The art of yearning

It’s been days since I watched Dracula: A Love Tale and I still haven’t recovered. That film didn’t just tell a story, it carved something into me: something tender, feral, and almost unbearable. Because yearning is like that: a hunger without an end, a fever that makes you alive but never satisfied.

I think that’s why I can’t stop replaying those scenes in my mind. It isn’t just the opulence of the imagery, the gowns, the shadow drenched rooms, the perfect soundtrack; is the way love feels like it might split you open. It’s the recognition that yearning is not weakness. It’s proof that we are capable of desiring something bigger than the disposable “likes,” the swipe right culture, the everything fast nothing sacred rhythm of now.

Yearning, in its essence, is an art. It’s the stare of Caleb Landry Jones that lingers like a bruise. It’s walking through a city at night listening to Depeche Mode and pretending the air itself is in love with you. It’s reading passages from Wuthering Heights and feeling them ache in your bones. And yes, it’s watching Dracula and wondering why ordinary love suddenly seems so pale, so unmagical, so unable to match the grandness of what you just witnessed.

I know this might sound dramatic, but I like it that way. I want drama. I want yearning. I want the kind of desire that terrifies, that consumes, that makes you write novels, that makes you dress like you’re going to meet someone who might change your life.

In fashion, yearning is everywhere if you know where to look: in the undone bows of Simone Rocha, in the melancholy lace of Rodarte, in a slip dress worn with a coat two sizes too big because it feels like protection from the world. It’s why certain looks feel magnetic, they don’t just style you, they tell the world: I am waiting, I am longing, I am alive with desire.

I think of yearning as resistance. Against fast trends. Against disposability. Against the idea that we should settle for convenience over magic. Yearning says: I will not be numb. I will not be content with shallow imitation. I will live in the sharp edge of wanting more.

So maybe that’s why I can’t shake Dracula: A Love Tale. It isn’t just a film; it’s a manifesto for yearning itself. For love that refuses to be ordinary, for beauty that makes you dizzy, for devotion that borders on madness. And in a way, isn’t that what we’re all secretly searching for? Something that makes us feel like we’ve touched eternity, even if only for a moment.

Until then, I’ll keep yearning. In velvet, in words, in every little act of noticing.

Because yearning, as unbearable as it can be, is the closest thing to proof that I am still alive.