Perfect match

There is no such thing. I’m learning that each person brings to me a little bit of something special, a little bit of something that I absolutely love – maybe some people have more of those little things, some less. I live in the fantasy that maybe, one day, I’ll bump into a stranger who will breathe the same thoughts. We will instantly gel. There won’t be any need to explain anything, conversation won’t exist because it won’t be needed. But I know it will never happen. I keep searching for what it is that I need, and I realize that I have no clue. I don’t know if it’s the endless talks about life, or endless laughing about life, or simple touch as a way of life.  I throw myself onto one, then another, then another – thinking, this must be what I am looking for. No, this. No, wrong again, perhaps it’s this. In the end, I shut down and want to be alone.

Nothing is perfect, there is no perfect match. I will have to choose what matters to me, and maybe for that I will have to first look at myself and see where I am at, what I am doing with my life, what is important to me. I try it every day. I take my skin off at sunset and turn it inside out. I look inside the sleeves of my soul, thinking I will glimpse that one hidden trait that is running my brain, the one and only that is so important that it’s hidden, so that I don’t throw it away by accident. Only I come up empty – nothing is there, and I think I am looking in the wrong place. I take out my heart and dissect it, bleeding all things love, affection, tenderness – taking them apart with bloody fingers, looking for which one is bigger. Only before I can see them really well, in sunlight, they slip out of my hands, and are lost. I dig into memories, I pull one string after another, and shred the strings apart, twisting them around my fingers, trying to discern what they mean. But the meaning is lost, so I migrate to the logic – one box of feelings and meanings after another, like old scarves, I take them out, and understand that they mean nothing. They can’t tell me how I will feel about someone, and how that will change and grow. So I come full circle and start over.

I think selfishly. I want it all. I get pissed at the need to choose. I want a piece of that and a piece of this, and I want to create my own mash-up – custom. Very convenient, like one of those products that lets you choose model, color, features, put on engraved initials. Dreamland again. I can’t give up on the idea that it is impossible, I can’t seem to let myself be with what’s there. I chase the dream, like we all do, and  hopelessly make myself believe. I don’t want to quit it. I feed myself the thoughts that it can be found – my twin. Only I forget I don’t have to look – my twin is always with me, all I have to do is walk up to a mirror. This is one person I will have to live with till the end of my life. This is the one that makes me complete, this is the one that can’t be happy without me. Turns out, no need to search, it was always with me. Always perfect, always matching. Once I get that, I will stop looking for a match – because there is nothing to match it to. I’m not a half of a cookie, I’m whole.

But then another thought poisons my newly found wisdom. Oh, but what will others think? Will they approve? Will they judge? Will they frown upon my choice, will they make faces, laugh behind my back, ridicule? Will they try to see if it is a match? Will they forever make me adjust what I want – to what they want? I try to let go of this too, to picture how I won’t care, and I can’t. This is the social fabric I am part of, and we all play the same game by the same rules. When I quit it, I will get punished. So what? Do I care? I don’t give a fuck. Or do I? Here we go again – full circle. Maybe there is still that perfect match somewhere out there? I don’t know. And I’ll have to accept that I will never know – to be able to move on, despite this yearning.

Photo by Luis Sarabia.