written after watching 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape'
I want to be infallible. I know I can't be, and that creates a bit of a dilemma. I oftentimes feel that the only real purpose I can serve is to make people's lives better. I want to see that I am making people's lives better. Instead, it sometimes feels like all I see are my own failures to do so. My family loves me, and I love them back. I want to do right by them. I wish there were a better expression for this than the one I just used, but to do so would take so many words: I want to make them proud, I want to take care of them, I want to be better than they expect, all they hoped for, make them better too...
I want to be infallible. I want to be there for my friends whenever they need me. I wish they would let me know when they need me because I can't be there for them if they don't let me know. It's not this sense of duty I feel, really. It may come across that way, but its not. I don't feel obligated to help people. If that were the case, I would be resentful and bitter. I would hate myself and everyone who relies on me, but that's not the case. Instead, I just want people to understand. I want people to know they can lean on me, and I will hold them up with all the strength I possess. When that strength falters, I need others to hold me up so I can keep holding up those who lean on me.
Yet, I feel so alone so much of the time. I feel like its me against the world and no one really understands. I can't communicate it with people except for every once in a long while. It seems like, even then, they don't understand me. How can they? I tell my stories. I tell them who I am, and through the stories, they get a glimpse of who I am. A mere glimpse. It would take hundreds upon hundreds of stories for someone to know me. But I want them to. I want someone to.
I don't live with my family anymore. It's hard. They know me. Yet, the more and more we are apart, the less they know me. We will always have something that will not go away: a bond, a sense of common experience—but it seems that, each passing month, or year, it's harder to find that bond amid the changes that are happening in each of our lives. It's harder to dredge through the alien feelings we have toward each other, and cut down to the core of who we are: we are family. It scares me, because maybe one day, the time it takes to get to the core of it...we won't take that time. Maybe someday we'll all be so busy that we'll lose sight of it, and it will be buried beneath a great weight of differences.
Families are supposed to go their separate ways, I know that. I don't think we're ready yet. They still need me. I still need them. Will it always be this way? Is it simply a matter of finding a balance between making sacrifices to be with them and fighting to create our own identity? I really hope this is simply an American phenomenon. I actually wish its not even that widespread, because this, in the core of my soul, feels...slightly...off. I know my mom and my sister and my brother are doing okay. They're doing fine. But I don't want fine for them. I can give my sister something just by having a conversation with her. I can transform fine into something better by my presence or by my words. By being in the right place at the right time, I can express love in such magnitude that it transcends form and floods forward like a river that has breached its dam. But I can't always be there.
A day will come when, in going my own way, I'll start my own family. I'll start a branch off of the tree that goes back to my mom and dad, my aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents...etc. Then i'll have someone who, though they won't always be there, they will be there as much as they can. They will get to know me, and will spend years and years in this pursuit. As will I of them. I will get married, and we will be two human beings accepting each other as we are, to the best of our abilities, and willing each other to be the best they can be. I want to support someone, share their dreams, be a pillar of strength for them. I want them to come to me when they need help. I want them to know that I will always be there. I will not be infallible, but I will give all that I have and more. 'and more': it would seem impossible, but I know it can be done. It is a leap of faith into the unknown, sacrificing solid footing in the hope of gaining something better. Love aids us in doing this. I want to love someone that deeply. Someone that will not go their separate way one day. Someone that I am bound to, by a sacred oath, until death parts us. And after that, we will be the bride of someone infallible, but until then, we will do our best to be his image as a spouse instead.
People talk about soulmates like its something we need to find. We need to find that one specific person who will understand us, who will be our exact counterpart, like two puzzle pieces that only interlock with each other. I disagree. I don't disagree with the idea of soulmates, I simply disagree with the idea that they are found. I think that bond is created. I think we decide that we are willing to sacrifice everything, down to our soul being an individual entity, in order to be with someone. We can mate in our flesh, but there is a greater mating, and that is of the soul. We ache when we are apart from someone, because our soul is stretched by the distance: it is neither with us or with them but has one end is with me and the other with her and the middle: its just stretched. Not across natural distance, across miles or continents, but by time and the state of separation. We have one person, only one, who we have poured our stories, our selves, our faith, our sacrifice...all of these things into. Our eggs are all in one basket and we are not afraid, but rather we get this sense that it is the only way that things can be. I think that's what a soulmate is. It is something we create, not by our own doing, but by our joined efforts and maybe, perhaps, by the hand of God himself. Maybe that's what we're asking when, at weddings, we ask for his hand to be upon that marriage. Maybe, in this understanding, I can pour more of my will into that prayer, so that others can experience this pure joy that i'm talking about. This pure joy that I really should have no understanding of. Maybe I don't. But maybe I do.
You see, I had thought I'd found my soulmate once. For a long time, she was just a girl I was dating. For a long time, she was a girl I loved, but I didn't know if it would last, or our lives could go the same direction. Something happened, though, when a great tragedy cast its shadow over my life. When tragedy came, I leaned on her. And she held me up. That did something, within me, that I wasn't aware of at the time. I think it made changes in her as well.
Then, when time and distance separated us months later, when I, in fact, broke up with her because I didn't want to do a long distance relationship, she sacrificed for me. She held me up from a distance. She saw that I was falling and grabbed me, holding my weight up when I couldn't stand on my own and enfolding me in her embrace when I could. She had no reason to, other than she believed in us, believed in me. I think that's when it happened. I think that's when it slowly happened in my heart. That's when I knew that I wanted to marry her. It wasn't just some distant 'maybe', but I was willing to make such great sacrifices in order to hold her up whenever she needed me.
It didn't happen. I won't go into detail about how it all fell apart, I'll just let you know that it did. I made mistakes, she made mistakes, we made mistakes together, we communicated things wrong, and the time and distance apart became something more until we didn't know each other anymore. And when I wanted to fix it, when I wanted to know her again, and for her to know me, the distance had become to great and she no longer wanted it. The wounds were too deep or something like that.
I think...I think that it's not that girl that I miss anymore. It's that sense of connectedness that I miss. It's that bond. I want a soulmate. And I want to be her knight in shimmering armor. And she will be my queen, who I would give anything for. I would risk any danger, endure any hardship, suffer any affliction, fight any battle, make any sacrifice for her. And she would know it. And she would lean on me for strength and, when I couldn't be infallible for her, it would be okay. Because she would know I had given everything and when I couldn't be infallible, she would hold me up instead.
This...musing of mine took an interesting turn. I hope that what it says means something to other people, and not just myself. If the truth in here is only truth about me, then I am still alone, but if not, then we are in this together. We're not alone, though we may feel it. It isn't enough to make this pain go away, but I take some encouragement in it.
