Old Albums, figuratively speaking
Eeks, I'm listening to the album that one of my ex-boyfriends had given me - it's on Raven and just came up on my playlist a bit ago. My mother was right about his style. Very rigid. Not surprising, though, considering his personality. It's funny, I think I saw him downtown one night when I was driving home, maybe a month or two ago. Since then, I've thought of him (and other exes) often. I don't know exactly why but I think I'm somehow reorganizing people's attributes in my mind. Oddly enough, the finest points of each seem to shout at me. Yet it's not because I miss any of them. It's because I see small pieces of Aflac in each of them.
Imagine dating (or nearly dating) various people and never being completely happy. You start thinking that there is no one that would ever match your dreams. It's a childhood fantasy that there is someone truly suited for everyone. Yet all along, there is someone for you out there. He doesn't know you and you don't know him. And at that point in time, neither of you are truly ready for each other. One or both of you needs to grow into the person(s) you are becoming.
Then, you realize all at once that you've been searching for yourself all along. So you take several steps back, assimilate what you've learned, and look inside to see who you actually are. You find yourself. You realize that it doesn't matter if you're alone, because you're all you're ever going to have forever. Thus you need to nurture yourself most. Besides, without a whole you, you can't help anyone else anyway.
And just as you think you have it all figured out, all of your past relationships or near-relationships come back to you in one body, with all the excess toxic substances removed. In this one person you find new experiences without physical threat; chemistry without alcoholism; intelligence without silence; proximity without prostration; sophistication without ingratiation; interest without inactivity; trust without abandonment; interest without subversion. And as if that weren't all enough, you find playfulness, charm, finesse, understanding, logic, responsibility, adoration, confidence, and - get this - LOVE - all in this one package.
Plus he's handsome to boot, which is something someone had to tell you because you were so wrapped up in his personality that you failed to notice what he looked like.
I know that everyone is different, that everyone has their good points and their issues, and that no one is better than everyone else. But I also know that some people are more suited to each other than many will ever realize. So it's not the comparisons that are so important to me, but rather, that I cannot even begin to imagine anyone more suitable than Aflac. I am truly flabbergasted that someone like him exists, when previously I only saw him in my mind's eye and attempted to "find" him in other people. Which of course failed every time because I hadn't learned to swim yet. Every time I saw something shiny in the sea, I'd dive in for a closer look and end up nearly drowning myself trying to retrieve it. Thankfully, I never lost my lifeline to the real world, and I finally built myself a boat so I could get a good look without getting my rope tangled in the seaweed. Then as I stopped peering over the edge and started looking at the sky, another boat came along. Its occupant asked if I was ready to do some REAL exploring. And with that, we docked our boats and found a trail to walk on.
It's also as if the rest of Aflac's wonderful attributes were waiting for these pieces to come together so that he could exist in my life for real. Without the pieces I stumbled across in my travels, perhaps we would never have met at all. I had a lot of growing to do myself, and who knows where he was in his personal quest before we met.
Silly way of looking at things perhaps, but it's another interpretation of the age-old "stepping stones" philosophy, where every step we take is another step on a long path into our futures. We don't get to our final destination without molding ourselves somehow along the way. One little variation and our ending could be entirely different.
~nv
Imagine dating (or nearly dating) various people and never being completely happy. You start thinking that there is no one that would ever match your dreams. It's a childhood fantasy that there is someone truly suited for everyone. Yet all along, there is someone for you out there. He doesn't know you and you don't know him. And at that point in time, neither of you are truly ready for each other. One or both of you needs to grow into the person(s) you are becoming.
Then, you realize all at once that you've been searching for yourself all along. So you take several steps back, assimilate what you've learned, and look inside to see who you actually are. You find yourself. You realize that it doesn't matter if you're alone, because you're all you're ever going to have forever. Thus you need to nurture yourself most. Besides, without a whole you, you can't help anyone else anyway.
And just as you think you have it all figured out, all of your past relationships or near-relationships come back to you in one body, with all the excess toxic substances removed. In this one person you find new experiences without physical threat; chemistry without alcoholism; intelligence without silence; proximity without prostration; sophistication without ingratiation; interest without inactivity; trust without abandonment; interest without subversion. And as if that weren't all enough, you find playfulness, charm, finesse, understanding, logic, responsibility, adoration, confidence, and - get this - LOVE - all in this one package.
Plus he's handsome to boot, which is something someone had to tell you because you were so wrapped up in his personality that you failed to notice what he looked like.
I know that everyone is different, that everyone has their good points and their issues, and that no one is better than everyone else. But I also know that some people are more suited to each other than many will ever realize. So it's not the comparisons that are so important to me, but rather, that I cannot even begin to imagine anyone more suitable than Aflac. I am truly flabbergasted that someone like him exists, when previously I only saw him in my mind's eye and attempted to "find" him in other people. Which of course failed every time because I hadn't learned to swim yet. Every time I saw something shiny in the sea, I'd dive in for a closer look and end up nearly drowning myself trying to retrieve it. Thankfully, I never lost my lifeline to the real world, and I finally built myself a boat so I could get a good look without getting my rope tangled in the seaweed. Then as I stopped peering over the edge and started looking at the sky, another boat came along. Its occupant asked if I was ready to do some REAL exploring. And with that, we docked our boats and found a trail to walk on.
It's also as if the rest of Aflac's wonderful attributes were waiting for these pieces to come together so that he could exist in my life for real. Without the pieces I stumbled across in my travels, perhaps we would never have met at all. I had a lot of growing to do myself, and who knows where he was in his personal quest before we met.
Silly way of looking at things perhaps, but it's another interpretation of the age-old "stepping stones" philosophy, where every step we take is another step on a long path into our futures. We don't get to our final destination without molding ourselves somehow along the way. One little variation and our ending could be entirely different.
~nv
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