Something I Can't Deny...

When I was about 15 years old, I had a friend named Brandon whose mother was a dabbling psychic. I met her the first and only time I ever went over to his house. My memory of this is extremely vague, but… I know after chatting for maybe ten minutes, she declared me a good spirit. She liked my vibe. And she bestowed on me a set of her tarot cards. She wrapped the deck in an uneven cut of brown suede chamois and specified the importance of always keeping them wrapped to protect their “energy.” I think she told me the cards had been passed on to her and were a special brand that was no longer manufactured. The illustrations were lovely and more whimsical than the typical tarot cards you always see. In fact, I only ever found one identical deck in an antique shop in Santa Barbara.

So I went out and bought a book on how to read tarot and began my own dabbling… and I'll never forget one very specific reading I did on myself. Now, whether the cards are guided by a spiritual force or a collective unconscious or your own creative subconscious is debatable. I found that it was easy to “feel” if their meaning was truth or whether the cards I’d laid were a bit off. With this particular reading, I felt the truth deep in my heart. It was a spread to “Determine Your True Purpose in Life.” According to the cards, my purpose was love. Specifically, my purpose was to find love. Find my soulmate. I remember tears springing to my eyes when I read that from the tarot book…

Yes. I want love. That is something I can’t deny.

Back in my senior year of high school, when I started dating my first “serious” boyfriend, I told my mom that I would finally be able to concentrate fully on my school work. I could finally relax and focus on other things since I would no longer be worrying about the daily minutiae of trying to gently prod a crush to fruition. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had a crush...

In kindergarten, it was Brett. So carried away by my crush (and not having learned boundaries yet), if I were sitting behind him on the blue carpet during story time, I’d find myself leaning forward – so close – trying to smell the collar of his shirt. I can mark in memory every single year of school with which boy I had a crush on. Each year I had a new object of affection. Often I’d alternate between Brett and his twin brother Bryan. In 3^rd grade, I hit pay-dirt. For some inexplicable reason, I became the girl that all the boys liked – including older ones – and I had my pick. I was passed notes and gifted rhinestone jewelry and even had my butt pinched during kickball! Sigh. I’ve never figured out how to recreate that phenomenon.

Then in Junior High I had my heart broken. Adam was my seventh grade boyfriend and I would venture to say he was my first love. As much as a 12-year-old can truly be in love, I was. He was the first boy that I really, really, really liked – and had for quite some time – who really liked me back. For two months (!!!) he held my hand and put his arms around me and walked me to class. He’d even point out our weekly anniversaries. I liked him so much that I became shy about it. That’s what did me in… because I was too shy to initiate our first kiss. It was the era of Truth or Dare, when we all learned how to French kiss, and I knew how to do it. But I liked him too much and it made me too nervous and, as I later learned, he decided I was too much of a prude. (Ha!) Really, he just never tried. I guess he rejected me before I could reject him.

It was after this heartbreak that I really fell in love with love. It was like heroin. I’d had my first hit and, oh, I wanted more. I discovered teen romance novels and read them voraciously. Every time I needed a fix I’d buy myself a new story of love trumping the odds of class lines and school sluts. I started collecting romantic greeting cards that professed charming quotations like “You enchant me” and “Can you feel my heartbeat?” with the intention of giving them to someone… someday. My VCR played The Cutting Edge on a loop and I bawled like a baby in a dark movie theatre during that scene in While You Were Sleeping when Sandra Bullock says to a sleeping Peter Gallagher, “Have you ever been so alone you spend the night confusing a man in a coma?”

High school was a veritable parade of crushes. Freshman year, I kept a running list in my head which I would re-order depending on which boy smiled at me that day or talked to me in class. I had a few “boyfriends” here and there. Usually these relationships didn’t last beyond two weeks because, as it turned out, I was a fan of the chase. More accurately, I think I was trying to reassure myself that I was likable. But once I’d confirmed that a boy did, in fact, like me back and the deal was done, I was then faced with actually having to interact with said boy on a more personal level… and suddenly it would feel wrong. Obviously, I just wasn’t that into any of them. Or maybe I was scared of being hurt again. Either way, I wasn’t sticking around to find out.

