Meeting my match
A recent rambling conversation with fellow Capital-J Junkie Where Angels Fear[0] produced many kernels of stories. This is one…
what happens when I meet someone who says “HELL, yeah! Let’s do it YESTERDAY!” rather than “No, that really is a step too far this time — even you’ll die if you do that!” ?
We both agreed that meeting someone more than someone who was also on our Wavelength would be dangerously fun, emphasis on the danger.
But as all Junkies know, all the best things come with a healthy dose of risk. What’s Life, what’s living, if you aren’t pedal to the metal?[1]
So all in all, I think I would like to meet my Match. My other half[2]. The ‘your crazy matches my crazy’ kind of person. We’d burn bright, if perhaps not for very long.
You know, I thought I did meet her once.
The past few years have been more eventful than all the ones before put together.[5] I appear to be cursed to lead an Interesting life. In some ways a blessing, mostly a curse.
Anyway…
I thought I met my match in my first love[6]. She was perfect. Not only in that ‘blinded to flaws’ way all first loves are said to be, but…her crazy matched.
Soon after, as these things inevitably do, all came crashing down.
She turned to me and told me, in a slightly less direct way, that I wasn’t good enough for her.
She was right but that’s not the point. It broke me, crushed me, damn near killed me in several ways.
Not because of what she said. But because the person I had loved —and a piece of me always will — the face that she showed me, never actually existed. That’s a fast track to trust so shattered it might take me a lifetime to rebuild.
All of that is in the past. I speak about it purely for the effect that it had on me, not just to be dark and gloomy. For the lessons that it taught me, and there were many. I’m especially glad to be learning these lessons, and many others, this soon in life.
She changed me, before and after the fall. I don’t know whether I truly changed or whether I simply began to learn about myself — about who I really am — as a result of what happened, but either way, I hardly recognise who I used to be.
And she wasn’t even my Match.
Wasn’t even someone who matched my crazy, not truly. Wasn’t quite a fellow Junkie. Wasn’t on the Wavelength, either. I thought she was all of those things.[7]
God only knows what will happen when I do meet my Match. If I indeed ever have the (mis)fortune of doing so.
The results will be truly spectacular[8], that much is certain.
[0] He’s also responsible for unleashing this sodding mess of footnotes. Well, Terry Pratchett (GNU) must shoulder some of the blame too, I suppose.
[1] Not bloody worth all the trouble, that’s what!
[2] In the purely philosophical sense. ‘You complete me’ is classic codependency[3]
[3] Something I blatantly suffer from[4]
[4] But am trying to improve.
[5] Maybe I’ll tell the interesting bits of that saga sometime.
[6] First love but not first girl…that was the first lesson
[7] Through rose-tinted glasses, red flags just look like flags.
[8] And quite probably blink-and-you’ll-miss it explosive too.
