(this is what happens when I write while listening to the soundtrack of “Pride and Prejudice”)
I look around and it seems like everyone is getting married.
It is so strange to be surrounded by people who are choosing each other, with no doubt, no fear. They believe they know each other. They hold each other with so much trust. So much trust, that they had no doubt that they could ask each other to dedicate themselves to a life-long vow of togetherness. Someone had the courage to ask someone else to stay forever. Had no doubt that, not only would the other say yes, but they would be filled with joy by the notion. They wanted each other. They are wanted by each other. A person wanted something enough to ask, and now two people are bound to one another.
Its so strange to observe, as it has made me reflect on my own unbound life. As I reflect, I see my world mirrored back to me in a display of emptiness. To meet someone who fills me with a compelling need for closeness, a need strong enough to overcome all my defenses, is a rare occurrence, but what is even more rare is finding someone who sees me as the subject of their desire. I have had little to no true romance in my life, and though, at times I have experienced the desire to love, I have never had an experience where that desire was returned. I have had encounters of being wanted, but never in this way. Eartha Kitt once said, “A man has always wanted to lay me down, but he never wanted to pick me up.”. As I watch the world around me grant wishes of “love” and “forever” to all of the people who surround me, I begin to wonder whether I will ever be wanted in that way.
I am not claiming unlovability, because, though it has never been declared to me, I do not doubt that I have been loved from afar. But from afar is not the same. It lacks the courage of a declaration. This time has made me wonder whether I am loved only by those who lack courage, or if loving me requires more bravery than it would to love another. You see, I am not simple, not easy, and parts of my complexity are on display for all to see. To choose me is to choose the “other”. To choose to ensnare yourself in intricate webs of social quagmires. I live in a space that rarely gives me the room to fully belong. This reality has brought me sorrow, but it has also allowed me to find a wholeness in myself. A wholeness that I have seen other seek in the arms of another, only to instead find the confines of hollow codependence. Finding a home in oneself can create a fullness. It does not require others to maintain it. But nothing can keep one from yearning for connection, or from wanting to love, and be loved.
I want to care for someone and to hold space for them. I yearn to be seen by another. To make another feel seen. To marvel in someone’s presence, and to delight in someone’s joy. I yearn to love, but I do not yearn for wholeness. You will not complete me. No one will be my missing piece. I will never be “nothing without you”. And maybe that is why I find no roses on my doorstep. No lovers at my door. Maybe that is just what happens when you find yourself. You lose all of the people who want to make you into a part of themselves, to shape you into a puzzle piece, so that they can use you to cover up their own hollowness. In this way I have dodged a bullet, avoiding the destructive hands of an unfinished person who looks for their missing piece in the hearts of kind strangers, instead of in themselves. Though this gives me a hint of reassurance, I still spend a little bit of each evening, taking longing looks out the window wondering if I will meet the one, whose absence makes my mind wander, and whose presence fills me with butterflies. The one whose heart is filled with courage, enough to want me with no hesitation, enough to ask me to stay forever.
ByAnotherName 