Soulmates

I don't believe in soulmates. I don't believe in Fate. I am not an actor simply performing a pre-determined script. There is no such thing as a girl who was "meant" for me, like it's our destiny to end up together. Love is something that develops and strengthens and creeps up on you until suddenly, you realise you'd struggle to live without them.

As usual when it comes to matters of a serious nature, I defer to someone more eloquent than me:

Yeah, yeah
If I didn't have you
If I didn't have you to hold me tight
If I didn't have you
If I didn't have you to lie with at night
When I'm feelin' blue
If I didn't have you to share my sighs
And to kiss me and dry my tears when I cry
Well I really think that I would
Have somebody else.

If I didn't have you, someone else would do.
Your love is one in a million
You couldn't buy it at any price
But of the nine point nine nine hundred thousand other possible loves
Statistically, some of them would be equally nice
Or maybe not as nice, but say, smarter than you
Or dumber but better at sport or...tracing, I'm just saying
I really think that I would probably
Have somebody else

If I didn't have you, someone else would do
If I were a rich man, diddle iddle iddle iddle ee
I guess I would be with a surgeon or a model
Or a relly of the royals or a Kennedy
Or a nymphomaniacal exhibitionist heiress
To a large chain of hotels
If I were a rich man, maybe I would fiddle
Fiddle diddle diddle with the rich man girls

I'm not saying that I'd not love you if I was wealthy or handsome
But realistically, there's lots of fish in the sea
And if I had a different rod I would conceivably land some
Even though I'm fiscally consistently pitiable
And considerably-less-Brad-Pitt-than-Brad pitiful
Am I really so poor and ugly that you think
Only you could possibly love me?
And I really think that I would probably
Have somebody else

If I didn't have you, someone else would do
And look, I'm not undervaluing what we've got when I say
That given the role chaos inevitably plays
And the inherently flawed notion of "Fate"
It's obstruse to deduce that I found my soulmate
At the age of seventeen
It's just mathematically unlikely that at a university in Perth
I happened to stumble on the one girl on Earth
Specifically designed for me

And if I may conjecture a further objection
Love is nothing to do with destined perfection
The connection is strengthened; the affection simply grows over time
Like a flower, or a mushroom, or a guinea pig, or a vine
Or a sponge, or bigotry.
Or a banana.

Love is made more powerful by the ongoing drama of shared experience
And the synergy of a kinda symbiotic empathy
Or..something

So I trust it goes without saying that I would feel really very sad
If tomorrow you were to fall off something high, or catch something bad
But I'm just saying, I don't think you're special!
I mean..I think you're special, but
You fall within a Bell curve
I mean I'm just saying
I really think that I would probably
Have somebody else

I think you are unique and beautiful
You make me happy just by being around
But objectively you would have to agree
That baby when I found you
Options were relatively thin on the ground
You're lovely, but there must be girls as lovely as you
And maybe more open to spanking
Or....fucking table tennis, I'm just
I really think that I would probably
Have somebody else

I mean, I reckon it's pretty likely that if, for example
My first girlfriend Jackie hadn't dumped me
After I kissed Winston's ex girlfriend Nia at Steph's party
Back in 1993
Enough variables would probably have been altered by the absence of that event
To have meant the advent of a tangential narrative in which we don't meet
Which is to say there exists a theoretical hypothetical parallel life
Where what is is not as it is
And I am not your husband, and you are not my wife

And I am a stuntman, living in LA
Married to a small blonde Portuguese skier
Who when she's not training, does abstract painting
Practises yoga and brews her own beer
And really likes making home movies
And suffers neck-down alopecia

But with all my heart and all my mind I know one thing is true
I have just one life and just one love and my love, that love is you
And if it wasn't for you, darling you
I really think that I would probably
Have somebody else
If I didn't have you someone else would surely do

You get the idea, I think. I'm not saying that I could happily just have someone else if my current relationship came to a shuddering end. As it happens, I just can't imagine a way in which I could remain a functioning member of society if that happened. The point here is that my life was not an already-written narrative in which I was inevitably going to end up marrying Kat. If we hadn't met; if I hadn't searched for whatever hashtag it was that led me to her Twitter page back in September, and then clicked the follow button; if she had dismissed my presence following her as an irrelevance and not replied; if either one of us hadn't bothered with Twitter in the first place, then our lives would not have been empty wastelands. We'd have found other people, and been happy enough and continued to go about our day-to-day lives. Soulmates. Do. Not. Exist.

