Too old for love

Do you ever get that feeling that you are too old for love? 

I used to love romantic comedies. Hugh Grant stumbling through his lines with his charming, wicked smile. Shah Rukh Khan being a lopsided Jesus. The grand romantic gesture and flagrant disregard for airport security. I grew up on them, hell, was raised by them. But of late, I catch myself rolling my eyes at them. How it is too unrealistic. All I can think of as the hero is tackled to the ground by security is where the hell are all the tasers? When did that happen? 

Do you feel that way too? Here you are, single in your late 20s, early 30s, heaven forbid, mid 30s, being told by the World around you that you are incomplete. Like there are pieces missing, swatches scalped out of the masterpiece your life is meant to be. But you don’t see it. Too close to the picture, you think it is done. You have a system in place. You can sleep in on Sundays, all your plans are yours alone, there are no compromises, no trade-offs between what you want to do and what you should be doing. Everything that comes in pairs annoys you, batteries, scissors, slippers. There is a drawer somewhere in your house where every spare is stored, waiting for its sibling to be worn out. But at night, when you are smoking your last cigarette for the day, leaning on the railings, you realize you are there alone. No one leaning against your shoulder, staring at the lights winking back through the pollution from the distance, like the smog is hurting its eyes. 

I don’t have a word of consolation for you. I will not stand here with a message of hope, like a pastor struggling to entertain the congregation on a Sunday, begging them to believe that all the sin out there in the World is temporary, a misshapen step on the stairway to heaven. But such is life. There are no neat endings. That is what separates fantasies from real life. It is said that Art imitates life, but it does not. Art merely summarizes it. I am sure you have heard that stories are life with all the boring bits left out. 

But in life, we must suffer through them. We are all convinced of our happy endings, focusing on the happy and glossing over the ending. Stories end because they must, so does life I suppose, but not in the same way. We are waiting for our epilogues, forgetting that we are barely at the end of the first act. 

So, just to prove my point, there is no conclusion here. This is what life is like. It goes on, you like some parts, you hate some, you shrug through others. And then it ends whenever it damn well pleases. 

Just like what is about to happen right now. 

The end.