Un Enamored
Enchanted and un-enchanted
Tales of youth and age!
In our late twenties we'd finally asked ourselves, how much of our romantic tales were our own creation, and even so, whether they were or weren't, why had our parents allowed us to believe in the magic spell?
We grew up among fairytales, love the backbone-storyline embedded into every part of our world. Like trauma, except unlike trauma we hadn’t learned anything of use from those tales. They proselytized Disney characters all while they knew of something else. Had us believing in love, even if we hadn’t known it ourselves. For millennium, seemingly the kernel of a story so vital to our survival itself. Undeterred by their own failures, determined to have us experience it as well.
No longer fooled by the magic trick, awakened, non idealistic, clear eyed at the edge of our twenties, we suddenly asked ourselves. It wasn’t that we were over it, or that we were cynics, it was just that on the other end of a waxing libido was the maturation of brain cells. A new phase emerged, one with wisdom to notice. It was never a trick but the ratio of option to will.
Almost as if it were designed that way. Youth a necessity. Young, every experience in it with romantic notion. The cosmic possibility, the way she looked at me. The coincidence, happenstance, the beauty of it all engulfing. When we are young, each of those sparks heightened. Our bodies driven to creation. And just when so much about the heart is still unknown to us. Utopian, brilliant, craved by instinctual urge —our bodies designed in flaw to attract us, —in contradiction to the impact it will have on us, —to procreate.
Animal instinct fades, alongside age, just as perception has changed, and our bodies come to new terms. We know too much, aren’t fueled by chance or luck. We grow calculative within our frontal lobes. Almost as if we needed that now. Just when our bodies have allowed us to use our other muscles. Suddenly we learn to love from an enlightened place. Still impressed by each moment of contact, except, in maturation with choice, aware of how hardship is shaped, how difficult it is to survive, knowing fair-well that love too rots and crumbles even when it’s burned in bright.
In our late twenties we asked ourselves why for millennium have adults chosen a romantic view over the more pragmatic tale. Perhaps they knew our bodies would pass that phase, that youth and romance were to be cherished while it lasted. Perhaps for better reason, knowing life with that childish freedom of fascination was the only way worth imagining things. That youth could manage that, relied on that, passion and romantic illusion the requirement. A version worth living, especially if all it were that we’ve been doing were constructing stories, dream-living, magic-building.
