The Foolishness of Love

“It is better to love wisely, no doubt: but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.” - Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray

The simple idea of romance has been a forefront of both thought and conversation since the very beginning of time. That we can feel so innocently and profoundly and blindly that we are willing to give ourselves away entirely. Society has become so infatuated by this concept that we have cemented it in history, we see it in letters from historical icons, in literature from old to new, it’s what we find ourselves digging for in the press when the world has gotten a bit too messy. Romance has been built up to be this extraordinary thing that blesses your life when you need it the very most and then sticks with you until the very end. Had romance actually been anything like this, Lilla Martinez would have accepted the idea of love much earlier on in her life. 

Lilla fell in love when she fell in love with love. Ask her to recount the day and she would tell you it was the middle of the night actually; she was hanging off her dormitory bed as she frequently did when there was work to be done and no motivation to actually do it. In times like this, she would usually be alone, a soundtrack playing in the earphones that never sat right in her ears and definitely didn't stay when she was dangling upside down from her bed like a child watching TV just to see ‘if it’s better the wrong way round’. Tonight, she had company, the brown-haired girl who lay on the too-old-to-still-be-soft carpet with her legs against the bed, close enough that if she shivered her foot would jab right into the side of Lilla’s head. 

“But what is life without love? Life is shitty enough as it is don’t people deserve that piece of happiness once in a while? Even if it ends or if it’s not what we expected because we didn’t actually know what to expect, it’s still fun for a while. We were made to love I think, we need it to get through life. As the great Thackeray said, ‘to love foolishly is better than to not be able to love at all.’” Morgan Paisley spoke too fast for 3am on a Friday morning. Her eyes were ablaze, as if she would actually combust if Lilla didn’t agree with her. Lilla noticed, even from upside down, that Morgan’s eyes turned a very specific shade of cobalt blue when she was arguing a point like her life depended on it. Morgan had grown up believing that fairytales existed, this may have been a combination of the fact her parents had been happily married and in love for twenty years this October, or that she herself had found her own Prince Charming, or maybe it was more the fact that her father had the tendency of making up stories and Morgan had the tendency of believing it all to be true. 

“‘The great Thackeray’? You say that like I should know who that is.” Lilla herself hadn’t had much experience with love, there was no love when her parents got a divorce and there was a miscommunication on which one was leaving, that particular act of love left Lilla living with her grandmother. She’d definitely had no experience with romantic love, there was something particularly hard as a homosexual trying to find a girlfriend when nobody believed you were a homosexual. Lilla Martinez was all strawberry blonde curls and flowers, pair this with her quick wit and the dark humour that gave her that too-pretty-to-be-true but too-complex-to-understand image that men and their simple minds adored, the idea of Lilla being a lesbian and trying to flirt was often mistaken for a mixture of friendliness and playful mocking. 

“We have been doing Vanity Fair in our Victorian Literature lectures for a month! We have a two-thousand-word essay due in next week and you don't even know the author?” Morgan looked incredulous, the cobalt in her eyes turning a deeper shade of midnight. 

“You and I both know I’m only taking Victorian Lit because it was better than fucking Shakespeare.” Lilla wasn’t opposed to old books per se, a lot of them were actually literary masterpieces, it was more the Shakespearean ideals. The fact that there was death or there was love, and the only thing in between was war. If Lilla had to pick her modules, she would much rather learn about modern poetry where the words don’t always make sense or contemporary fiction that proves that love is not the be all or end all. Because while Victorian romantic literature tends to portray perfection, Lilla liked to explore how humanity isn’t perfect at all.

“One day in the future you’re going to need Vanity Fair and you’re going to think to yourself ‘if only I’d listened in fucking Victorian Lit,’” Morgan’s voice had a hint of disappointment swarming in the playfulness. It was a hard concept for her to grasp, that Lilla who was like her in so many ways could care so little about something she loved so dearly. However, while Morgan had grown up in love with the past, Lilla had always been much more interested in how she could affect the future.

“I’m quite certain I am not going to need shitty old romance books when I’m writing my best-selling sci-fi series but thanks for the pep talk Morg,” Lilla laughed. She had always been one of those people who consumed media and thought she could do it too, that was how she got into writing. She had this need to be the best in this quiet part of herself, a part that wanted nothing more than to be one of the names on a shelf. Morgan had never had that need, quite simply because she already was the best, top of the class, effortlessly perfect. She looked to pass her knowledge down instead. That was why while Lilla is drowning in espresso staring at the white screen of an empty word document, Morgan would be inspiring the future generations as a professor of classical literature at the University of Leeds, or something as equally as insufferable and boring to Lilla in a place she would much rather not be. 

“I hate you.” There was no venom in the words that would usually pain Lilla to hear, instead Morgan’s voice was all honey. Thick and sweet and Lilla found herself in that very moment, ear throbbing from where Morgan’s foot had finally collided with her ear, drowning in it entirely. In honey and chocolate curls and a midnight blue ocean. She knew from the second she fell it was a foolish act, and from the second later she couldn’t disagree with Thackeray more, because falling foolishly in love with Morgan Paisley left her far worse off than not falling in love at all.