The bell rings. I’m sitting in first period deep in thought. I’m focused…not on what’s going on in class but what I had been watching the night before: the one thing that has occupied the last two weeks of my life. I yearn to hear that raspy, deeply Scottish voice saying: “Tonight, on ‘Love Island.’” 

I truly love “Love Island.” It seems that since I started watching season seven that I can’t really think—or talk—about anything else. 

The real question, though, is why has this mindless reality TV show occupied every minute of my life for the last two weeks? I’ve been wondering, my mom has been wondering and my friends have been wondering why my private story is filled with selfies of me, mouth wide open, hand covering my mouth, reacting to yet another crazy fire-pit moment or crying over the most recent dumping.  

The simplest answer to this question would be that I am a teenage girl who loves drama; drama that I’m sitting in my bed watching play out in a villa in Spain by an excess of single, British, 20-somethings. 

This seems to make sense. I mean “Love Island” viewers are statistically more superficial. According to Viewers are two times as likely to read gossip blogs/magazines than the average person. Sixty-five percent of viewers say their favorite activity is to sit on the beach and a whopping 75 percent say that it is a priority to look physically attractive (yougov.co.uk).

So it would make sense, right? I like “Love Island” for the same reason I could stand in Sephora for hours or that I wake up every morning and look at “The Daily Mail” on Snapchat. 

That answer seems too simple, though. It doesn’t explain why I am so emotionally invested in the lives of random people who are sitting around in bathing suits for eight weeks. Just now, as I am writing this, “Love Island” is playing in the background and I had a visceral reaction to one of my favorite boys being in the bottom three (at risk of elimination).

I think that while yes, I am a teen girl who gets a kick out of the superficiality of it all, a more appropriate answer to my question would be that I love love. I love it when two people that have been flirting get to “couple up.” I love it when you can see a boy trying to win a girl back after messing up. I love it when the islanders do grand gestures for each other to prove that they do in fact love each other for more than just $50,000 and 10 weeks of internet fame.

I watch “Love Island” for the same reason that I watch “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” or read the “Twilight” books on repeat.

“Love Island” is a non-stop cycle of crushing, dating, falling in love or falling apart. It’s everything you could want without the stress of having to do it yourself.

I’m in love with love; that’s why I can’t get enough of “Love Island.”