Category Archives: romance

Date a Girl Who Reads

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Date a Girl Who Reads by Rosemarie Urquico

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent.  Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

just like a girl

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The other day at our apartment dinner table, my roommate Desiree confessed to me, “I’ve been looking at wedding rings lately.”  She seemed a little embarrassed.

Quickly, I made a confession of my own: “I’ve been looking at wedding dresses.”

Please note, both Desiree and I are as single as single can be.  There is no urgent need for us to be planning out the details of our future weddings, but it’s just so fun.

Here are my favorite wedding gown options.  Thoughts?

Untitled

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Say anything; I want to try on your life like a suit coat for the fit.
This works – bashfulness catching your tongue at my question
so that the air expects words that do not come,
leaving empty space to dangle like mistletoe, pregnant
with potential.  Keep your secrets, then – only don’t look away.
Your brown eyes are ripening grace and fever in me like sun on a vineyard.
Your intensity pitches a spreading fire in my chest, and I need no bolder story.

 

OCD and relationships

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Not just relationships.  Boy-girl relationships.  Romance.  How does it work?

I’m thinking about this because I just had coffee with my dear friend Caitlin and we were talking about when we were first discovering that we had hormones.

Two memories for me:

1) Reading YM Magazine beneath a desk with a girl named Lindsay in 4th grade.  We paged through the magazine, and Lindsay would say of a celebrity, “Oh, look at him.  He’s hot.”  I had to think about it.  Was this okay to say?  It seemed kinda risque (ha!), but I figured it was all right.  Page turn.  My turn: “Oh wow.  Hot.  He’s totally hot, isn’t he?”  Repeat.

2) Watching Little Giants with my friend Jacki in 6th grade.  Devon Sawa made us giddy.   Like, lie-on-our-backs-while-screaming-and-kicking-our-feet-in-the-air giddy.  Hormones, I decided, were wonderful things.

As I got older and my struggle with OCD magnified, things got more muddied in this arena.  (Relationships got trickier than a tween crush on Devon Sawa and JTT?  SHOCKER!)

A couple thoughts on love/romance and OCD, the doubting disease.

In tenth grade, I liked Zac Hanson.  Yes, of MMMBop fame.

(Are you loving these pics? Because I am!)

It was 10th grade.  It was a stupid celebrity crush.  And it would drive me crazy– way too crazy for a 10th-grade celebrity crush.  I would overthink my love for him– and sometimes I would think that maybe I liked Taylor instead, which felt absolutely TREACHEROUS to me.  Then I would feel guilty.  Then I would think in circles until I could boil whatever “issue” I had down into one statement, which I would write in a notebook with a Crayola bold marker.

I mention this because I would carry this action with me for quite some time– thinking in circles until I could come up with a “summary statement.”  I can see now that this was my way of trying to get a handle on things that were too overwhelming for me.

I also mention this because, um, hello– this was too overwhelming for me.  And that’s ridiculous.  And that’s OCD.

Next story.

(Is this post getting way too long?  Just wait.  I have several more stories.)

One day in 7th grade, I thought my friend Lisa looked pretty.  Just a simple thought: “Lisa looks pretty today.”  Then I tore myself to shreds wondering if I was gay.  Years later I would discover that this is SO common of an obsession that there’s a name for it– HOCD, homosexual OCD.  Wow.  I was a textbook case.  I didn’t even want to be gay– and I definitely liked men– and yet, somehow (cough, OCD) I still worked myself into a tizzy.

Along came college.

Freshman year I liked a boy who liked me back.  We got along great, had awesome chemistry, enjoyed each other’s company, the whole shebang.  My OCD chewed the relationship up like a junkyard dog eats garbage.  I remember the night that he told me that he liked me.  We sat in his car till late that night, holding hands, talking over everything.  I was on Cloud Nine.  This gorgeous boy somehow liked little old ME– actually thought I was incredible!– and I remember going back to the Northwestern dorms, waking up Tracy to tell her about the DTR.  Then I went back to my bedroom and cried myself to sleep, completely sick over it.

Doubt creeps in that fast.

I spent the next day convinced that I had to end whatever had just begun.  I can’t tell you how sick I felt over it.  It’s that same feeling when you’ve betrayed your dear friend and she doesn’t know it yet.

He was crazy about me, but I couldn’t handle the sick feeling I had (OCD-induced, although I didn’t know it at the time), and soon after, I had to call it quits.  I remember spending many days down by Lake Johanna, doing another of my little rituals– making list after list, still trying to do the old trick of finding a summary statement I could live with.  I convinced myself that I liked his roommate (whom I did not like) even, which is another whole stupid story.  I just felt like a murderess all the time– and so sinful!  It was doomed.

(Don’t feel too sad– in the end, it wouldn’t have worked anyway!  I don’t regret it.)

One last story.  I hope you’re hanging in there with me on this post.

Post-college.  I had a massive crush on the sweetest boy in the world.  He was adorable, nerdy, wonderful, and we were good friends on our way to becoming even better friends.  I convinced myself that I was not “allowed” to like him and that God would not approve of my crush on him.  Let me be clear on something: this was OCD-induced, not Spirit-induced, which is clear to me now.  It was agonizing.

I felt torn between this boy, whom I loved and who could have helped me to grow in my relationship with Christ, and Christ Himself, who I half-convinced myself was against the relationship.  Notice: half-convinced.  Some days I was certain that it was sinful for me to like this boy; some days I thought I’d be throwing away God’s gift to me if I were to let him go.  OCD, the doubting disease.  I shredded my heart.

It’s interesting to look back through the years now and see OCD’s clear but ugly hand pulling the strings in my life.  What a thief.  Thanks be to God who has rescued me from such an ugly enemy (who sometimes masquerades as a friend!!  LIES!).  When the time comes, and the right boy comes along, this time I’ll be ready for him.  All glory to Jesus for that!!