Boys of writing vs. boys of reality

 Boys.  Oh yes, the dreaded word for which we call adolescent teenage males.  They’re complicated, confusing, and at times irritating–heck, I’d even go as far as deeming them a freak of nature.  Though, even with all of the grief they cause us girls, we still stupidly somehow always find ourselves wanting, ‘true love’ and a ‘fairytale ending’ with them.

 Why is that?

 Basically, it comes down to one thing: writing.

 Writing has completely ruined teen girls’ perspectives of  the opposite gender.  Books, movies, poems, songs, social media–they’ve all entirely tainted boys for generations to come.  The whole world has become obsessed with love and relationships and heartbreak.  It’s all depressing breakups:

 “Why do I catch myself feverishly checking my phone every two seconds when I know all too well that your name won’t be lighting up the screen like it used to.”

 To gushy ‘I-love-you’ sayings:

 “I know we’re too young and  it’s still early for this .. but I hope you’re the one.”

 And even the occasional ‘Who-needs-a-relationship-when-you-have-food’ posts:

 “I don’t need a boyfriend, I have chocolate and cookies.”

 Some posts make you laugh, some make you cry and others make you hate yourself for not having what that one person wrote; I know it’s a bold way of putting it, but it’s the truth.  We’ve all gotten so strung up in what people say a relationship should be that we don’t even know what a real one looks like anymore.  It’s all:  “He has to have abs, be in a band, and have a lip ring.” And not: “He has to be a gentleman, I have to like him for who he is, and my parents have to approve of him.”

 I’m even guilty of reading a Nicholas Sparks novel thinking, “man, why can’t boys be like that in real life?  Why can’t they be perfect?”  Honestly, books make me so mad sometimes.  I want Augustus Waters to give me forever within a number of days.  I want Lloyd Dobler holding a beatbox outside my bedroom window, trying to show me he cares.  I want John Bender from the Breakfast Club to fistpump the air after he’s won me over.  And I definitely want Johnny Castle from Dirty Dancing to say, “nobody puts baby in the corner.”

Fictional boys make you want the surreal moments–they make you want the ‘big move,’ that in most cases will never happen.

It will never happen because real relationships are messy, and sometimes end up with a few casualties or might not end in the fairy tale fashion. There’s hurt and confusion and chaos–there’s almost never smooth sailing, and you’ll almost always get caught up in a storm.  But at the end of the day and when the gray skies have passed, if you’d still would risk anything to be with them, nothing is unfixable.

And maybe that’s the best part of love; it doesn’t need to be fictional to be perfect.