So this is what the silent blog community is like Sunday nights. Or, at any rate, it is Sunday afternoon for most of you while it is Sunday night for me.
I am sitting in my darkened study, some candles lit, and Matchbox 20's "You Won't Be Mine" pumping through my MD player into my brain. The song has quite an impact on me. Always has, some pretty major events have happened while or just after listening to this song. I am drinking some rather decent South African red wine called "Chill Out", which I confess I bought not only for the name, but because it was the last bottle of its kind on the shelf. Whenever it is the last bottle, I buy it. Laugh if you must (and I would), but if a bottle is left behind I always buy it. I feel like it may be lonely or sad, since it is not fulfilling its wine destiny. It invariably comes home with me.
I was watching TV just a little while ago, and they brought up an interesting point. Something that made me wonder, on my madcap relationship searching weekend, about how we behave and act. Maybe it's because I have a BA in anthropology. Maybe it's because I am alone. Or maybe it's because I have nothing better to do, and have been thinking.
I have been thinking bout soul mates.
Is it possible there is such a thing? Is it only a figment of Harlequin romances and girl talk? Or do men believe that there are soul mates, too?
The whole idea intigued me so much that I thought I would do some checking. I checked on Google (somehow it has become the Bible of the web) and there are 257,000 hits under "soul mate". It also suggested the term "twin flame", which makes me want to gag. Most of the hits are matchmaking services to help you find your soul mate.
Yeah. Whatever. Since I am such a lackluster dipshit that I needed a dating service to match me with a 55 year-old Ukrainian.
It seems like most women have a pre-conceived notion that there is "One" for them. "The One", in fact. And if they can't have "The One", they will shrivel up and die, to be permanently removed from the dating shelf and maintained in a jar of formaldehyde and labeled "The Freakish Spinster" in future Circus acts.
I used to be one of those women.
See, it takes meeting a Great Guy to set the opinion that a soul mate can actually exist. A Great Guy (and I mean that in caps) who wakes you up (since, like Sleeping Beauty, we lie dormant until someone comes along to kiss us and wake us up, obviously. Thank you, Brothers Grimm, for fucking that up for us pretty conventiently.) and shows you life. This is, of course, interchangeable with A Great Woman for those who bat for the other team. But once you meet the Great Guy, the whole world changes.
I had my Great Guy. He was indeed the highlight of life. He taught me more about myself and about orgasms than any man before him (he perfected this fabulous, earth-shaking "sit on my face" routine that taught me what REAL orgasms were!). He woke me up. He taught me how to breathe. He broke my heart.
And every man after, for a while, were held up to the standard that Great Guy held and they were measured. They were found wanting, and so I used them as play toys. I grew to figure that there was only one Great Guy per woman.
I had had mine.
He was gone.
I was toast.
Until, bobbing along in my everyday life, I met another Great Guy. And this guy...whew...he made the first Great Guy pale in comparison in terms of deep, intrinsic value. And it was then that I decided that perhaps we don't have one soul mate. Perhaps we have a number of people that come into our lives and change it forever. They leave their mark upon us and as long as we live we cannot erase the memory and the magic that they left behind. Why does there have to be one? Should we assume that life is some kind of race, and at the finish line waits "The One" with a dozen roses and bottle of Gatorade? Should we start out with our lives being that defeatist, or can we assume that perhaps the glass isn't half empty, that being so cynical should be reserved for women on "The View", and that if we take a chance and fall in love, maybe this is one of "our handful" that we should be with? Don't we have enough in our lives designed to kick us down (job promotions, swimsuit season, and the Victoria's Secret catalog), we don't need the additional stress of finding "The One"? Perhaps I am talking shit. I am half a bottle down on red wine, anyway. I just wanted to say that I have thought a lot about , soul mates, and what it means for us. And I don't think there is such a thing as one person for each of us. I think there may be one that leads the pack of others, perhaps by a long shot (and I do mean this for me, since Great Guy number 2 will forever own a large portion of my soul), and although we have an immense cast of characters that parades through our lives, maybe it is just a few that seperate themselves from the white noise of our lives. And whatever you do, when you find one, never let them go. Come hell or high water, when you find one of the "Great Ones" in your life, hold on tight and never let them go. On one side of the river, you have salvation. On the other side lies regret. Seems a pretty easy choice, to me. -H.