what it's like when you're the romantic of your friend group.

When you're the romantic one in your friend group, the people you love most, your best friends, will roll their eyes at you a lot.

Maybe you're not the most rational, or you're always watching sappy movies just for the happy endings. You send beautiful quotes to people at random times to lift spirits or just because the words touched you. Words are always touching you. The way the light is moving can touch you. The way the leaves move in autumn has made you tear up, inexplicably. The way two people, completely unaware of you, look at each other can make you weep. You want to map star charts of potential soul mates.  You're constantly preoccupied with one person or multiple people at the same time, on a constant loop of awareness of their existence and how amazing they are. And then, almost instantly, you're caught, snagged, on someone else. When you're the romantic of the group, sometimes you even give yourself emotional whiplash. 

Your friends will shoot each other glances as you beg them to drive by that guy's house one more time, just to see if he's home, not that you really care. (You do) They will sometimes, affectionately, think you are legitimately crazy, but they will also count on you to give their dip-shit partners one more chance many, many times because you are the one person who still believes there is hope for them yet. And really, isn't everyone a dip shit, sometimes? You believe in second chances, that given the chance, people can and do change. You believe in the light inside, in the chemistry that overcomes. You believe in the ability to reform and the power of love. You believe in, if not the perfect one for all of us, then at least the right one. 

You're eager to take in the late-night stories of past heartbreak and what it taught. You believe that heartbreak is meant to teach, and even when you're hurting, you take some strange and sometimes sick comfort in learning. You'll poke at the pain like a half healed scab you can't stop ripping off. You dwell, oh my, do you dwell. When someone hurts you, you'll write at them for years and years and you won't be able to stop yourself from being reminded. Someday you'll get better at being reminded quietly, you hate to burden your friends. You'll dream of them less and less, and though sort of relieved, you'll miss them even more in their absence from even your subconscious. 

When you're the romantic in your group of friends, you believe in the integrity of souls and in minimum compromise with maximum returns when the moment is finally right. 

You believe that yes, someday, the time will finally be right. When you're the romantic, you believe in timing and love at first sight.

When you are the romantic in your friend group, you might smoke a lot of cigarettes and drink a lot of beer/wine/gin and on the back porch, worrying constantly about the state of your friends' hearts. Sometimes listening, sometimes alone. You can't help it, you feel like your heart is sick with some disease whenever love takes a sharp turn. It's a personal affront upon you, although it doesn't do either of you one bit of good to feel that way. 

You wait. You find yourself waiting a lot, with baited breath. Waiting for the right one. For the golden hour, when the light is just right and the crash is riddled with explosions, with fireworks. You set scenes and believe in the power of dialogue. You know you don't feel love in your heart, you feel it in your guts.

When you're the romantic, it is up to you to keep the faith, to believe. You know what I mean. You'll be sitting around with your friends, maybe having a few cocktails and all of the sudden it's an assault on love. It's all, "There are no good ones." And "Love isn't real." Or at least, "It will never last." Lasting love is a figment, a myth, a disney story. And you're the one who speaks up in love's defense. You're the one who is vehement in her honor and insists against all evidence. That. Love. Can. Last.

When you're the romantic of the group, you don't always realize that groups even need romantics because sometimes, sometimes, in that rare moment of doubt, your belief will waver slightly. And in those moments, you can count on the rest of your friends to remind you. That love is real and you're a crucial part in the chemistry of the group. And that maybe you feel like your head is in the clouds at times, but really, you're a warrior. And believing in love, being a romantic, means never losing sight of that.