For the love of “real” love stories…

I’m done I tell you. D-O-N-E. Done. Done with the sparks and the fireworks. With searing passion and scorching heat. And please, oh please for the love of chocolates and babies and all things nice, please spare me the Gary Stu’s and Mary Sues. I am so done with fictified perfection. Give me something real to admire. Give me blood and flesh and flaws and fights. Give me a real love story that I can sigh at and swoon over. Give me the tale of two people who make me want to laugh and cry when they do.

I’m so done with love at first sight. I mean, it may happen in real life, but I could never understand it. Attraction at first sight I understand… But love? No. So give me love that blooms slowly, because love doesn’t do well if it is rushed. Give me that sweet spot where love is hovering between the thrill of the unknown and the warmth of familiarity… and most of all, give me that one moment of realization, when familiarity and friendship transcends to love. Give me long conversations… from the small talk to the revelations, of hopes and aspirations, dreams and fears, of idiosyncrancies and pet peeves… Give me two people laughing with each other and falling in love deeper, because in the end, you really, really, need someone to laugh with. Give me the awkward, because intimacy is not always fine tuned to perfect harmony. Give me the giggles and hushed whispers and sweaty palms and sloppy kisses, because that’s how it is in real life. Give me comfort and dependability that a sound foundation brings, and give me two people who ensure the foundation is about emotional connection more than physical attraction.

Spare me tales of the filthy rich and exaggerated wealth. I don’t know many people who live in palaces, do you? Spare me the details of ridiculous luxury; my humble lifestyle can do without the enticement into the world of instant gratification. I am blessed with a fantastic imagination and I can dream about a life of milk and honey but don’t shove it in my face when all I want is a real story. People make stories, don’t they? Not their means. So give me the cracked walls and dented cars. Give me faded carpets with a million brilliant memories with a tea stain here from laughing too hard, a splash of wine there from when they got too drunk. Oh please give me a house that is lived in, and tell me the stories the walls have seen. Spare me the details of opulence; I don’t need to know about the sparkly shiny things.

Spare me the chiseled faces and the strong jaws and devilish handsome men. I don’t want to know how they look like in a crisp suit or a silk shirt. How does it matter if they have bulging biceps and a broad shoulder and narrow hips? Just tell me they are good looking, and please oh please, leave it at that and move on. We all know looks can only go so far. I mean, when you are tired and lonely and all you need is a shoulder to lean on, you don’t stop and see how broad that shoulder is. So yeah, I don’t need an illustration of handsomeness each time he appears.

Spare me the quintessential confused women… I want to believe women everywhere know exactly what they want, and confusion is not limited to a gender. Spare me tales of the damsel in distress, nor do I want epic stories of iron clad heroines. Give me a real woman, with her strengths and weaknesses. I guess most of all, spare me the extremes. Real life, in most cases, revolves around the mundane. Give me an escape into fantasy, hell, I demand you do. But don’t turn that fantasy into a caricature of perfection, and don’t make it a black and white world. People aren’t ever all black or all white, are they?

Give me tales of people doing foolish things in love, because love does that to you. Give me silly fights over small things… Because in real life, people fight over silly things. Don’t give me a story that ends at the happily ever after. Tell me what happens in the happily ever after. Give me tales of married couples keeping the warmth alive, and how they fall in love again and again with each passing year. Tell me more about how they work hard and strive to keep the fire burning beyond the honeymoon. Because in real life, the true story begins after you decide to say “I do”

Give me all of this… Ordinary flawed people, lukewarm love that doesn’t burst into fireworks nor crumbles to ashes but is always there, and a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people with extraordinary tales. Don’t take me for a fool and dish out surrealism and ask me to drown myself in that sea of exaggeration. Give me something real, and I will have real feelings for it. Until then, I am done. So, so done.

P.S. In case you had no idea why you were subjected to this elaborate deluge of words, this is after giving up on the In Death series, which in my idea is a love story masquerading as a murder mystery trying to be a science fiction (talk about multiple personalities!) I guess this is my idea of giving the oh-so-perfect Roarkes of the literary world the boot. Ugh.