When I was thirteen, love was simple. I knew I liked a boy if he was cute and I giggled often; after this revelation, I spent most of my days trying to figure out if he shared those tender feelings. I was never the girl to simply ask, so I sent my most loyal corral of girlfriends to excavate information and return dutifully. If the feelings were mutual, Disney magic- we were “going out.” When it ended, and it always did, there were tears and anger and dirty looks exchanged in the hallway for a few days, weeks at most, and we moved on. My qualifications for dating were simple- he needed to be cute and we had to get along. My friends and I occasionally “went out” with the same boy, but no one really cared. When it was over, it was over; there were no re-do’s or round two’s or renewed interest. I brushed off the hurt and brief amounts of lost time and carried on to the next one.
I always imagined finding “the one” would go very simply: we would meet in a fashion that would lend itself to a spectacular “how we met” story, we would fall in love, and, through trials and triumphs, we would stay together and life as would knew it would be brighter, a happy place. We would start well and good, with dates and late-night phone calls, with first kisses and daydreams, with hours of talking and interests that were plumb-lined. Our life together would involve fights (I had seen my parents do enough of them, I knew eventually they would come) but at he end of the day, he would love me and I would love him. All of this, from phone-calls to love everlasting, would culminate with a marriage by the time I finished college or shortly thereafter; of this, I was certain. My journey would be perfect.
In three days I will turn twenty-four. I have neither a husband, fiancée, boyfriend, pet, or plant, and yet, my love life is overlapping waves of the Complicated, in ways I never could have predicted.
There has been no story paralleled to the one I wrote years ago. I have had some particularly interesting “how we met” stories, many late-night phone calls, and interest sharing, but all to nothing, to no happy endings. The sour feelings and tears occasionally lasted for weeks, but usually, they have lasted much longer. As I write this, I still hold strong to an ending from almost three years ago; but that is another story for another day.
Ten years ago, my narrowing of the dating pool was simple. Though I came to realize some time ago that more pickiness was required, I am befuddled lately at how much more picky I need to be and how complicated that makes things. So often I wish I could turn back to simpler days of attractiveness and compatibility; other days, so much of me wants more. I want values, intelligence, wit, a desire for marriage, passion, life goals, a loving family, living proximity, the ability to love unconditionally, and so many other things that exclude people who fit so well into the simpler version. I am new to the pain of excluding and I wonder, and often, if it causes more hurt than it prevents.
Since leaving high school, I have only dated one guy only one time. All of them, in some way, have turned back up, like reruns of Law and Order, on every channel, at every time of day. Today, their holds on me overlap, and with too many hands over me, I have trouble seeing the path before me. Their shadows are different sizes, but a combination of shadows creates darkness in all the places they overlap; at the present, I am in the dark. I don’t know where to turn to be out from under the shadows or if I even should. I am cold in the shadows, and, at the same time, I burn so easily.
For the complexity of all this, this love business, I was not prepared. I was not prepared to distinguish between love and in love, to deny myself those whom I crave, to love those who love others, to spend months and years waiting for their shadows to pass, to be alone in the shadows at twenty-four. In this place, I am not sure how to be. As it is with writing this, I am not sure where to go, where to find the answers to the questions life has drawn from me. I have not yet given up hope on my story and I have not yet crawled into a cave with permanent shadows. I am not sure of the way out nor am I entirely sure how I got here. I only know where I am and where I hope to be and that someday, the hope is that all these things make sense. I’ll let you know when I get there.
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