Scared to Settle

I might have settled if I hadn’t gotten that phone call that day.

Or, rather, not gotten that phone call.

I’ll explain this later.

We are so cynical in this day and age. To be considered a romantic, be it a hopeless one or otherwise, is usually considered silly and inappropriate. After all, there is no such thing as your soul mate, and if there is, there might be more than one…you have to make things work with someone if they’re not working, there’s no such thing as the perfect person…I could go on.

So why do I have a hard time believing this?

Allyuh know I like to define things that are on my mind so as to have a clear path to explain my thoughts down the road, and this time is, of course, no different. My man Merriam Webster defines a soul mate as “a person who is perfectly suited to another in temperament”. While that definition is exceedingly vague, its meaning is not. Your soul mate should complement your nuances, all of them. And this doesn’t mean that they should be exactly like you, now. In fact…being exactly like someone is boring. I like the tiny conflicts that come from disagreements. I like being able to debate topics. I like to have balance.

I talk about topics like this because they have a way of becoming recurring themes in my life. With my circle all approaching 30 this year (if they didn’t already turn 30 last year), those of us that aren’t married or in committed relationships find ourselves unwittingly wondering if we will ever meet that fabled ‘soul mate’…or if we already have. Now having said that...

Wait. I haven’t been random in a long time. Lemme jump for a second.

I have this recurring dream that I am stood up at the altar. It’s been a recurring dream for the past four years. I’ve analyzed it from every angle, every perspective, every viewpoint (and why not? I’ve been having the same dream for years!), and I always come back to the fact that I’m scared to give my all to one person for fear of being abandoned. The fear of abandonment, for me, is a valid fear. If you know me, you know this to be true. In this dream, once or twice, the person who stood me up was none other than the original Disappearing Acts. When you take into consideration, though, that he happens to be a lying sack of shit…There is no worry that he will do that in real life, though.

*cues MJ “She’s Gone from My Life*

Anyway…

More recently, I had a dream that I left someone standing at the altar. I dreamt that one of my best friends talked me into marrying someone I was seeing because they were good for me, but when I got to the front of the church to say “I do”, I had a panic attack and couldn’t do it, so I left him there. I won’t tell you what happened in the rest of the dream (that’s a topic for a whole ‘nother blog), but what I will tell you is that this dream caused me as much anxiety as the last one. Me? Leave someone at the altar?

Wait…me?? SETTLE?

The only way I could ever imagine myself leaving someone at the altar is if I knew that I was settling and I couldn’t live with that choice. I am big on being happy. So big on it, in fact, that I set my life up in such a manner so that I can, indeed, be happy. With that said…I couldn’t imagine settling for someone, no matter how much I fear ending up alone. Yes, there are times that you have to work with the person that you are with – but that’s not settling, and that’s not what I mean by settling. Just because someone loves you doesn’t mean that they are the right person for you. The right person, in my eyes, is not just someone that loves you. There are a lot of people that love me.

But…

The right person, in my eyes, is the person that you can’t get out of your mind, even when you try…the person that makes you better…that knows your flaws and accepts them, but doesn’t try to change them…yet they work with you on them…the person that takes the time to understand you, your loves, and your nuances…who supports you unconditionally but isn’t afraid to tell you that you’re effing up…they are the person that you find yourself sharing everything with, even the things you never wanted to share…the person that you couldn’t imagine not being in your life, even when they piss you off (and they will).

And so on and so forth.

The person for me is the person that makes me feel all of that, all of the above and then some. So I was sick to my stomach when I realized this morning that I almost settled for someone who wasn’t that. When I was trying to be in a relationship a while back, I was all set to go on a trip to meet this person’s family for the holidays…but it didn’t happen. I never got the phone call that they were on their way. Why didn’t it happen? The details are not as important as the revelation that this person didn’t want what I wanted, for one reason or another…but more importantly, if this person left my life, I wouldn’t miss them.

And I can’t be with someone who I wouldn’t miss if they weren’t around. Neither should you.

Only time will tell if I will have to settle for less than what I truly want. Yes, everyone has a soul mate…but I don’t think everyone gets to be with that person. Life has a way of throwing curve balls into the mix. So only time will tell what will happen…but as much as I fear being alone…I fear settling even more.

So I won’t.

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My Mother's Child

As a child growing up, I always aligned myself with my father more than my mother. Understand that I loved both of my parents dearly, and I still do. It was just a…thing for me. I didn’t see what I had in common with my mother. Why, you ask? My father was the logical thinker. Anything he did was based on a logical train of thought that led to a well thought out conclusion. Not so much with my mother. My mother was a creature of more than just habit. Passive aggressive by nature, she often let her emotions guide her thoughts, actions, and deeds.

I was telling a friend of mine just yesterday that growing up with parents that were significantly older than the average parental unit left me feeling older than I was for years. As a child growing up, I would often examine situations and scenarios with a certain air of adult thought processes that endeared me to my parents’ friends but alienated me from my peers. It is with that thought process that I would examine my mother’s behaviors and, subsequently, endear myself with my father. After all, despite how I felt about a situation, I knew how to tackle my emotions and learned how not to let said emotions affect my decision making process.

I don’t know when I evolved into my mother’s child.

Somewhere in my growth process, somewhere in the process of me “preparing for 30”, I have become my mother’s child. I have allowed my emotions on certain topics to make decisions for me – decisions that five years ago, I wouldn’t even have remotely considered. Your emotions, when they make decisions for you, are a dangerous thing. They have the power to make you ignore your moral compass…or to make impulsive decisions…or to even hold on to inappropriate thoughts and feelings. It was the very thing that I criticized my mother about constantly…the very thing that I have found myself, in recent years, doing.

I am my mother’s child. I am more of my mother’s child than I ever imagined. It is not something that I am proud of. Please do not misunderstand me. I LOVE my mother. And I am glad that I have aspects of her in me. Just not this aspect. Acting on emotions was never something that I ever wanted to do…and it’s something that I am working on fixing. Yes, I know…you can’t control how you feel…but I am damn sure gonna try.

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