Hello from the other side
I'm not sure if everyone experiences this, but I know I'm not an island. There are enough nut job scrawlings on the internet about things like this happening to other people. I read these posts and think how romanticised and science-ignorant they sound and yet, I get it. Much as it sounds like phony, spiritual romance rubbish. I've done the pinch test.
I have set up camp with these nut jobs who write about soulmates- something I stopped believing in long ago. It makes me uncomfortable knowing we're sharing the same views. I am a realist these days. Realists, don't get involved in this mumbo jumbo, so why is this all happening around my like a carousel of cringe?
I haven't seen Joshua in a year and a half. Last time I did it was a jolt. He'd messaged me three days before our of the blue. my train was delayed from work, another pulled into its place after it should have already left. I was watching the door in front of me and he walked right out. He drives everywhere, but he'd been on a course day. He said it was weird seeing me, like everything had lined up for it to happen. Like usual. Like a far-fetched flop of a film.
That's what annoys me about it. It's like being written in an unrealistic sci-if drama. I used to want to write these; I never asked to live in one. If he were here I would ask him if he thought that was the reality of things- that our lives are characters forced to endure what ever storyline some writer jerk pens. He would not debunk it. And I would roll my eyes at the story-telling of our author. ITS JUST WAY TOO UNPREDICTABLE, fucksake get it together and give us something to work with.
On the other hand, of course it's crazily beautiful when coincidence becomes a pattern. It's a sign of something beyond what we take for granted, that it might be ok to believe in something bigger- it might just bear water to have faith in something other than gravity.
So it's been a long time and I have occasionally thought about that time when life got really weird, the time I knew him, but not really invested any real thought.
So I'm watching a tonne of 'friends' on Netflix by myself while my house is empty and I start thinking about happiness and how my happiest was two years ago, the night I felt true acceptance of myself. It was a landmark evening. I was living with PhD students, celibate and unrequiring of anything. And then immediately afterwards I met Joshua. I didn't ask for that.
Now, if you're one of the nut jobs who are into this, you'll have read all the paranoia about the stages of your twin flame. Oh yes- that's what they call it when this happens to you, because apparently, this is A THING? My saving grace is that all the stages 'documented' in calibri across www occurred to me while I was blissfully unaware that this was something that sometimes happens to people, in a very specific way. So I definitely didn't create the illusion for myself from wanting it. I didn't want it. What it turned out to be, just as the prophecy of the nuts informed me long after all the 'signs' were there, was a dreadful, exhausting explosion of an experience that I'm supposed to grow from going through. But how lucky am I!
So last night I explored it, I challenged it, i wanted to review whether I was still an overly romantic teen in my heart and head, and had dreamt the whole rhetoric.
I'm a facts kind of gal. There were far too many coincidences for me to assume I was just getting wet over fairytale and fantasising a period of my life when I needed some. As I say, this happened when I had felt the least needy in my life, ever. I didn't need to invent some trash novella to entertain myself. I was good, I was in a great place.
So I told myself last night, I'll do an experiment. I'll try to make contact and see. I opened my mind and reached out my hand for some essence of him. It hit me like being plugged in. I was reminded of the physical shaking that no other human being or other thing has ever made me feel. I asked for a sign from the universe. I didn't really specify what, I felt like asking to see him in person was quite a lot to ask. Some other nut I was reading about had asked to see two swans as her sign and her friend had posted a pic of two swans on Facebook. I thought that was pretty good but I didn't ask for anything, just a sign that the whole thing wasn't an acid trip. I shook in the darkness and called his name as though he were sleeping next to me and thought 'yep, if my calculations are correct, this should be enough to do it. Maybe he'll text me in a few days.'
Disclaimer: I am not obsessed, or in love. I know it sounds like it. I have a happy relationship. The way I feel about him is exactly how I felt about myself in that pinnacle evening. Like I'd found myself. Yeah I know it sounds awful. I've had full force honeymoon phases, different with each lover and this... it's like meeting yourself. It's amazing, it's easy and it's ridiculously fraught. Imagine, unless you're also a nut and know, actually meeting yourself in different casing. It's a massive headfuck lemme tell ya. You don't know how to handle it- if you met yourself would you go out with you? You'd probably feel so close that it's meant to be and then get all weirded out because it's like ground zero incest, and then fight fight fight, because none of it makes sense and how dare you turn up and fuck up everything I thought I understood. Life can never be the same, reality becomes a bending shape when you thought it was completely, solidly linear.
