During all my time spent alone in quarantine, I occupied myself by trying to find love. 

I started watching movies with little conflict, and I skipped the parts that did. I spent so much of my time hopelessly trying to find connections when all the time alone stripped me of them in real life. I knew that everything wasn’t as simple as it was through fictional stories or the way I tried to see the world through my rose-tinted glasses, but it didn’t matter. 

Then quarantine was gone and I was set free to make realistic opinions, thoughts and feelings. I was utterly disappointed. And at some point, all the built-up love turned into numbness toward the world. Beauty was scarce in my mind. I started to categorize my opinions into something more real so my over-romanticizing of life wouldn’t hurt me again. I started trying to make things deeper than my mind of snap judgments and took out all the romance of life and beauty.

For a while, I was struck with constant questioning of my perception of what romance should look like. I was constantly comparing thinking deeper to my appreciation of beauty. There was no more question of romance because it became a question of perception. I was trying so hard not to feel an immediate response to beauty because I thought it made me and my thinking too simple. 

My mentality and capacity for emotion were constantly questioned. I didn’t know what to think, love, or appreciate without criticizing myself.

Sometimes more than snap judgments can hold the truth, I guess a lot of the time. But the reality of me, a girl born into social media and internal expectations, with the constant arrangement and ranking of beauty, has made me fall in love with pretty things. I’m easily pleased by a sunset or by a pretty person walking down the street. I love looking through the fresh produce and brushing through soft hair. 

I’ve figured out that being a romantic should mean a happy medium, like most things. I’ve found that sometimes throwing on a filter to see romance is good, looking at things with hopeless appreciation. But it is a filter; I still need to peer through and see things from the perspective of a thinker and not just a lover. I’m trying to live through the conflict, not just to see the love, but to appreciate that beauty can be simple and also messy. The romance of life looks spectacular from my point of view, even if at times I’m living through the conflict.

I’ve started to sort through the trees with nothing but beauty on my mind. I’ve figured out that loving to love is not for nothing; it is an appreciation of feeling. I am once again surrounded by beauty because I have once again started looking for it.