"sean, you're so fun."
it's all i came to live for. i didn't need to be smart. or pretty or funny. i had freshman boys to do my homework, makeup to cover my face, and my sarcasm to cover my insecurity. i just needed to be crazy. outrageous. sexy. all the boys wanted to fuck me, but even more, so did all the girls. they wanted to be me. to live inside me. i had attained that "it' quality, the mysteriousness of someone admired from afar, who had deep dark secrets, cold and damp as a dungeon, but intriguing enough that you had to think twice before going down to explore.
it didn't need to be explored. just knowing they existed was powerful enough. they could see it in my eyes. i had LIVED. and i had. but at a price. because you can't have mystery if you let anyone get too close. and the few people who i let in, my sorority sisters, my lovers, even some of my fuck buddies and best friends. i gave them full access to the reality behind the smoke and mirrors. i stripped naked, down to my tattoos and black nail polish, and let them stare an poke and prod, and then, eventually, pull and scratch and bruise. i gave them full authority to rip me absolutely to shreds. and they did. every single one of them.
perhaps one of the most humbling, one of the most surreal...perhaps one of the most terrifying experience in life is meeting your soul mate. your other half. the person, who unlike any other person who walks this earth, can read your mind and feel your feelings and speak your thoughts before you even think them. i have always been skeptical; a cynic. i have never believed in a one true love, The One, or any of that other romantic bullshit. but this isn't about being in love; your soulmate is.........your person.
and not a single one of those things did i feel when i first met cris while working at a camp for special needs children the summer after i finally, and quite miraculously, graduated from college.
he was short, younger than me, goofy, and mexican. he introduced himself as the leader of my brother wing, my brother wing leader as i was the leader of my wing as well. i gave him what had by this point in my life become referred to as my "bitch face".
it's not that i have any anger or contempt, usually, when i bust out the bitch face. it is, most often, just a look of absolute unimpression; underwhelming boredom. it is the reason that, for the people i do eventually get to know on some level, my friends tell me how afraid/intimidated/what a bitch they thought i was when they first met me.
to be honest, i am bored with most people. they are unexciting to me and i feel like they have nothing to offer. they speak just to hear their own voice. they talk but don't say a goddamn thing. this is, of course, juxtaposed by my absolute obsession with people; with their lives, with their thoughts, their actions, their motives and intentions...their lives. it makes no sense. so, we are getting somewhere then...
i barely spoke with cris the first week or 2 of camp. his friendship with one of my wing staff barely registered on my radar. they spoke spanish and i couldn't understand what they say. the way he tried to get my attention by outrightly ignoring me made me think for about half a second that he was exactly like every other male on the planet who wanted to fuck me but didn't know why.
the thought was fleeting; in short, i didn't think about him much. at all.
but one day, as the universe would have it, we had the same night off. i had plans to go out to dinner with my parents. i had yet to decide if i could be friends with anyone, so i chose to spend my afternoon breaks alone and my nights off with my family; it was safe, it was boring, but i trusted no one. it was too early, too new, and i had too long of a summer ahead of me.
so i told cris i would call him later and i didn't call. and predictably, he became obsessed with me. and i didn't ignore him. instead, i feel in love with him. i made the biggest mistake of my life; the biggest baddest #1 cardinal rule of soulmates. because your soulmate, once found, is like the missing piece of your puzzle. it's not like finding your other half, it's like finding YOURSELF.
the ancient greeks told a myth of the gods ripping men apart and tossing them to opposite sides of the earth, where they were to spend their entire earthly lives searching for their other halve.s the power of this idea, the notion of being ONE and then being ripped apart AGAIN is like having your insides ripped out, only to find your intestines are endless, like scarves in a magicians black hat. the magician may get tired, may give i a rest to stretch his wrists and feed his bunnies, but then at the most unexpected time, like when you're refilling the sugar glasses at work, smoking a cigarette on the way to church, or painting your sisters toenails, he returns, and is stronger than after his rest. he rips and and tears until you are literally IN PAIN and exhausted simply by being alive.
how the hell did i let this happen to me??
because you can't hide from your soulmate.
you can't hide from yourself.
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