Be Careful What You Wish For

This morning I received an email from an old friend. She had just returned from a distant State so that her young daughter could visit with her father (my friend’s ex-husband).

For some reason, relationships (the good, the bad and the ugly), seem to be the topic of conversation with everyone around me for the past few months. Am I qualified to talk about relationships? Do I have the magic answer to the perfect one? Not by a long shot. There is first the assumption that there is a perfect one. No. I don’t believe there is and only because I don’t believe there is such a thing as ‘perfect’ anything.

The other night a friend and I were talking about past relationships and she made a comment regarding the common thread that connected all of hers. She then made a statement which stuck with me. She said “I sometimes wonder, what the next important relationship in my life, will look like.”

Sometimes it looks nothing like what you think it will.

If you believe in the idea that you will receive what you ask for (which I do), then you’ll have to go on the assumption that you can in fact design what you want in anything. The thought that you can draw to you the perfect partner and have he or she delivered in a box the color of robin’s egg blue with a pretty little white bow is somehow intoxicating. What if that were possible? Would we do it? Hell yeah. I know because I have, sort of, except for the box.

A few days ago I was searching through my desktop files for a story I wanted to work on for a writing contest. I came across something that I had written on September 6, 2006. I write a lot and I don’t normally reread my work unless I am looking for something specific. In this case the title caught my eye “My Wish List for My Ideal Partner” and I thought “What the hell is THAT about?” When I opened it, it was a copy of my horoscope (it’s a vice) for that day and it had instructed Virgos to write down a wish list (in great detail) of what we would like to find in an ideal partner (something about the stars being in the perfect place and the universe would send it…blah blah blah). After the demise of another relationship the previous year the weight of feeling like a failure in that category was settling into that uncomfortable ‘whoa is me’ mindset. So there it was a long list of things that were and still are important to me.

What knocked me for a loop was the realization that a person I know embodies all the qualities on my list. And I thought “No! No way. That is impossible.” But it wasn't As I read through the list I’d made almost 2 years ago, I could not believe what I was reading. The interesting thing was that no one I had met between then and now had even come close to fulfilling my idea of what was important and here it was staring me in the face. I will be the first to admit, it scared the hell out of me and the reason was the fact that it’s all well and good to have those ideals met, but what about the things I need to do or be? How do I measure up in order to even warrant having them? If I can’t be the best person I can (and God knows the defense mechanisms kick in at high speed so I haven’t), then who am I to even be worthy of accepting what in fact I asked for?

The only course I can take is to have an open mind and open heart (that part is hard for me) and allow this person to teach me something about myself which until this point I haven’t wanted to learn.

After all, that is what any relationship is about.