Funny how I just came to my own realizations after a brief encounter with someone I shouldn’t have even spent an ounce of effort being delulu over. But I guess 20 years of being a hopeless romantic makes us fools in love. So I write this down, in my bed, sitting while the warm lamplight illuminates my almost worn-out diary.
Before Sunset is my favorite romance drama, at least for now. It may seem like just a movie about two people having conversations—kind of boring, that’s what people try to label it as. But I guess finding beauty in films is subjective, and I feel like this one is just extraordinarily beautiful in its own messiness. Imagine spending only a day with someone in a romantic city because life caught you in the exact moment, and you both just happen to give in to that rare connection—only to never see them again for years, with nothing left behind except the memories you try to revisit through the book you wrote about your love story. Was it even a love story, though?
And years later, you find your way back to each other because you can’t let time pass without asking why it ended the way it did. Now one has a family, and the other is—well, just like me—afraid to take relationships to the next level because they still hope they’ll find that one person from that one moment, the one who made everyone else feel like they could never compare.
And that would have to be me, in the character of Celine.
I am Jesse in front of other people, but when vulnerability kicks in and I can no longer keep my walls up, I become her. I burst out and explode. I say things I don’t mean to say—or maybe I do, but I just don’t know how to translate them into a language society understands. And I’ll probably share the most embarrassing stories I can come up with simply because I feel and see things too deeply, in ways words can’t fully capture.
And that’s exactly why it’s terrifying to even consider love and relationships.
For someone who spent their childhood trying to recreate fairytales, who spent their teenage years falling in love with rom-coms, having crushes, and never doing anything about them—to now be in their early 20s, still asking: when will my time come? When will my own story start?
The romance books keep piling up on my shelves, hundreds of love songs in my never-ending playlist, and movies like Before Sunset keep me hoping that maybe I’ll bump into someone I’ll genuinely connect with.
It’s scary out there.
But it’s still something people can’t help but give themselves to.
And I happen to be one of those people too.
But when will I be saved?