E is for "Effervescent"

If there was one anime I know every episode by heart, it would be Aya Nakahara's Lovely Complex. I first heard about it from a friend back in high school, but I only ever did give it a chance a few years after and completely fell in love with it. For those of you who're not familiar with it, it's an anime about a tall girl falling in love with a shorter guy and spends around 17 episodes trying her very best to make him fall for her – and it's great. If anything, I feel like it was very ahead of its time, tackling on one or two social issues whilst dazzling us with romcom tropes, but the actual story pans out as a very satisfying watch.

Or at least to me, I felt very drawn to it because I was going through the same thing. I had the greatest crush on someone who was a couple of inches shorter than me, and I honestly could not resolve this inner conflict. Fresh out of an all-girls highschool, my college had so many good-looking guys, and I end up liking one who was just as geeky as me BUT shorter? My 17 year old self must've been trying to grasp for some acceptance and reason. And so, I clung to LoveCom for dear life. And to those naysayers out there that say anime can't teach people a thing or two – I learned from this show that when you're visiting a sick person, the right etiquette is to bring well meaning gifts like citrus, or the person's favorite get-well snack. Take that.

But kidding aside, I love everything about this anime, even if it was stupid at times. But now that I'm older (hopefully wiser), and more experienced, I think back to my teenage years and feel that maybe I must have had too much unrealistic expectations of what “being in a relationship” and “giving your best” actually means. I had been that tall girl trying my very best to get that short guy to notice me, succeeded at it after a months and months of painstaking heartbreak – but the similarities end there. I am happy that in my mind, after 24 episodes, the main characters get to perpetually live out a fantasy romance we all dream of.

But not for me – real life is different.

I feel like I've come a long way from how I used to be a decade ago, and real life has definitely taught me difficult and hard lessons I would never wish on anyone. To the me now, love isn't constantly giving your all and crying at every rejection. It isn't being with someone 24/7 and expecting every minute to be magic and rainbows. As I type all of this, please know that I'm actually cringeing and beyond embarassed – and I really wish I could send my current self back in time to just let the old me know that it's okay to have a break.

That it's okay to quit too – putting yourself first is more important.

Of course, my bull headed teenage self wouldn't listen to all this enlightened talk (would call bullshit on it, in fact), but we get dealt with different cards with an unlimited number of episodes to play out. The LoveCom chapter of my life has long ended, and now I can look back to it fondly and say that really, I lived out an anime for a time.