TGIF! It's significantly cooler in the city than in the East Bay today.
Some days it's warmer, some days it's the same.
I had a good talk with my roomies last night. Sharon and I discussed the
idea that there is "one true love" for everybody. She thinks there is. I
realized, with a start, that I'm not sure about that anymore. I used to
believe that fervently; I was certain I had a soul mate out there and that
I would find him before the end of my twenties, we would fall instantly in
love, get married, the whole bit. I assumed I still thought the same way
(helped, no doubt, by my need to defend myself against Todd's constant
scoffing cynicism on any love-related topic). I'm trying to figure out
what happened to this idea, and why am I not so blissfully, optimistically
certain any longer?
I could blame it on age, but I don't like to think optimism fades as we
grow older. I rather think it's the move to California; it's shocking to
move from Indiana to the Bay Area and realize how many people there are in
the world. I see different people, new strangers, every day. How on
earth am I going to shuffle through all of them and find THE ONE??
I've been marveling lately at the random series of event that shape our
lives. For example: if Todd's friend, Dan, hadn't chosen to go to
Cornell for undergrad, he probably wouldn't have gone to Berkeley for grad
school. But he did. Then Todd moved out here with him, I came to visit
on a spring break and decided this was where I was moving after college.
I put an ad on Yahoo! personals to meet people in the Bay Area, met Kevin,
who dragged me to Faire. At Faire last fall I met Ian, who introduced me
to his roommates, Cliff and Mary Anne. Mary Anne introduced me to David.
I would have never met this circle of friends if Dan had decided to go to,
say, IU. How odd.
Back to "THE ONE" topic: I have had to deal with new ideas out here.
Certainly, people I knew in Indiana practiced such ideas as polyamory
(more than one love), but I never dealt with it directly. Out here I've
found myself in this situation more than once. I'm inclined to say that I
think the people out here are generally more mature and ready to deal with
all the complications polyamory presents, but since I never dealt with it
personally before, perhaps that goes without saying. Still, the whole
concept of poly raises some questions, the big one being, if you're poly,
how can there be THE ONE? THE FEW? THE MANY? THE ONE and the little
ones? I dunno. It's the same fear I had as a child and will have from
the other side as a parent someday: Whom do you love more? How do I love
equally? I'm such a jealous person that I think dealing with this is good
for me; learn to share, learn to deal with irrational emotions, learn to
balance (learn to schedule).
But all this is for right now. I have no idea if I'm going to continue
poly from now on. Some days I think I will; I imagine a big happy family,
where everyone cares for everyone else's kids and the many viewpoints
balance everything out. Our house will be a huge Victorian farm house on
acres and acres of land, and we'll be famous for having so many talented
artists in one setting and school kids will grumble about having to write
essays on us while college kids compete for our internships. Other
days I think NO! I want my house with one other person, my space and his
space becoming our space. Where our kids only know one mommy and one
daddy and their aunts and uncles come visit often. A house with one large
study where we can work together. A house where it's quiet at night, and
we can sit entwined on the sofa and read. Something cozy like that.
And then there are the days when I know I won't end up in either. Those
are the days I imagine traveling for years, coming back to settle alone in
my own ecologically sound home that I built myself (heh). I imagine
having lovers, and having children that I'll raise on my own. In this
fantasy I am already wealthy from the zillions of travel/erotic/etc.
novels that I've written, and I have a thrilling social life in the
evenings and quiet, long days in which to write more.
These are all my fantasies, you understand. We cannot know the future
(thank goddess).