It wasn’t until I met Jeff – that first “serious” boyfriend – that I stuck around. This was one of those things that I believe was fated. I’m of the mind that certain people come into your life for a reason and once you’ve learned what you were meant to learn from them – just like that – they’re gone. My mom liked to boast of how well I “handled” Jeff when we started dating. True enough, he was a slippery one at first and I won him over without losing myself to desperation. Looking back, I think the result was two-fold. I was rewarded with a relationship that taught me how I deserve to be treated (another thing that my mom went on about for years afterward)... but, it also left me saddled with an ill-perceived confidence that I should be able to win over any man. In all of my twenty-eight years, Jeff was the longest, truest, steadiest relationship I’ve ever had. And we were together just barely a year.

Since that relationship I’ve had a string of hits and misses that engendered a new list: The Nickname Graveyard. Roll call, please? The Crying Orthodontist… Fidel the Future Convict… The One I Could’ve Married… The Gay… The Hobbit… The Hottie… The Nottie… and The Mask aka The (Mistaken) One. In terms of time, The Mask has been around the longest. In terms of actual consistency and bang-for-my-buck… he’s fallen quite short of the mark. However, this relationship, in all its peaks and valleys, has taught me a lot about myself…

See, I’ve spent a number of years now with “love” relegated to #2 on my list of priorities. When you have grand scale ambitions such as I do, it’s only natural for “career” to replace “love” in the #1 slot. Certainly, at least for the majority of early adulthood as you try to forge your way in the world, I think it’s important to shift that focus because it’s necessary to build yourself up, flesh out your character and really know what you’re capable of before you can be ready for The One. For a long time I’ve been aggressively career focused. So much that I was insulted when, a few years back, a female boss told me that some co-workers thought all I wanted was “to get married and have babies.” When she said it, I laughed out loud and scoffed at the idea, thoroughly annoyed to be dismissed in such a way. Turned out this was her own theory and she was testing my drive... I passed the test.

Truthfully, I’ve been using the “career” card as a way of justifying the failings of my love life. Many times I’ve explained away my disappointments by saying, “I don’t have time for a real relationship” and “I get wrapped up in a boyfriend too easily and can’t afford to lose focus” and “I’m just not supposed to be in love right now” and “It’s impossible to have a relationship in LA, so why bother trying?” Yet, every day I am contradicting my own stubborn logic, because... even though I say proudly that career is my #1 priority… it is LOVE – the search for love, the attempts at love, the grappling, endless yearning for love – that consumes my focus. Trying to tell myself otherwise, I’m realizing, is pointless. My career has really just served as a constant excuse for the lack of love in my life. Don’t get me wrong, my career is very important to me. But it’s a neck-and-neck race these days and, trust me… love fights dirty.

It is my want of love that makes me a girl that always needs a crush because otherwise life would be unbearably boring. It is my want of love that forces me to watch even the cheesiest romantic comedies. It is my want of love that caused my mind to play tricks on me, convincing me that I had honest feelings for someone who was less than deserving (The Nottie). It is my want of love that wouldn’t allow me to let go of someone that’s “just not ready” and might never be. And it’s my want of love that had me convinced I must not be ready either because I can't love someone else until I love myself.

All this time I’ve denied that I want love – want it and deserve to have it – right now. I've been denying that there is any other path to love than this fatally idealistic rut of waiting for a future with someone that may never come.

Then, recently, I took a trip to New York.

New York’s an inherently romantic city that I’ve visited many times before, but always returned home relatively unaffected by it. Except this time I was touched by some magic as I walked the streets. I felt connected to the pavement, the buildings, the trees and every person walking around me. I felt the thrill of catching the eye of almost every single guy I crossed paths with. I felt the giddiness of possibility. For the first time since I took up the mantra earlier this year, I believed in its power: I am The Prize. My desire for love was suddenly so sharp that I had to acknowledge it. As soon as I did, it was like all my feelings came rushing in and the world seemed to open up and I remembered...

I believe in love. I always have. I’m a romantic, I can’t help it. Love is what has always driven me. Love is what inspires me and excites me. I have so much of it to give. Love has always been my purpose, even before I knew it. I’m no longer willing to sit on the sidelines. I want the fantasy. I want the fairy-tale, with all its imperfections.

And I want it now.

Denying that was the only thing that was really keeping me from loving myself. But it’s something I can’t deny because it’s part of who I am. What’s so wrong with wanting marriage and babies?

I want it all. And I’m ready for it.