Oh, how you hate romance. The genre of literature, the idea, even the actuality!

Because you know, it’s not truly real. Any guy who is being ‘romantic’ does so either to make a girl helpless, or under obligation, not because it’s just part of his nature.

And you hate being given obligatory presents.

Reading romance, especially, makes you feel the echoing chamber of your own lack, causing you to break down in desperate fits of sobbing as you curse the author who has written such a beautiful character, which you know could never be real.

Even those beautiful, time-honored classics like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre hurt – probably even more than the light, modern fluff – because you know they are such fairy tales . . .

And you wish so hard they weren’t.

You read a book recently. One a friend gave you in which you met a character who was, while in many ways different from yourself, at least similarly romantic near the beginning.

But her dreams were crushed,

She lost the potential of the hope she had loved,

And was left with a lukewarm knight, clad in baggy-jean armor, sporting a lumbering, awkward aspect with absolutely no sophistication. Sure, he cared, but he was no knight. No prince . . .

You realize that 75% of men are like this.

And the other 25%?

Cons.

They are no realer than the men who have to make themselves romantic.

You smile bitterly to yourself, and wish you could say you were doing it through tears. But you’re not crying. That all happened already. It’ll come back later.

Right now, you’re angry.

Defiant

Cold

Pessimistic

Yet because you are a fickle, foolish, idiotic human being, you also hope that someday, someone out there will read this rant against the unfairness of fairy-tale knights . . .

And that he’ll come,

That he’ll tell you it’s not true,

That he’ll love you so much, in the end . . .

He proves you wrong.

Is happily ever after possible?

Certainly not. your reason snorts.

I wish . . . your feelings whisper.

Who can know?

No one.

It’s not real. It never was. And you remember with a bitter laugh, that all those authors, the prince-charmings of which you love oh-so-desperately-

Were women.

“Come, shining knight, and prove me wrong.”

Now you’re crying

“Rescue me . . .”

From what?

.

.

.

“Myself.”

.

.

.

Curse romance.

I hate crying.