Intro #
I had just taken a surfing lesson and was feeling good about life. Getting to and from the beach had to be done on foot and we had all just walked back to the parking lot carrying our own surfboards. While some of those in the group went to the bathroom or to the nearby gasoline station for snacks, two of the girls in the surf group sat to talk about how they had come to live in the surf town we were going to be driving back to. I was sititng next to them as they talked.
I don’t believe in the one.
– Random girl
I don’t know what it is about this statement that made my internal anger rise.
Her Story #
She had had a long-term relationship with someone that lasted 7 years and said it had ‘run its course’; they had separated amicably. They still messaged each other and when she was in town she would contact her ex and stay at his place. According to her, romantic relationships have a lifespan, a beginning and an end that is shorter than the lives of either people. Once it reaches a certain point it dissolves beyond being able to hold onto it. It should be normalized to communicate that to the other person, that it should be accepted by them once it’s vocalized, and that both should move on to another romantic relationship and start all over again.
Something bothered me about that. It was maybe the casual way that she said her current boyfriend, our surf instructor, was secure enough to let her stay at her ex’s apartment when she went to the city he lived in.
Is that what being secure is? Not caring what your significant other does with their lives and how it could affect yours? I’m sure others would want to change my words around and say “No it’s being secure in oneself and the relationship and trusting your partner.” I acknowledge that there is some usefulness in that rewording…that it makes it seem honorable in some way.
It’s a game of words…both attempting to describe the same scene.
A Version I Can Accept #
I realized much later that my version of her statement that I will actually accept is this:
I don’t believe in the one you find, I believe in the one you make.
– Jerry
This gets to the crux of it and my dissent. Relationships aren’t found by happenstance like a lollipop on the street that once you get tired of the sugar high, or you finish the lollypop you chuck it back out into the world for another to find and lick away at.
Right now the best way I can put it is that they’re like gold that you find suddenly. Yes, they’re shiny, pleasing, and valuable. And if you are happy with just a chunk of gold that’s fine, but it’s what you shape the gold into and then reshape it into and then reshape it into. How does it evolve and refresh anew?
Just Angry #
It’s a day long past and no more of it remains but I was angry then. It was an anger that never inked a page or pixeled a screen until now. Now what’s left is this altered quote to express my own point of view; the anger served me well.