Dinner For One

She is out there somewhere. This I am sure. This I know. I thought once, around Christmas, I knew her. I talked to her briefly, but that person, she unfortunately turned out not to be. But how high I was at that time on the delusion of it. I pretended many times that other people were her. This I could do now, even, as many other people do as a way of life, or to stave off loneliness. To have dinner for two. To not have these moments when they realize they are alone in bed still awake well past one and there is a chance that they may be alone for years to come. Possibly until the end of all things. When death is at the door like a Jehovah's Witness, who doesn't just knock twice and leave his literature in the crease of the door. There are many terrible things that can happen, unexpectedly. The least of which is not cancer. There are car accidents. Unexpected falls. Aneurysms. Strokes. Quicksand, I'm sure. They are all out there. Somewhere. 

It isn't easy to do on your own. You know this by now. To raise a son or a daughter with minimal help. To be solely responsible for their physical and mental health. Their well-being. You captain their ship. You prepare what they eat and where they go and how they get there. What they see and what they do and what goes into them. It isn't easy to filter the world as you must filter it. To give freedoms and to take other freedoms away. To either give them religion or not, and if so, to choose which denomination. To model an appropriate level of cynicism that does not negate all the optimism you hope to imbue. To teach them to be kind to strangers, yet wary. To adequately explain things that you hope will satisfy their ever-raging curiosity and not dull it. To give them life and never to stifle it. 

And you, of course, are responsible for who you introduce them to. If you date someone, love someone, they must be good for your child. It is an unspoken edict. They must further what you've already established, or augment it, rather than to contradict it. There will be those you eliminate right off the rip for their lack of interest in parenting. To hell with them. They needn't be a mirror image of you, in fact, perhaps they might model things you do not model adequately. Creativity. Compassion. Masculinity. Femininity. Bravery. Resistance. Restraint. Morality. Spirituality. Mysticism. Discipline. Any number of things. They are, like you, an ingredient that goes into making your child who they shall become. They will be step-dad or step-mom and their role is an amazing one to fill. One you cannot put in a classified or describe in a help wanted ad that isn't as long as your arm. You're not hiring someone, for Godsakes, but all the same, you are. You're hiring the most important person you will ever hire.

But you, like I, already know all of this. You have had your fill of dinner for ones, you've grown accustomed to them and in some sad way, you prefer them because you are in a shell of your old self. Your curious child self that was full of love, both eager to receive and to give. It is no great secret. There are a number of people who might satisfy being appropriate for your child, but who fail to stir in you what needs stirred. Your curiosity. Your desire. They get stale, don't they? Almost as though on the bottom of their foot there is a date stamped to discard them by. They get tired of being funny. Tired of flirting and making an effort. Of amusing you. Writing you love letters or messages on the steam of a bathroom mirror after a shower. And there they lie on the couch. Like a decorative throw pillow that is of no particular use and which clashes with the curtains. Whatever happened, you ask yourself. You only hope that you were never that way. That you aren't but two mirrors. A beast with two backs, seldomly. 

There is a whole world full of people and to look for one amongst billions is indeed quite a daunting task. One — a rather ambigous and lonely word. But who are we to turn down such a grand adventure? We that are bred of sailors and mountain climbers and explorers and adventurists of all sorts. Or simply not to, in those moments when our child sleeps, to daydream of having you. You — this enormous word that is so unsuitable for the person that it vaguely and inadequately describes. Life is about sacrifices and triumphs. It is about winning and losing some. It is stuffed full of truths and lies. Our mistakes and best efforts. It is about being pleasantly surprised and terribly let down. And surely, it is about falling in love and suffering heartbreak. It is how you know you are human, after all. Being wrong and getting right. Getting knocked down, yet getting back up. This life is about you and your pursuit of happiness, from which no one in the world has any right to hinder nor stall or impede you. No job is so important that it cannot be lost for love, other than that of being a parent.

There are a menagerie of reasons I am single — the greatest of which is my persistence not to settle and my fear of being wrong. To couple with someone and miss the person I could have met if I held out a day or two longer. A chance encounter at a park I won't go to because I am somewhere with someone else faking it. I find myself in bed awake at this hour reflecting, as I often do, on both circumstances within and outside of the realm of my control. Making an inventory. Giving to God that which is His, and making an account of that which is mine, both my debts and profits. But everything is meant to be just as it is in the pursuit of the person I have been pursuing since I had a romantic inclination. Since reading Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade and seeing the movie on a classroom TV that was strapped to a cart, enthralled at the very thought that two people could be so in love that nothing else mattered. I was both created and destroyed in that instant. No other sort of love will ever do. No artificial, high-fructose corn syrup, saccharine, splenda sort of love will do. 

It is clear that the fire dies with time for some and they just put up with whoever their game of fatal attraction or musical chairs fated them. But it has never died in me. If it mineralized inside of me, I could be mined for romance for centuries to come. However, I cannot fake it. It isn't in me to fake. I cannot pair with someone on a dating site derived from some sophisticated algorithm or mutual interests. I am a meet-you-on-a-park-bench sort of fellow; or a bar stool; or at a grocery store. But there are only so many ducks you can feed; so many beers you can drink; and so many groceries to buy, before to wonder — what will come of it. The result is this at 1:44 a.m. and wide awake still, wondering what color her eyes are. Always wondering things I might never know. 

I'd rather be genuinely lonely, looking for the person I love, than fake happy with someone I don't. Even if it means a lifetime reservation for dinner for one, the candle burns, nonetheless. Having you, someday, or that dream therof, is worth being lonely for years, even when I don't yet know you, or know for certain that you are out there. That you might feel me as I feel you. Your presence. Maybe you think these same thoughts in your own way. 

It is worth drinking alone. Dining alone. Raising my daughter to believe in true love. Hoping she learns to be a lady still, even without you. The thought that you exist, somewhere and in some way, anonymously or notoriously, publicly or privately, matter-of-factly or explicitly, reluctantly or zealously, happily or sadly, is what inspires me to still breathe and to get excited about every stranger I meet — one just might be you.