taking off my rose-colored glasses

Yesterday I was sitting in one of my literature classes, distracted by thoughts of all of the homework I have to complete today, when my professor read the first page of Jacob’s Room aloud. The narrator switches thoughts mid-paragraph, then back to the original thought in the next sentence. We discussed it a bit and, not that this was a direct product of the discussion, I came to a realization. 

I have abandoned my years-long habit of romanticizing the world around me. Reality has set in and I have become so very present in my surroundings and the things that are prevalent to my life right now. 

I had this blog post planned out about a year ago (while I was studying in Paris and trying to romanticize our intensive and immersive French course), where I was going to jump into this idea of romanticizing our lives and the world around us. I had written part of it, but I was too busy trying to live in the world that I could only see through rose-colored glasses. It’s hard to write a post on romanticizing when you are so immersed in the process you can’t tear yourself away long enough to put it into words. Does that make sense? I feel like those were the ramblings of a madwoman trying to throw words on a page at the rate they escape her mind. I suppose, though, that might actually be a relatively accurate description of me. 

So how did I switch from a romanticized view of my world to one grounded in reality? Honestly, I think this summer did a lot in that department. But let me rewind a little to set it up…

When I got back from studying abroad (I’m sorry, I’m just going to have to sound like the annoying study abroad girl; it has seriously had a huge impact on me), I was sad and missed the life I had there so I tried to create a vision that lay over my world, like a veil changing the image in front of my eyes. Life at home, life at school, small tasks like homework, once-a-week responsibilities like grocery shopping–all donned this veil to make me enjoy it more. 

Pinterest boards became my escape (even as I went into the summer). I used only certain mugs for my coffee as to spark joy. I darkened the exposure on pretentious pictures I would take of books and trinkets and friends. 

As I lie in the summer heat, I realized that my summer was wasting away in front of me. My Summer 2024 Moodboard timeframe was closing and I was about to spend my last month working at the Olympics (come to find out, it was hard to romanticize this). 

My summer felt very stagnant. I couldn’t get a job for the short time I was living at home, my friends all had jobs or internships or were staying at their apartments in different parts of the tri-state area, I only saw my family. I had books and my bed and I just kept looking forward. 

When I got to Paris for the Olympics, I realized it was going to be very different than what I expected. I really enjoyed my job, but I didn’t realize how wide the chasm was that lay between the Paris I experienced as a student and the Paris I experienced as more of an adult. 

My days were monotonous: I woke up and ate and went to work (which honestly was a highlight in my day) and then came back to my hotel and read and went to sleep. I would wake up the next morning and do the same exact thing again. I would eat the same meals every day from the Monoprix in the train station by my hotel. I would fix an espresso at work to get me through the eight hours. I just lived the same life every day. 

Reality was so firm and repetitive that romanticizing became impossible, except for maybe in the books I read or the music I listened to on the bus to work. 

A break in the cycle came in the form of a few consecutive days off of work, which I ran with. All the way to Marseilles, in the south of France. What I envisioned to be a few peaceful days at the beach, or a time of liberated growth, became a few days of panic, uncomfortableness, and thinking of the future. My moments of peace were found floating in the Mediterranean Sea, or sitting and watching the sunset on my first night there. 

Other than that, I had travel issues both into Paris after my trip and from Paris back to the US. Through all of this, it was so stressful that I didn’t have a moment to romanticize.

When I flew back to the US, I got back in on a Friday night around 12:30, and then the next morning left my house at 8 so I could move into my apartment at school. RA training was in full swing, which I now am, and so I could not catch a break to rest and do nothing. 

Since moving back into school, I have been through a week of training that went from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30-9:00 p.m. every day, then I lost a childhood friend, and now I’m taking four of the hardest classes I’ve ever had and have more work than I could have imagined. 

After that quick little life update, you can probably see why I haven’t even had a chance to romanticize. 

I’ve also been talking to a professor of mine about the change in me from last semester to now. Talking it out kind of gave me an epiphany: I am trying to be present and hold on to these days a lot more than the me I was six months ago. Now, I’m more serious. I go into class with a different perspective, a different desire. I feel different somehow when I talk to friends or family. I’m not sure what happened to cause these changes specifically, but I have to believe that it’s my new mindset of reality. 

But what is good about this shift? I still get hit with random urges to curl up in bed and sit in a place of wistfulness, where I sit and imagine I’m something of a woman in the late 1700s in the English countryside. I think I’ll always have this urge, since with literature I can’t quite tear this desire away from myself. 

I’m trying to figure out a way to conclude these thoughts, but I’m stuck. I want to have conclusive thoughts on the way I’ve changed, and I can’t. The shift from romanticizing so many aspects of my life to just basking in the reality of my world has hit me in the truest way, expressing the pain and the seriousness reality has the tendency to drop on someone.

Maybe in the next post, I'll have a solid enough position that I can add on to what I've said. Or maybe, I'll have shifted again. I'm finding that the black-and-white sides of romanticism versus reality are not valid fenced-in areas that I can put my mind, my soul. I hope that I can find a good spot to balance the two, because I don't think we can have one or the other. Being limited one would drive us to wholly madness (sorry, I've been reading Hamlet...).

Thank you, as always, for reading.