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What is romance?

And where is the fine line crossed between infatuation and actually having an unexplainable connection or draw towards a person?

I’ve been tossing these two words and their supposed definitions back and forth lately like a circus act.

Infatuation vs. connection.

I have one right now in my life. It isn’t major. And it may be completely one sided. Nothing has happened on any level other than under the surface.

I hate to compare it to a splinter- but I am going to.

You can’t ignore a splinter. You feel it there, hence the under the surface feeling, no matter what you are concentrating on or how many distractions are pulling at you; amazing how something so tiny demands to be felt and noticed.

Same with when you first start feeling something stirring within towards a person that is either an attraction or connection. Either way it equals distraction.

Yep, attraction=distraction.

So again, what is romance?

To me, romance has never been outside myself. Romance is a cause and not an effect. And it is usually how I, myself, can differentiate between a high school -like infatuation and a valid pull towards a person.

Romance to me is the first time you hear your name roll off the tongue of that certain someone, and in that moment it is as if a thousand butterfly wings just caressed you in depths within that are not touched on every day occasions. And from that moment forward you wait in anticipation for them to call your name again, just to release those butterflies; giving them the freedom to take flight.

Romance can be a state of confusion. When you sit in your moments of silence and out of nowhere that throbbing begins inside as the image of that person begins to take form in your mind. And you sit and watch as the hope in you has a conversation with the insecure side of you. Going back and forth as to whether you are imagining things. He loves me…he loves me not.

Romance takes life from black and white to suddenly noticing every color hue in the rainbow. Everything looks brighter, beating with the same heartbeat you have noticed has become more pronounced in your chest.

So last night when I sat talking with a friend and we got on the topic of someone I have been noticing as of late, I went home and pondered these questions myself.

Is it infatuation? I sat and thought about the times I have met men over my lifetime and had a great attraction that felt as deep as the sea only to find it had the depth of a puddle.

Then I compared it to my feeling as of late and there was one thing that was present in this one that I found missing from those past connections.

Patience.

The feeling that there is all the time in the world to see what unfolds, if anything. The patience to not jump to assumptions of what the other person may be feeling, again, if anything.

Infatuations can’t ever wait. It is got to have it now, now, now…and me, me, me.

Romance waits- there is no aggression or feeling of time running out like the sands of an hour glass. Romance envelopes you, like a blanket on a cold day. Infatuation asserts itself in each moment; sharp and intrusive.

I am a diehard romantic. It cannot be destroyed in me. There have been many circumstances that have tried; but romance, like the rose, may go away for season- only to return again in full glory.

Maybe, at the end of the day, romance has nothing to do with two people and what may and may not transpire between them. Maybe the times we meet a person that causes something to stir inside is the Universe’s way of blowing us a kiss; meant only to awaken the beauty within.

The universe blowing us a kiss that caresses the soul long enough to see beauty again; to feel excitement again. To stop and take notice that everything is thriving and dancing around us if we will just take the time to look.

A kiss that may be all it takes to make us leap off the edge of complacency into a world of the unknown. Something that makes us turn left instead of our usual right and forever alters our world as it would be.

Maybe romance and connection is the life support used in times when we have unconsciously closed ourselves off to magic.

The life support for when we have become unmoved like a stone.

Romancing the stone with an I.V. of love-

Now that I have written this I am going to stop my juggling act and retire from the circus for a while.

I believe I have my answer...