fiction or not

I was watching Oprah this morning and she was recommending a good read - something about love in the times of cholera. It's about this young man, who glanced at a woman and knew she was for him, pursued her, but she got sent away, she married some doctor, and some 40/50 years later, in their twilight years, he found her again, and finally they got together.

That is soppy - but I'm sure it's a good read. Sometimes, we need soppy to get out of the reality check. Honestly, what is life about? It's should not be a dream, yet it cannot be all harsh reality because I think we all have a need to be in an unreal situation now and then, just to keep the boredom at bay.

I use to read tons of romance novels - probably built my ideals on them, but circumstances never allowed me to actually pick a great ideal and weave it into my life - I'm too much of a pragmatic to do that with success. Which makes me wonder now, if following my heart would have given me a different outcome. I have no regrets - because whatever choices I have made were validated, at least at that point in my life.

For a person who's cut and dry; there is a very deep part of me, which never gets to be shared. Somewhere, between growing up and watching people get bruised, I got myself a box and locked everything up - I'm sure it was as young as 16 - my best friend got dumped and that cost her the O-levels. Perhaps, it's just being selfish for oneself to some extent. Everything is fine, until it comes to emotions - it's not something I toy with, nor something I would like to be open about, because too many years have gone by, and I have become what I thought was safe for me.

So, maybe that's why a lot of women enjoy romance novels - because I'm sure, many have such a box - although the degree of this control would vary. When we read, it's us and the words which flow into an almost endless stream which tugs at the heart-strings. There is no worry, nothing, we just read and flip the pages - run the imagination and let ourselves get lost in a different era.

Perhaps I should go pick up that book.
Because for all the fiction that it gives, there may be a measure of reality for someone else in the world. Nothing is ever fiction in romance - it's whether we want to take ourselves on that road, circumstances and all - if we don't, then it's fiction, if we do, then it's our reality -