17. Finding You

 

Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost
I’ll be there on time and I’ll pay the cost
For wanting things that can only be found
In the darkness on the edge of town

Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town.

 

You’re out there looking for something your whole life, no matter who you are. And you keep searching for that thing until you either find it or die looking. Even when you tell yourself you’ve given up; compromised, settled, you never stop looking.

Now, maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic (I’ve been called much worse), but for me, that thing was a very particular kind of love. I’d drifted through most of my adult years always feeling like there was a glass partition between me and whomever I believed I had fallen in love with at the time. And no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get close enough to feel – safe.

I came to see it as pathology, began to believe there was something fundamentally wrong in me. I would meet someone; smart, beautiful, caring, and try to fall in love with them in the way I knew love was meant to be.

Somehow, though, that sheet of glass was always there. We’d have a brief honeymoon period where she was everything in my universe and I was certain that this time this one was the one. And then, the day would come when I’d smack my nose up against that glass wall again.

It wasn’t that suddenly I didn’t care. It was just that sinking realization that she was not the love I came here for.

It all comes down to this, can I be the real me, at all times, in front of her?

The answer, for me, was always ultimately…..no.

Most of the time we feel the need to wear masks. It’s a self-defeating attempt to present ourselves to the world in the best possible light. We only want others to see our caring side, our empathetic side, our depth, and sensitivity. We’re not quite so keen on sharing our unspoken thoughts, our past transgressions, or our deepest, darkest predilections. Those things are much harder to cop to because we believe they are the things that will send people running in the opposite direction.

And the truth is, if they are not the right one for you, they probably will run. However, if they really are that singular person….

Never in a million years could I ever have imagined that I would find my one amongst the oceanic babel of the internet (preposterous). And never had I contemplated the notion that my perfect love might turn out to be a mother of three, dealing with a fractured marriage and living in semi-rural New Jersey, USA. That just wasn’t in my frame at all.

Nevertheless, the moment we began to communicate, we both felt it; connection, deep, deep connection; the undeniable certainty that here was a person who desperately wanted the real, the raw. Here was someone who just got it. And when both parties feel that, it’s like a bush fire, it consumes everything.

We would communicate publicly almost every day but message each other only occasionally and sporadically. Sometimes several weeks would go by without any private contact at all, but it always felt so amped each time we did talk; more so than the actual conversation itself would often seem to merit.

I think we were both telling ourselves lies at this point; pretending we weren’t feeling what we obviously and demonstrably were.

Neither of us was looking to start something and both of us wanted nothing else.

You can only pretend for so long. Once the heart decides, there is an inevitability about where you are headed. You can ignore it, you can fight it, but in the end, the heart always grabs the reins.

I cannot express what an enormous relief it has been to discover that the glass partition is not a permanent fixture. I am not a mutant freak, I can, in fact, feel love in exactly the way I’d always imagined.

I guess I can stop worrying about whether or not I’m some kind of narcissist or sociopath (in my experience, actual narcissists & sociopaths never worry about that). I’ve simply been struggling with an overwhelming imperative to find the person who could match my need; intensity for intensity.

I realise now, how much expectation I’ve put upon partners, over the years, none of whom had a hope of meeting those expectations. Perhaps reading this, you think me unreasonable, that I placed too many conditions upon my love, but I can’t see it that way. I have this beautiful soul in my life now precisely because I never gave up my search for that singular one.

That fact justifies everything I’ve had to do and endure; all the loss, all the heartbreak. I wish I could have achieved it with fewer false starts, but in the end, I regret none of it. I was the person I was when Jersey girl found me, purely because I’d been shaped by all those experiences.

I wouldn’t change one thing.

Words and image used in this post are my own.

©2016