the writing is lackluster and impersonal at best. it lacks imagination and excitement. gone are the tales of black out city and gone are the stories to live vicariously through. i fell into routine ordinary life, leaving most “sex in the city” excitement behind for the “leave it to beaver” excitement. okay so maybe not leave it to beaver but wonder days or something along those lines that has little to do with partying all night and making ordinaries envious of the life you are living.
the past few months of entries have been nothing short of shitty reviews of places i’ve been and things i’ve come across. no insight.
so what now? why write now? suddenly, in the middle of an accounting update meeting i feel inspired to write to the point where my fingers move themselves to the appropriate letters to type my thoughts swarming in my head.
the one. you know the term about the one love of your life that no one will ever compare to. they are the benchmark that you measure everyone else against and the only person with whom you have had the most intense and intimate relationship with. you know the one i’m talking about.
we’ve all used the one. maybe when we’re drunk we refer to someone we are so physically attracted to as the one, or maybe in an obsessive relationship we refer to our other as the one. truth is i’ve referred to someone as the one many times. but have you ever really experienced the one? and once you have, what’s leftover afterwards?
first there was rob. he wowed me and dazzled me with compliments that every sixteen year old needs to hear to develop into a confident, self loving person. i saw him and my body cringed. for years after, hearing that one jewel song would give me the shivers. but what i realize now is that rob was not “the one.” i was naive and young. i never truly loved him though i claimed every night on the phone that i did. i didn’t have a clue what love was. i know this now because years later he means nothing to me other than the cause of a few crazy high school years where i reached my daring prime.
along came ryan. i was so confused with this relationship that one day i thought i was playing him and the next day he had another girlfriend. for five years we went back and forth and i said that he was the one who i would end up comparing everyone to. the thing was, i was more obsessed with having a love and being in love, than actually experiencing love. ryan and i didn’t love each other more than best friends love each other. we loved having someone. we loved having someone to call and talk to, or to meet at the bar to watch the world series, or to hang out on the couch with. so years later i realize that although i loved ryan, i can’t remember a time when i was in love with ryan.
disregarding the many in between who i thought i had fallen for only to realize that they were momentary distractions, including mike and dan, someone completely different came along and challenged my being. he was totally different in every way possible. and so i fell. but looking back what did i fall for? i didn’t fall for him, but rather the idea of him. i wasn’t in love with him, but rather i wanted to be him. i wanted to be unique. i wanted to wear the screaming red shirt he wore in a black tie room. he embodied my desire to be anything but me, and anything but ordinary. so the truth was when things ended and didn’t go how i wanted them to go at the time, i was more upset by the fact that i couldn’t mold myself into being someone else other than me.
the next relationship actually brought me to say the words the one and soul mate. it was one of the most destructive and intense relationships i have ever been in and ever care to be in. sparing the boring details, i convinced myself that i had to love this person. why would i ever convince myself that i had to love someone you ask? i fell back into an old way of loving having someone to be with. i loved having someone to call at any hour and having them jump for me. i loved having someone when i was lonely. did i love her? i said it, but so often doubted it when i said it. towards the end i realized that i just felt obligated to say it. i was once asked that if i couldn’t picture myself with her for the rest of my life, how could i possibly claim that to be love? at the time of course my response was defensive and i stated over and over again that i loved her.
but they were right. i didn’t love her. not like i should have loved her. i mindfucked myself and manipulated my life into thinking that i was in love with her. i was simply only in love with the idea.
so what makes this all important and where am i at now? well, a few things after providing my brief yet two page history. one- kristen and brian. here are two individuals who are so obviously soul mates and know it but aren’t together. fate and destiny have separated them despite mutual efforts. time has passed and i am to question if maybe they are soul mates simply because of the intense and unforgettable past that they both possess or if there’s something more? or maybe we should question then if they are even soul mates? would the great forces of fate and destiny tear apart soul mates and wait so long to return them to each other? maybe they simply shared a great love that has dissolved into nothing more than pictures, memories, and old love cards.
but brian is the one for kristen. he is the one who everyone is compared to despite their best efforts to stand apart and stand alone in her love life. maybe she will kill me for writing about this, but i truly believe that its fascinating. brian made kristen’s heart melt. hell, he made all of our hearts melt. we all wanted someone to hold our hand as we were wheeled into surgery or there when we awoke from surgery. we all wanted someone to come to the family parties and refer to our nieces as their nieces as they threw them up in the air. he was the one. the one who lived up to the say anything idea of love during the good times, and the way we were love in the bad times. they were more than just the brad pitt and jennifer aniston of our high school class. they were the tom hanks and rita wilson.
so now years later after breakups and hookups and reuniting, this cycle is continuous in my conversations with kristen. every guy she dates is immediately compared to brian. but what about the guys on the other side of the one? the guys who get compared unknowingly? or rather what does it mean and hold for the future?
the truth is she has an undying connection with brian that nothing, and i mean nothing, will ever break or change. sure someone out there could come along tomorrow on a white horse and rescue her as she falls, will and grace style, and be more to her than brian ever was, but they will still be compared to him. he will never be like the first guy to infiltrate the family or to win over all of our hearts. he will never be brian. he will never be the one.
so i am ultra sensitive to the notion of the one. i know that the one has never existed in my past despite my using the words, or my attempts to convince myself. i have never had this connection where when i wake up in the morning they are the first person i think about or they are the person i have dreams about. sure we all do this when we are in relationships or when we are trying to get over a relationship- but i’m talking years later here. i am not envious of those who have experienced the one, but rather envious that i’m not someone’s one.
its uncomforting to realize that you will never be that one to someone who has already experienced a prior one. no matter how hard someone tries with kristen, they will never be the one because the one already exists. so how then do you deal in a relationship where you know that there was already a one? you both sub-consciously acknowledge this fact, but being the hopeful and nice people you are, you consciously deny it. where does this lead you? well it leads you to uncomfortable repetitive conversations and most of all it leads to insecurities despite your best efforts and your knowledge that although you might not be the one you are the one right now. but you see, the one right now isn’t what love songs are written about, and isn’t what country songs win grammy’s for.
but what happens when the love right now is the one but its not a mutual feeling or can’t be a mutual feeling?
