Romance needs urgency

Oh my god, I go to bed every night thinking about how much time has elapsed since writing to you.

Miss you.

Would love to hear how you are.

Reminds me of this poem:

In those fragments of time where it’s just me, an overpriced, undernourishing snack and a sign counting down the minutes til I depart, I’ve been thinking a lot about romance.

Partially because I laughed out loud when a man recently brought over a 4 euro bottle of wine to my house and said, ‘It was the cheapest I could find — bare minimum vibes haha.’ (Saw this reel from comedian Josh Thomas about hetero dating and can’t stop thinking about us as ibises).

Partially because Charlie’s Everything is Romantic struck such a pop cultural chord last year, and I like listening to it in noise-cancelling headphones while waiting in customs.

Partially because I worry people are hesitant to be sentimental because embarrassment has become so public, and everything feels like it’s in crisis, and being seen to try means you actually...care.

But also, on a more philosophical level, because I think being romantic (not just in the traditional sense of how it’s sold to us) is the thing that constantly keeps my life alive. Keeps me alive. I wonder if you feel the same.

I’m so glad it’s 2026, that cringe is dead, and that we're all accepting that everyone is exhausted. Exhausted from working and empathy fatigue and existentialism and personal branding and oversharing, and every time I work myself into these states of like, what am I doing and what is the point, I always return to romance as the tonic.

Or at the very least, a way of living that can direct me to some relief and whimsy. We can do our worrying and then make the world go around.

To be romantic about life is to believe that anything can change in an instant. It’s to stop trying to work out when or how that moment might arrive because you trust that it will come. To get comfortable with the mystery and banality of life. To stop needing the answers all at once, but at the same time, do enough to inch towards them.

To be romantic is to do something without asking and without expecting anything in return. To be romantic is to pay the bill, to book the flight, to possess an ability within yourself to turn a bleak hotel room or a delay into a weird adventure, an unexpected feeling into a signal for something else.

To be romantic is to treat attention as the greatest form of romance itself. You can tell this in two main ways: how someone looks you in the eyes and how many questions they ask.

To be romantic about life is also to accept melancholy. It’s to expect less of Sundays, accept life is boring and a lot of the time an uneventful trip to the supermarket aisle, and not spend the journey home wondering whether that’s because of some moral failing on your behalf. To be romantic is to be able to laugh about it. And then to also know when to ask for more.

To be romantic is to treat solitude the same way you treat company. To care about your own experience as much as others and vice versa. It is to make small gestures towards your life, however small, ephemeral or meaningless to someone else, because they mean enough to you.

To be romantic is to stop worrying about what you look like and whether you have precisely correct things for the journey. It is to trust that the things will show up when you need them, be invisible when you have to learn how to search for them, and not make sense when you need to be reminded that not all of life does.

Whenever I am emo, I return to romance as not only a concept, but a way of life. You can be romantic about anything. It makes you make the sharp bits of life soft. And the soft bits of life more meaningful.

And, at the very least, a way to pass the time.

• Going on a hike with my friend and ending up at a wine bar on a Sunday night with no underwear on after swimming, and getting home at 8pm dusty and having eaten just cheese for dinner.

• Lengthy voice notes from friends. I’m talking 16 minutes. I’m talking two-part episodes. I see a lot online about people hating a long voice note. I fkng love them. Give me a podcast episode. Narrate your supermarket shop to me. Give me anything but another reel of celebrities interviewing celebrities or men interviewing monks.

• The full drawer of Diet Cokes was left in my fridge after a group of my friends came to visit. An absolute sugar marathon to work through and a constant reminder of my friend B returning from my front door at 5 in the morning, saying, ‘I just bought us a bag of Coke!’

• Making no plans on a Saturday

• Speaking Portuguese to the barista who makes me coffee three times a week and fooling them into thinking I’m fluent

• Jeans and a slutty top

• Changing the colour of the cushion covers in my living room and treating that as both a spiritual cleanse and an extreme home makeover

• Throwing away old make-up that I wore to weddings when I was in my mid 20s, similarly to the aforementioned extreme makeover note

• Perusing Vinted instead of doomscrolling at nights

• Going for walks before work in the morning and recording voice note responses

• Anything that resembles a slight amount of DIY

• Looking at old photos of myself when I didn’t feel hot or cool, and realising that I was

• Declining a date due to a lack of the aforementioned essential urgency

• Taking a course of natural liver cleanse supplements, but also having a glass of wine on a Tuesday night

• Not watching trending TV shows

• Buying slippers from the man who seems to be able to make anything from sheepskin at the market

• Being mysterious online

• Being mysterious in general

• These Japanese incense papers I bought in New York that make your house smell like an elegant psychic’s house

Speak soon.

Wishes,
Bel
xo

PS. Happy Kevin Morby release week!