Tuesday, August 7, 2012

The One

A thousand years ago, my mom encouraged (made) me read The Secret. For those of you who have read it, you know will know how this relates, for those who didn't, basically, The Secret is everything you want you just need to think really hard about, and then the universe will deliver it to you.


For the most part, I think this is crap. But in the same way I don't necessarily believe in a god, but still sometimes worry I'm going to hell, at times when I am thinking about something and then it happens, I wonder if I made it happen with my powerful brain.

As I mentioned last week, I have been thinking a lot about my past, including past loves. And it wouldn't be a list of my greatest hits if it didn't include The One, because as the saying goes, you never forget your first.

Now, for clarification sake, The One wasn't my first in that sense (oh, god how I wish I could forget that first). He was the first guy for whom I had those feelings. You know those feelings. The shivers, the butterflies, the weak knees and the panties sliding to the floor. All which I mistook for love.

Back then all I knew about love came from romantic comedies, pop songs and novels.

And if life were more like a romantic comedy, college would have ended with The One running to me, apologizing for all the hurt he caused. I would have shook my tear-stained cheeks and responded that no, I was sorry for being so silly and stupid and fill-in-this-blank-with-your-favorite-cliché-for-a-twenty-year-old.

Then we would have embraced and you would have watched our happily ever after flash by in a montage of photos taken during our wedding and on vacations and at the birth of our two children as the credits rolled.

Fortunately life isn't a romantic comedy – it isn't that terribly predictable, nor is there just one person destined to make you happy for all eternity.

I learned that after I met someone who made me feel just as good (even better) as The One. Yes, you can have chemistry with lots of people, but that isn’t love. It’s biology.

So he is The One. Not because I still harbor any thoughts that he is the knight in shining armor I mistook him for in my late-teens, but because I was so convinced he was the elusive one and now that I know there will never be “one,” he is the only one.

Does that make sense?

And maybe because he was the first, or because I spent so much time loving him, I still recognize him by his walk. His voice. His scent.

Even 12 years later.

What does any of this have to do with The Secret?

I saw him this weekend. Actually I didn't see him at first, I heard him. But that is all I needed.

Same tightening of the spine that happened all those years ago and every time I have run into him since.

And for just a moment, as I passed him, I had to remind myself that it wasn't love, it’s chemistry. It isn’t destiny. It is two people living in the same city with common friends and interests. It isn’t magical thinking. It’s coincidence.

And to prove it, I spent the rest of the weekend thinking of CK (and occasionally Ryan Lochte) and I didn’t run into either of them.

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