I wonder if I’ve taken this goddess thing a little too far? Am I asking for too much? Am I destined to be alone or forever unfulfilled by a partner? I know now that no single woman or man could fill all of my needs for emotional support, physical comfort, spiritual digressions, and commiseration. I used to think it was my sadness that I needed to keep in my backpack. These days, I understand the flipside might be more of an issue for me.
When I’m up I tend to talk. Verbosity is a nice nickname for the medical term, “pressured speech.” When my brain won’t shut the fuck up. Too many thoughts all at once. Someone is speaking to me and I get a hit, a whiff of some new tangent, and I’m off like a rocket.
It always feels additive to me. To my son, it feels like an interruption. He is correct. I am self-absorbed and narcissistic. I interrupt. I work on pausing before I speak. Listening more. Talking less.
Will I aspire for some unattainable relationship my entire adult life? Did my sister provide an impossible template of love? Who could live up to her? A mother’s love a sister’s love all packed into one. When I see her I am triggered, motivated, excited. I begin talking fast.
What if that’s not the goal? What if it’s a lure? A glimmer of light seen as a child that continues to haunt my imagination. Like a quest for enlightenment. An understanding of god. God.
Running smoothly under the surface of the freezing river, the steelhead shoots up and swallows the lure. An immediate pain and pull toward the light. The end. A rapture. Do little fish films pop up as water drains from his gills, gulping for oxygen on the trail beside the splashing river?
I don’t seem to have gotten much closer to my goal. I have more ideas, more strategies, more poems… I am no closer to finding HER. I am beginning to think I’ve been fooled by a lure. The allure of an amazing woman. How much time have I lost to chasing, wooing, and losing each relationship along the way?
What if, starting today, I no longer chase the lure of her? What if I simply get on with my best life expecting she will join up at some point? If she’s not looking for me, looking at all, it will take more time. Today, I am in no hurry. I am in desire. I am in a state of lack. I crave satiation. The warm buzz of a body well-loved, well-sexed, well-touched. I see now how intoxication of any kind can be harmful or addictive. Still, I stretch in several directions at once. I have an incomplete idea of my happiness.
My sister is never coming back. My first wife, who resembled her in many ways, was a catastrophe.
If the life I intend to live is primarily between me and me, I need to get over my mythic quest. If there is no woman to find, only inner joy and peace, then my “lack of goddess” is not a problem. I will have periods with a partner and periods alone. I am in a desert moment now. I’ll be Edward Abbey and go Solitaire for a bit. I am not afraid of quiet and stillness. I do prefer when cats stir the pot of my reality.
Cats? Check. Kids? Check. Woman?
I call myself a seeker. What if I stopped? Am found. No longer seeking. What do I call myself then? Happy? Content? Well?
