Meeting The One

By Noyingbeni T. Erui

I have always had some sort of rule for everything in my life. Be it in my personal

life, with family, and friends, or in romantic relationships, especially the latter. I

would meet someone new and my mind would go reeling from all the excitement

but at the back of my mind I’d have questions, tons, and they would hum like a

broken record, nagging, incessant. I would think, will he be right for my family,

how does he treat people when I am not around, what does he want to become in

life, does it align with my dreams, how are his manners towards his lesser or his

superiors, towards plants, animals, is he clean, does he wipe the counter off after

cooking, wait, does he cook, is he good at it? Is he humorous? What are his views

on women, and men, does he plan dinner dates, is he a good gift buyer, or a

romantic? Will he write me letters? Will he hold my hand all through the night, will

he kiss me in the traffic? Would he like me for who I am, or would he challenge

me? Would he match my energy? Would he celebrate me, or accept my past? On

and on my mind would go. Sometimes I would try to shut it, sometimes I would try

listening to it.

So, when I meet someone new, I would try to match his energy, change my ways

for that man, or sometimes try to change them into the man I can live with. I tried

to balance reality and idealism, sacrifice and self-love, expectation, and

contentment, hope and giving up where I needed to. Every time I meet someone

new, I would search for the missing pieces, some insignificant, some monumental.

Every time the relationship ended, I would learn something new, some useful,

some bitter. Still, I would go on searching for that one person. Then the next, and

then the next… Until the lies and the betrayals broke me so much that I began to

think that “the one” is a myth for people with excuses and I decided to take it all

upon myself to correct my expectations. Little did I know that this would be the

gravest mistake I will ever make- settling for less- I had reached the place where

all dreams go to die.

When I met you and began to know you slowly, the checklist in my mind in the

form of clouds burst one by one like bubbles. *pop* slowly, *pop* *pop* tentatively

and *pop pop pop*catching up speed, until all went quiet. The silence was so loud

and the peace so out of place, that it made me restless. The bed I had made with

those clouds no longer existed and it irritated me to no end. That feeling was

electric, exciting, and painful all at the same time and that confused me the most.

You see, I had half given up hope for “the one.” Strangely, from the moist ground

(vapour from those clouds) new feelings grew; hope, romance, faith, peace, trust,

happiness, contentment and at the far end of the field, I saw your face…love.

I had been struggling with a lot of changes recently. All the words I was being told

circled my head, “you will never be happy,” “you are nothing,” “no one in their right

mind will love you”, “who do you think you are”, “you are not worth anyone’s time”,

“your expectations are too high”, “you will never find what you are looking for”,

“stop living in your fantasy of books and movies”, “you are too ambitious” …these

words became music, my self-destruction button you see. My undefeatable

enemy.

I tried not listening to it at first but it would creep in during my worst moments and

all the carefully put self-confidence would crumble away. So, I decided to face it

head-on this time. Every day I would listen to the same music so I will either learn

how to deal with it better or learn to live with it and every day, the enemy knocked

me to the ground. Every day, I get up and try to give it one more fight. This

morning when I was getting ready to listen to the same music, the phantom pain

still lingering on my face, I braced myself for the pain that will knock me down like

the hundred times before.

But today I learned to swerve, the punch went past my face, today I stood my

ground, I did not fall, today I felt enough, today I realized the cliched “why none of

them worked out”, and today I knocked the enemy to the ground and told him, I

have found the love I deserve, the one that surpasses all the books and movies,

the one they told me I’ll never find. Today, I found the one I have been searching

for all my life. I have found- The One.

By Noyingbeni T. Erui