But of all the possible tangential narratives my life could've taken, I'm pretty happy with this one.

Personal Development

"I didn't have an easy childhood" is a cliché and probably unjustified in the vast majority of times it's used. Compared to many people, I had the easiest of childhoods. A fairly spoilt only child in a family that has never been well off, but has equally never really struggled for anything. At least one holiday a year and sometimes more; school trips; a private education. Not exactly a broken home, is it, despite divorced parents.

However, the private education side of things wasn't as smooth as it could have been. I blame no-one for this except myself. When I was between the ages of maybe thirteen and seventeen, I was an obnoxious little shit. Arrogant, superior (if that isn't tautology), all too eager to believe the hype about my own intelligence that my well-meaning family and teachers repeatedly gave me. The fault is my own.

However, the upshot was that I didn't particularly develop social skills until I joined sixth form and was suddenly exposed to "girls" as a species (my school was single-sex). As a result of my behaviour up until that point, I didn't really have proper friends either. The combination of these two handicaps resulted in a deep-seated insecurity that has been with me ever since.

Not a great lot about this insecurity is rational. I've learned to accept that certain people seem to actively want to spend time with me and take part in conversations with me. The insecurity comes in my continued bafflement as to why they want to do so. I spent so many years being ostracised by my peers that I still genuinely don't really "get it" when people want my company. I always suspect that they have some sort of ulterior motive. In high school it was usually that they wanted me to do their homework for them. Now? Well, who knows what I think they want? Therein lies the irrationality.

When I first entered into my current relationship the insecurity was there to rear its head as per usual. If I were to describe or design my perfect "type" of girl, Kat would tick more boxes than anyone I've ever met. Yes, she smokes. Yes, she's a vegetarian. She's ridiculously competitive to the extent that sometimes I think it might be best just to not enter into any sort of game or competition with her. If I win, there's a tantrum. If I lose, there's gloating. She's not perfect. But she is as close to it (for me) that I've ever experienced. So the insecurity was extrapolated to match. How, my subconscious reasons, can such a wonderful girl as her possibly be interested in someone like me? And more to the point, when is she going to realise this and abandon you? According to this little voice, it is only a matter of time.

This has in the past led to self-sabotage. My subconscious is so convinced that I will end up alone again that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; I end up behaving in such a way that a break-up becomes inevitable. My fear of this behaviour repeating itself with Kat is not irrational. I'm terrified of fucking it up. But as scared of that as I am, I'm equally determined not to.

This is all leading up to a main point. Over the last few months I've noticed a distinct dimming and quieting of that insistent voice of insecurity. I don't crave constant reassurance from her about her love for me and her commitment to "us" (and I suspect that this is as much a blessing for her as it is for me; my needy side is not pleasant). Obviously I miss her when we're apart and that feeling only gets stronger, but if we don't chat on Skype or on the phone for a day or two, it's no big deal. I don't instantly suspect that this means she's going off me, as I might have before. I am relatively relaxed about it, I know she cares about me and she's thinking about me.

Big deal, you might say. Of course she is. Anyone who's ever met her can see how much she loves you. Well, yes. But this is a big deal for me. It shows me that with the right support, this monkey on my back need not be a permanent fixture. I might even defeat it one day.

It's a work in progress. I still have my days when every possible sentence and action on her part gets interpreted as an omen that she's about to leave me (irrational much?!) but they're becoming more and more infrequent. I'm beginning to grow up. She's made me a hugely better person since coming into my life and I hope that she appreciates, eventually, just how grateful I will always be for that.