There is No "One". There are Ones.

I just got back from my run. I love running. It hurt's like hell during, then after, you feel amazing. It's like the reverse of binge drinking. Anyways, from now on I'm going to blog once a week. I'll write on Thursday during the clarity that follows a great run, and it'll be up for you to read on Friday. There! Now you won't have to obsessively check the page every five minutes to see if I've posted. (I, however, will still have to obsessively check for your comments.)

I've wanted to talk about my romantic past for a while now, but was never in the right frame of mind. How post-run, jelly-legged delirium is the right frame of mind, I don't know. Ahem.

When I was seventeen I fell in love with this beautiful 21 year-old-man I knew from high school. I stumbled upon his facebook page today while I was putting off running, and I could still see it! I could still see all the things that made me swoon when I was in high school and knew better than to date a non-christian.

I got the talk from my dad, "You have no business hugging and kissing a boy who is not a Christian man." Exact words. I remember that conversation vividly. But I still couldn't talk my heart off the edge, even though I spent hours agonizing over it.

Looking back, I think I felt special. I was a star-crossed lover. I had this cosmic, supernatural connection to someone who God had forbidden me to want. I will always look back on that and feel full of that special feeling, but there's another feeling now; I feel foolish too.

I look back and think that I should have been allowed to have my first love. I should have lost my virginity and experienced all that magic and mayhem. I should have been allowed to be normal and love who I loved and get my heart broken and move on.

But I couldn't have that, because as long as I thought that I was this saved person, this Christian, and that he was so woefully broken and blind, the relationship became the eternal struggle of good and evil in my life. A relationship that would have failed all by itself for organic reasons became Milton's Paradise Lost to me.

I was such an arrogant dumb-fucking-kid, because I couldn't see that I was just like everyone else who falls in love with another arrogant dumb-fucking-kid and gets her heart shattered. It's kind of cute, how stupid we were, and I'm sure 8 more years will make it even more cute and stupid.

The problem was I could never understand what kind of guy God meant for me. I couldn't comprehend the magnitude of marriage. It was always absurd to me. I often told people that I would never get married. Chastity was a reasonable price to pay for my freedom.

I remember meeting my aunt Carol, who remained unmarried and spent most of her life in Taiwan as a missionary. She gave me hope, for a time. I was always on the look out for someone who helped me believe that there was a life for me out in the Christian unknown. That amongst the sea of people who didn't relate to me, there was someone just like me.

I came close, but no cigar. I found a Christian man who loved God the way that I did - as a personal relationship that you didn't have to prove to anyone. We could talk about anything, and we did. Practically every night I would sit on top of the washing machines in the laundry room of my dorm and talk and talk and listen and listen, and I found someone on the other end who was equally good at talking and listening.

In spite of how hard I pushed my brain, I still couldn't see him in my life. He was perfect in every way. I wished that I could just fall in love with him and have the life that my parents wanted. But I balked at the idea of being a pastor's wife and, from time and neglect, whatever feelings he had for me wilted and died.

Then I stopped dating Christians all together. I started dating people who were obscenely, absurdly wrong for me. I even dated a sleazy foreigner whom I did not respect. Nicole, my best friend, yelled at me for half-an-hour in Urban Outfitters when I told her. She actually cried, she was so upset.

I guess, I couldn't love anyone I was supposed to love, so I became a cock tease. I don't defend the logic.

So here's today. I'm sitting at the computer listening to Lady Sovereign. I'm full and happy thanks to the grilled chicken salad that Jason's dad made me (he and Richard are staying with us this week). My life is chockablock with music, art, and love. I have the relationship I've always wanted; I was just looking in all the wrong places.

I think I will always hate the idea of marriage, but good for me, because I've found someone who doesn't want to get married either. I've found someone who loves his art more than he loves me. He understands that I will choose my music over him every time, and he probably wouldn't have fallen in love with me if that weren't the case.

I look back on all the energy I spent trying to be someone I wasn't, trying to love people I didn't, and I feel foolish.

-KL