowd, their eyes meet, and they both immediately know that they are meant to be. And I've heard about stories like that in real life. My dad always says he knew the minute he saw my mother outside his high-school that she would be his wife someday. And the other night, my aunt's friend was telling the story of how she met her husband: they were in Paris, she was taking a seminar and he was teaching it. She dropped her pen on the floor and he picked it up for her, and their eyes met. She immediately told her friend "I have the strangest feeling this man is the man of my life." And they've been married twenty-years or so now. 

These stories are great. They make us all dream and smile, and hope for the kind of love that you see in "The Notebook" which makes every girl cry her eyes out. 

What's funny though is that many a times, these words have been said and things did not work out --so they're quickly forgotten. If things had worked out, the story would be told on every rooftop. My friend Rebelious got engaged 6 months after meeting her boyfriend, because "they just knew." They were married another 6 months later and at their wedding, he told the story of how the night they met, he told his friend that this is the girl he was going to marry. And he did marry her. But then they got divorced two years later. So much for a romantic story.

I'm not trying to poke holes into wonderful romance. I love these stories. I just think they trap us in these little boxes and make us feel like that's what we should look for, someone we're just going to look at and know within minutes that he's the one. I don't believe that anymore.

I think I was in love once or twice before. And each of these times, I had decided that I was "in love" almost instantly. In love with someone I didn't even know. Now I am convinced this comes from watching too much Cinderella and the Little Mermaid as a child, because how someone can love a person they know nothing about now seems completely absurd to me. You're in love with someone first and then you get to know them? And you find out what they're like and you have to accept them with all their faults because you already decided you love them. You love what, exactly? 

Love at first sight now seems  like a recipe for disaster. You meet someone, fall in love, have a picture of them in your mind and what happens next, in most cases, is that they keep disappointing you --they don't live up to that image. They are not want you wanted them to be, and once the infatuation wears off and you realize it, it only goes downhill from there.

And then you meet someone one day, and you don't expect anything. He makes you laugh maybe, something peeks your interest, but wedding bells aren't ringing in your ears, and you haven't pictured what your three children are going to look like within an hour of meeting him. You just meet him. And spending time with him is what makes you want to spend more time with him. And suddenly you find yourself surprised by the way he is. Good surprised. You didn't build-up an image, he builds it for your, little by little. You discover each other and the more you learn the more you like. And I think that's a better story.

there are no love stories like in the movies

I have a friend who still believes in love like in the movies. She dreams of passion that would last through decades, that would survive routine and babies and boredom and age, that would awaken sparkles in her eyes even ten, twenty, fifty years down the line. She believes in the happily ever after and she doesn't want to settle for less. Afterall, she's seen it happen. In "The Notebook."

Now last week, I acted in a short film. And it was a love story --like in the movies. I met the actor who I had to fall in love with at 7am Sunday morning and by Sunday afternoon he was proposing on a beach with the sunset in the background. And the truth is when we were acting it out we kept laughing at how weird the whole situation was and how we felt like in a Mexican TV Series, but on screen it just looks like we're happy in love. I saw the footage and it looked so amazing that even I believed it for a second. And the entire film is condensed quick-shots of the evolution of a love that is born, grows, flickers and dies. It travels through time, skips through the boring parts, only shows the audience what they want to see. Think about all the moments of love you've had in you life. If you just edit them and add some amazing soundtrack and tie everything together, you've got your own film.

But there are no love stories like in the movies. In real life, love stories are only felt in glimpses, in moments captured in a sort of capsule that only last in our memories. Love is not perfect. It is not gentle, it is not kind, it is not forgiving. Love is a mess of passionate turns that leave you hanging on the edge of a cliff. It's a roller-coaster that goes up and down and sideways turns your life around and scares the shit out of you all the while giving you the greatest rush of your life.  

This year that I spent out of love was the best way for me to finally understand it. I recognize it now better than ever, and I've learned to appreciate it as what it is: discontinued and rough around the edges. Many a times, it doesn't come inside a wrapped-up package with a pretty bow. And I had a glimpse of it, I think. There's someone was in my life for years and every time I saw him my heart skipped a beat, but it was never good timing for us. And the truth is, I know deep down that if we had gone for it and tried being together, I wouldn't have been happy. But when I was with him for a glimpse of time, I know we had something special. If we had turned this glimpse into a relationship, then I'm afraid it would've spoiled it. So I chose to keep it special: Even now, I can close my eyes and always smile when I think of him, and I just appreciate it for what it is: a love story that could've been. 

technology killed romance

I was looking through the boxes underneath my bed: old shoe boxes, about six or seven of them, filled with letters and pictures. Hundreds of handwritten letters from that time before the internet existed. You know, that time mobile phones were the new revolution and we all begged our parents to get us one and it was this large, chunky, heavy Nokia which we could have never imagined would become the technology hub it is today. There was no Google and no BBM. If you wanted to reach someone, you had to call them at home, not too early and not too late, otherwise their parents might get angry. And when the other person would pick up the phone, they wouldn't know it was you instantly because there was no such thing as caller ID and you just had to spend that awkward minute explaining who you are.

Now you can find someone you've met once in a random bar and whose last name you can't remember just by searching on Facebook and guessing by your "friends in common." In stead of going back to that bar every night for a week trying to see her again, or chasing down friends to figure out who the mystery girl is and magically end up by getting her phone number, or her address or something --you just poke her. Or you can send an "inbox" message: now that is what I would call romance in the 21st century.

I have all kinds of letters in those old boxes. And they are dusty and I can barely make out the handwriting, but every word I read makes me smile. There is something so precious about the time it took for each of these letters to be written. By hand. When was the last time you wrote anything by hand, except maybe a grocery list, or your signature on your credit card receipts. With a letter you could play with colors and spray perfume on it and pick a nice envelope. Now there's email. You write a few sentences with words that don't contain all their letters because we live in a world where if you can gain half a millisecond by typing "r" in stead of "are" then you do it. No one even addresses it to you anymore, there is no "dear" anything it's like your email to: is enough. The signature at the end is automatic so you don't bother with that either. You just get straight to the point. Forget the time where post-its could be spread around the house with little Xs and Os --my mom use to leave them on the bathroom mirror for my dad to see them when he woke up, and it was never just "don't forget to buy some toothpaste," there would be a whole seductive energy around it that would make him smile instead of seeing as a chore. Now you'd barely get an sms: toothpaste plz.

And there was a time where even an sms could be romantic, you know, when they first started. We used to "save" the special ones and read them over and over again. A guy would send you a text message that he spent an hour writing, putting in all his feelings because it's easier to write it than to say it. And there we would sit around with my friends and compare our romantic messages one after the other. Now there's BBM. It's like you're on a chat-room 24/7. Of course you've got the heart emoticon and the hug emoticon and the kiss emoticon but that just means that they are finding new ways for us to write less and less.

I guess what I'm trying to say is --technology killed romance. And if we don't try to revive it, we're gonna forget it even existed. So I'm just gonna throw this out there: write a letter to someone you love and make them feel that special excitement of receiving it, and opening it, and discovering the words line after line and then keeping it safe somewhere for years to come. Not in a folder with a blue label in their gmail inbox.