Modern Love

I listen to episodes of Modern Love because I want to believe in love and more than just that, I want to believe that I can have it too. I want to believe that I can have it in the way I want it but not necessarily in the way other people want it.

I do not want a melding of bank accounts, of decision making, and one queen-sized bed in which we will spend every night together until one of us dies. I do not want to be one person that shares one last name, a Mr. and Mrs. on an envelope that should have been addressed to me.

I do not want to ask before doing. I do not want an engagement after 547 sleeps. I do not want babies. I want myself and I want you to have you and if we can have each other while still keeping ourselves that sounds wonderful too.

It’s funny that I say this now because I used to go for men that looked like me and apart from their blond hair and blue eyes I went for men that made me whole in some way. I would look at them and could easily mistake the color of their skin or that space around their pupils for my own but what made us different is that they had something I was missing.

I liked men who were at ease in social situations because I was not. I liked men who were brave and had an adventurous edge because did not. I liked men who had a vision for their future who knew the things they wanted because I did not.

When I was a college sophomore I dated a classmate who was from South Africa. I liked his voice and that we looked physically kindred, but what I liked most of all was that he had an edge. He rode around campus on a skateboard and wore deep u-neck teeshirts. He could get stoned every day but still kept a high GPA and seemed most in place being out of place.

I was smitten with him but he wasn’t necessarily smitten with me. I stayed silent when I saw a text on his phone from a girl saying, “ We should talk about what happened last night.” I accepted that he would ditch me for his friends and that he didn’t plan on speaking to me when he went home for the summer.

See, that using and secretive aspect of him was something a very flawed version of me wanted for myself too. I wanted to be someone who could sleep with a stranger and be okay looking into the eyes of their partner the next day. I wanted to be someone unattached.

I think it’s a sign of growth that I no longer feel attracted to men who look like me, with who I could melt into one whole person.

My aunt would say that we go for people who look like us because we knew them in a past life. Maybe they were a sibling or spouse. Maybe we killed them or they killed us and we have some kind of karma to work out together.

I think that’s too much togetherness, too much baggage, too many expectations.

I believe my karma is my own and I am my own in this lifetime. I am not a plant searching for a man who is a cracked sidewalk that I can grow up through. I am not trying to hook up with the brother I murdered during my last time living.

I want something new in this life that is completely its own.

Some mornings when I drive to get a coffee from the shop I like in town I spend time thinking about the person I want to be with. Maybe he has dark hair with a bit of a curl and green eyes. Maybe his skin is a little more olive than mine and maybe what makes us similar is that we both want to stay whole but still have each other.

He does not need to resemble the person I want to be because I am becoming that and will be that on my own. I think that’s the idea I like the most, that I don’t desire him to do a better job at being me because I am the only one who can do that.