The Everyday Love Story

Because there’s no farting in Nicholas Sparks Novels

A boy I dated in college once told me he wanted to be a lawyer because his parents were lawyers, and he said it seemed like the “right thing to do”. When I told him I wanted to be a writer, because it seemed like the ONLY thing to do, told me writing was not a viable profession the way you tell somebody the milk carton is empty. So I decided, while he fondly admired his parents’ law degrees and sipped on Mint Juleps, that I would write him up and down, backwards and forward, inside and out, until he had no other choice but to eat his own words for breakfast.

That boy soon became nothing more than a second rate Amory Blaine.
Nothing more than a few lines in my story.
And a lawyer.

Needless to say, we didn’t last. And it was then that I realized I was never cut out to be the girl who gets the guy at the end of the romance novel. You see, Nicholas Sparks didn’t write a single love story with me in mind. Nicolas Sparks wrote me out of all his stupid love stories the minute I learned how to pick up my own pen and write the damn story myself.

Let me break down my issues with with the “Modern Day Love Story.”

Nowhere in a Nicholas Sparks book do two lovers stray from their countryside love affair to indulge in Buffalo wings and a Celtics game. There’s no “Safe Haven” here, just an amalgamation quirks that probably fall short of leading lady material. I laugh when I’m squeezed too tightly. I’m violently ticklish. I WILL kick you in the teeth. I will be an accident I won’t apologize for because I warned you and you chose not to listen. I leave the fridge open when I cook. I sleep with my socks on. Speaking of sleep, you’re just going to have to accept that once or twice a night you’ll play stop drop and roll. There’s no my side or your side. There I am in the middle of the bed. Where you end up does not concern me three hours into my first REM cycle.

And speaking of beds, I hate bed sheets. Not fitted sheets, you weirdo. I understand their place in the normal sleep paradigm. But regular sheets stress me the fuck out. I don’t care if it’s flannel, or Egyptian cotton, or silk. (Does anyone actually have silk sheets? Ew.) I always wake up feeling like Criss Angel trapped in a double straight jacket, and God forbid I tumble out of bed like a burrito rolling down a hill, only to be left dangling by my ankles in my underwear.

It’s a very real fear.

The heroines in Nicholas Sparks novels probably love ~freshly washed sheets~ and I just don’t. I can’t. No sheets.

We are not “The Lucky Ones.” I’m not going to try to fix you when I’m still working out my own kinks, because I think in real life, people should have kinks. Nicholas Sparks always seems to write one deeply flawed character with tons of kinks, and one noble, brave, do-it-all for love character whose primary job is to save said “kinky” individual from inevitable self destruction.

I’m not interested in gentrifying whatever mess the last girl left you in. I’m not interested in rebuilding your ruins so the next girl can move in. I’m not interested in the next girl.

You have to rebuild yourself.

I don’t need you to fix me, either. I don’t have abandonment issues, Daddy issues, intimacy issues, or commitment issues. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got issues, they just don’t involve people leaving me, so they probably aren’t scalable enough to turn into a 300-page book. I’m impatient, but NOT a little unkind. I’m not a Marilyn Monroe image quote that you can post on your Facebook page. None of this love me at my worst nonsense. If you choose not to love me at my worst, I won’t hold it against you. “At my worst” seems like it would be a dark place for you, especially if we just met.

I’m ACTUALLY impatient. I’m impatient with slow walkers, my mother, and the when my Amazon Prime order doesn’t arrive on time. I’m impatient the phrase ‘time heals all wounds’, with poor subway etiquette, and every train that runs through Brooklyn. I’m impatient when someone calls, and you call them back immediately, and they don’t pick up.

“Where could you possibly have gone in thirty seconds?” Is all I’m saying.

I’m not the party girl, the cool girl, the it girl, or the crazy girl. I’m not the one-of-the- guys girl, the career girl, the bring home to mom girl, or the lady in the streets but the freak in the sheets girl. None of these girls are singularly real. They’re limiting characters. Rosalinds. I am perhaps a little of all of them, and I’m not ashamed of that reality. Maybe that’s the problem. It always seems like the main character is trying to hide her flaws. I have plenty flaws and they’re out in the open, mostly on the internet for your viewing pleasure.

So give me all of your flaws.

I want messy love. Wild love. Accepting love. I won’t judge you love. Love incapable of fitting between bookends. I want a love that’s okay getting lost as long as it finds its way back. I don’t care if you laugh so hard that you fart, as long as we’re laughing together. Farts don’t happen in Nicholas Sparks novels. That wasn’t exactly what Nicholas Sparks had in mind when he wrote “The Last Song”.

What I want is for us to challenge each other to become better people than we were last year. The chase is not a challenge. Dogs chase things. I don’t want to be a dog. I certainly don’t want to be a bird if you’re a bird. Birds are kind of the worst. I’ve never seen anyone get super excited about birds, and I want love I’m super excited about.

What I want is for you to have a mind of your own, and know that it’s okay if you change it a million times. What I want is for you to know that if you let it slide that I kick the bedsheets to the bottom of the bed, I’ll let it slide that everything in your life is organized alphabetically, and once in a while, I’ll mess the order up on purpose just to see if you’re still paying attention. I think there’s humor in that.

Really, that’s all we all want, right? Somebody who isn’t going to try to peel away every complex fiber of our being until all that’s left is Allie and Noah. Or Jack and Rose. Somebody who understands that we’re all just trying to stay afloat. You know — just not on a door in the middle of the North Atlantic with a sinking ship behind us.

Wait — that wasn’t Nicholas Sparks.

You get the idea.