N’oublie pas qu’avant toi
Y’en a d’autres que toi
Et qu’après toi, crois-moi
Y’en aura, y’en aura
–Rachid Taha/Tekitoi***She’ll be the one that you’ll wish you’d held onto
She’ll be the one but it’s too late for you to
She’ll be the one who knows all your history
She’ll be the one –
So you can cross her off your list
–Elvis Costello/Big Boys
Do you think there is such a person as the Right One? The One True Love? The Soul Mate? The one person you will meet and fall in love with who will make your life complete?
I do not.
Don’t get me wrong, the idea has its romantic attraction. There’s something very emotionally satisfying to the idea that if we just meet the One, everything will be perfect. That right there is the first clue that the idea is false. It’s too good to be true. For another thing, Wreckless Eric totally called it–what if she’s in Tahiti? There’s no way you’ll ever meet her! There are definitely right ones, soul mates and true loves, I just don’t think that they are dealt out on a one per lifetime basis. Another person doesn’t make your life complete, either. Can your life be much, much better with love in it? Duh. Yes. But if you aren’t complete already, another person won’t do it for you, you’ll just be an incomplete person with a great romantic partner. Or partners, if that’s what floats your particular romantic boat.
What that means, for me, is that you might meet multiple people in your life who are right for you, or potentially right. You might meet the right person at the wrong time. You might meet more than one person at the same time who could be a true love. You might even actually fall in love with more than one person at a time. You might never meet the right person. You might be so picky that you won’t recognize the right person if you do meet him. Anything could happen.
Right. It’s part of life, and subject to all of life’s usual chaos, unfairness, serendipity, awfulness and awesomeness. That includes thinking you’re with one of the right ones who turns out not to be, and thinking someone isn’t the right one who in retrospect turns out to be. Maybe he was more right than you thought when you let him out of your life.
Like most people, I have a lot of wrong ones. Not necessarily bad guys, but not right for me. Thankfully few bad guys, or maybe there were just a lot of them who I didn’t even bother finding out about. I have one or two who I thought might be the One who didn’t agree and broke my heart. A few who thought I was the One, but I didn’t think they were. I don’t think I’ve ever let one of the true loves go, and I’m glad about that. It must be hard to realize later that someone you broke up with was the one you really wanted.
Is it petty of me that I wouldn’t mind one if certain people regretted letting me go? It is petty. I know. I think I’d be noble about it. Not rub it in. Much. I suppose it would depend on how they behaved when they let me go, wouldn’t it?
Still…
It would be kind of nice to know.
Nice in a mean way.
Nothing like a bit of contradiction to keep you thinking about what you think…
***Don’t forget that before you
There are others besides you
And after you, believe me
There will be, there will be