Track 2: "Missed Opportunities"

• IDEA: Well, I’m nothing in my writing if not honest. So let's just get this segment of the show over with early, shall we?

For starters, I wrote this about a silently requited love interest I had a few years ago. Forget ‘head over heels:’ we were head in the clouds, Cloud Nine to be exact. But our love was dead in the water from the beginning, truth be told. And if we’d tried to treat it as anything other than that, for longer than we already had, we both would’ve drowned.

Imagine the feeling of having a love, one of the greatest—in the moment, what you believe to be the greatest, the Fates' magnum opus—of your life, choking on the weeds of something as menial as “unspoken—”

Kidding. Disregard everything you just read, I just wanted to see how long I could keep the tangent going.

Honestly, with this writing, I was going for the vibes of if throw caution to the wind was a singular poem. So much guardedness is around Love and Romance these days, especially in my generation. It’s all about if this person doesn’t do it first, then I’m not doing it and unspoken games and odd boundaries that are a far cry from what Love actually encompasses. And personally, I just don’t fall into that sect of feeling. I’m a hopeless romantic completely and wholeheartedly. I still believe in handwritten love letters, freshly picked flowers (your favorite, of course), long walks that last until the sun sets and the both of you don’t even notice because the only thing you’re looking at is each other—the whole nine. So I truly wanted to write something from that perspective instead of the scared perspective that’s become common these days.

• WRITING PROCESS: 

Ok so… this time, my process was neither the ripple nor the domino: it was more akin to a sandwich.

If memory serves me correctly—I got the first line, “Say it,” first. And then I got, “If three words, eight letters, out in the open with no place to hide…” and from those two lines (well, 1 ½ lines) my brain just stacked whatever was supposed to go in between.

Particularly though, I remember sitting there and really throwing around those coveted three words in my head soooo many times while I was writing it. I love you I love you I love you was on a constant loop, because I was trying to see what “the muses” would give me for the other half of that line, to rewrite this new reputation Love has: that has it written as Loss.

A reputation it truly doesn’t deserve, in this romantic’s opinion: loving never equates to losing anything. Not truly.

And when that belief settled itself into my thoughts’ bones at that moment, I got the next half: “...was what it meant to lose, she would lose everything.”

In other words: “If this is what you all think is Loss, then fine. I’ll still do it. I’d rather risk the loss than not be sure of what I’ve won by keeping the words with me.”

• MY FAVORITE LINES: 

The ending. Obvious pick, but whatever:

“If three words, eight letters, out in the open with no place to hide

was what it meant to lose, she would lose everything.

Over and over, for him, she’d never win and do it gladly.”

• AFTERMATH: This one gave me the warm fuzzies 🥰. For one, I LOVE when the romantic side of my writing gets to shine bc 90% of my words are tear-inducing lol. It's a nice reprieve whenever these kinds of writings knock on my brain’s door. Plus, it’s always nice any time I get to remind the world that I’m a proud spokesperson for the minority of lover girls that refuse to believe true romance is dead.

Never stop believing for your Mr. Darcy—he’s there, he’s just somewhere beneath the bargain bin or something.

And that’s a wrap on Track 2 🎬. Monday is a really special one: “Wings.” And its background is quite tear-inducing, so… I apologize now, I guess.

See ya later, readers. xoxo

IG: @joyyy_reads ✨