Sea of Strangers

It always starts the same.
It starts new and different.
It starts exciting and relaxing.
You just don’t know what to expect because for you this will be ‘it’. This will be the end of your search. The end of your soul-searching chapter.

I remember staying up talking all night long, jamming to our favorite songs, those personal curated playlists, the good fights, the bad fights, the break-ups, and the make-ups. Almost every night I googled the question “How do I know if he’s the one?” and I realized that the answer I’d been searching for was an answer that I already had. Knowing that I needed to google that very question showed me that if I was unsure, I knew that it was probably for a reason.

I suppose “right person, wrong timing” may actually be a thing, but I can’t relate to that. Although I’m not sure what it’s like to be in love, I do know that it is not waking up and turning your back to the other side of the person lying next to you. I know it’s not a sense of loneliness when you’re with them. I know you’re not in love when you secretly ache for love whenever it’s close. Ironically, sometimes I even confuse physical desires with love. Our bodies are just so inclined to one another that it makes us crave the touch and without it, we would constantly feel disconnected.

I convince myself every day that I should fight, but I’m a lover, not a fighter, and the more I do the more I feel like I lose myself. No matter how many times someone tells me that they will always wait for me and fight for me, in the end, they quit. I won’t burden myself with “what ifs” and the possibility of them missing me. At least they’ll be happy if not with someone like me.

I hate the part of letting go and falling all over again.

I wish that I could restart.

From the beginning before everything got so hard. And I could tell my 19-year-old self everything that I know now. About struggling for years with a person who eventually chose someone else, about how dating her best friend is never a good idea, about giving the pieces she has left only to be thrown away like trash, and about how to stop herself from falling for a person who got a lot on his plate. Same hole, different scene.

I read this article by Brianna Wiest. She said, “Everything that is truly right for you will seem so simple, so obvious, so comfortable. Everything that is truly right for you will happen serendipitously and spontaneously. It will come to you when you expect it and when you don’t, as both a surprise and a certainty.”

I believe that what’s right for us isn’t a harsh declaration, it isn’t something we have to force or wonder about for too long. It isn’t something that leaves us looking for signs, it doesn’t require us to poll our friends’ opinions. It doesn’t leave us questioning, grieving, self-doubting. It doesn’t put our lives on pause. It doesn’t feel as though we have to grab it before it is gone, but rather, that it will always be waiting for us when we are ready.

And I also believe that this ongoing discomfort deep within was inching me toward a place better than I ever would have thought to ask for — better than I would have ever believed I deserved. I will see how all of my questions were answered. I will see that each step served a purpose. And when I look back on it, I will see how my journey was weaving me toward an endpoint, a place at which I’d finally turn the page and begin writing a new narrative.

I will know that eventually all of this is NOT for nothing.

All of the effort, the tears, the trial-and-errors. All of the believing, and all of the lost hope. All of the days wondering, could this be it? and all of the nights staring at the ceiling and knowing that there is more.

My story will change.

With love,
R