We paint what we cannot hold
- Weronika Kryś
- 5 hours ago
- 4 min read
What is love, if not something we spend our whole lives trying to understand? What is love, if not the most romantic lie we tell ourselves? Something we chase, something we crave, something we fear. Painted in red, wrapped in ribbons, sold in heart-shaped boxes as if love itself could be that simple. As if it could be bought. As if it could be held. But is it ever? How often do we fall in love with the idea of love, rather than the reality of it?
We imagine it to be perfect, soft like in movie scenes, flawless like a poem written with no mistakes. But love is not always gentle, certain or returned. Sometimes it is silence between two people who once spoke endlessly. Sometimes it is the ache of holding on too tightly, only to realise there is nothing to hold anymore. Perhaps it is why we paint and write. Why we turn feelings into colors and heartbreak into words because love, in its truest form, is something we cannot capture. It slips through our fingers, fades with time and changes without a warning. So we create it. We frame it. We romanticise it.
Valentine’s Day arrives dressed in red, like the world is trying to convince itself that love is this simple. Hallways bloom with paper hearts and rose-coloured decorations. Laughter echoes louder than usual, as if joy can be taped to the walls. Chocolates melt in warm pockets and roses are carried like a proof that someone, somewhere, is being chosen. For a moment everything feels softer and almost magical. But it also can feel like a performance. Like love has been turned into something measurable. Something you can count in bouquets, in cards, in public gestures. As if the absence of flowers means the absence of the feeling. As if love must always be visible, loud enough for everyone to see.
We romanticise love like we romanticise sunsets, only remembering the beauty, never the darkness that comes after. We grow up believing that love is supposed to be perfect. We romanticise love so naturally that we rarely notice we are doing it. We call it hope, we call it dreaming, we call it “just being in love”. But how often have we fallen for the idea of a person, rather than the person standing in front of us. We want love that feels like a scene, not love that feels like reality. We search for constant excitement and call it passion, even when it is only chaos. We confuse affection with attention. We confuse longing with connection. We convince ourselves if we miss someone enough, if we think about them enough, if we love them hard enough, it must mean something. But does it? Perhaps that is why love disappoints us so often.
Love was never made to be perfect. Real love is not flowers, chocolates and confessions. Sometimes it is distance or the heavy silence after an argument, when words feel too sharp to speak. Sometimes it is the quiet realization that the effort can be one-sided, that feeling can change without warning. Love does not guarantee forever. Love should not feel like drowning. It should not feel like constantly proving your worth. And when it ends, it does not end neatly. It leaves behind echoes, songs you can’t listen to anymore, places that suddenly feel unfamiliar or conversations you replay like an unfinished poetry. Love becomes memory and memory becomes weight. Maybe this is the side of love we avoid talking about, the side that doesn’t fit into a Valentine’s Day.
Maybe this is why we create. Because when love becomes too complicated to explain, we search for another language. One made of colors, of music, of ink, of unfinished sketches hidden in the back of notebooks. When feelings become too heavy to carry, we turn them into something lighter. Even if a person cannot stay, the feeling can. We paint what we cannot hold. We paint the version of love we lost, the version we wanted and never got to live. We turn memories into masterpieces, heartbreakers into something almost beautiful. Not because we are trying to escape reality, but because we are trying to survive it.
Love is terrifying because it can feel like forever and still end on a random Tuesday. Because love can be real and still not be enough. Love is not always a happy ending, sometimes it’s just a lesson that leaves bruises. And even when someone’s gone, the feeling stays like a wound you keep scratching. It lingers like silence that suddenly feels too loud. Some people are not meant to stay. So we carry them in strange ways. In habits, memories, in the softness of old conversations we replay like prayers. And even when we try to move forward, some parts of us stay behind. Still reaching. Still remembering. Still hoping. We paint what we cannot hold because the mind lets go long before the heart does. Because grief is just love with nowhere to go.
Bibliography
Photos:
Baby Praying Mantis. “The 25 Most Romantic Animals That Ever Lived.” BuzzFeed Community, BuzzFeed, 27 Feb. 2013, www.buzzfeed.com/babymantis/the-25-most-romantic-animals-that-ever-lived-1opu?utm_term=.sgZ7RzpD5&utm_source=Pinterest&utm_medium=organic&epik=dj0yJnU9Rnk1TVBVcE9OdG5VNDI5TmtvREtZV3pjTlFtS0k2U2gmcD0wJm49VW5ydlRhT1hDNy1nV09ZR2tEM3dsdyZ0PUFBQUFBR20zSkR3#937869. Accessed 15 Mar. 2026.
Schuring, Roos. Seascape Hazy Warm Sunset. Oils/Panel, 2023, www.roosschuring.com/blog/hazy-warm-sunset?utm_source=Pinterest&utm_medium=organic. Accessed 15 Mar. 2026.
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