Today I drove to work, thinking about how exhausting knowing Joshua had been and how I didn't want to risk going through something so fucking intense like that ever again and put the whole thing out of my head. I worked, busily and almost forgot I was supposed to go out for dinner with colleagues. I tried on a couple of occasions to get out of it once home. I considered playing dumb, then I got a message asking what drink I wanted. Then I got a phone call. Then I was about to text and make excused when I received a picture of a drink on a table, waiting for me. So of course, I went. I did even think how I couldn't be bothered to fix my self up for s night out because I always go to that pub and never see Joshua, and even if I did, why would it matter what I looked like.
Well, you can tell yourself that shit but when you're there drinking that beer and you look out the window and he's there,you'll wish you'd thrown on a bit of mascara just to save face.
I asked for this. I got it. But only a sign. We did make eye contact and it was awkward. Twice I think, maybe three times. It was definitely there.
No one knew except us. The world carried on around us and if I'm correct neither of us knew what to do about it, so save for those connecting moments we carried on too. It was a bit like lying to each other really badly. Because of course we were going to notice each other. We just pretended we didn't.
I would have said hello, if there'd been an opportunity. The people and the conversation around me started to blur a bit. I noticed him looking at me out the corner of my eye. Like a mirror. The universe bending.
That was it. I asked to see him and after a year and half and countless evenings in that pub, I got what I asked for the very next day, when I was prepared to settle for less of a sign.
I got it.
And if course...It wasn't enough. It wasn't a sign I really wanted was it. I wanted real interactions. I must be clearer when I ask for things I guess! Who knows what we would have talked about. Small talk is for other people and we never really spoke when other people were around us. It was always private. His life, my life would be paused. Those worlds are irrelevant when you have your own.
I have set up camp with these nut jobs who write about soulmates- something I stopped believing in long ago. It makes me uncomfortable knowing we're sharing the same views. I am a realist these days. Realists, don't get involved in this mumbo jumbo, so why is this all happening around my like a carousel of cringe?
I haven't seen Joshua in a year and a half. Last time I did it was a jolt. He'd messaged me three days before our of the blue. my train was delayed from work, another pulled into its place after it should have already left. I was watching the door in front of me and he walked right out. He drives everywhere, but he'd been on a course day. He said it was weird seeing me, like everything had lined up for it to happen. Like usual. Like a far-fetched flop of a film.
That's what annoys me about it. It's like being written in an unrealistic sci-if drama. I used to want to write these; I never asked to live in one. If he were here I would ask him if he thought that was the reality of things- that our lives are characters forced to endure what ever storyline some writer jerk pens. He would not debunk it. And I would roll my eyes at the story-telling of our author. ITS JUST WAY TOO UNPREDICTABLE, fucksake get it together and give us something to work with.
On the other hand, of course it's crazily beautiful when coincidence becomes a pattern. It's a sign of something beyond what we take for granted, that it might be ok to believe in something bigger- it might just bear water to have faith in something other than gravity.
So it's been a long time and I have occasionally thought about that time when life got really weird, the time I knew him, but not really invested any real thought.
So I'm watching a tonne of 'friends' on Netflix by myself while my house is empty and I start thinking about happiness and how my happiest was two years ago, the night I felt true acceptance of myself. It was a landmark evening. I was living with PhD students, celibate and unrequiring of anything. And then immediately afterwards I met Joshua. I didn't ask for that.
Now, if you're one of the nut jobs who are into this, you'll have read all the paranoia about the stages of your twin flame. Oh yes- that's what they call it when this happens to you, because apparently, this is A THING? My saving grace is that all the stages 'documented' in calibri across www occurred to me while I was blissfully unaware that this was something that sometimes happens to people, in a very specific way. So I definitely didn't create the illusion for myself from wanting it. I didn't want it. What it turned out to be, just as the prophecy of the nuts informed me long after all the 'signs' were there, was a dreadful, exhausting explosion of an experience that I'm supposed to grow from going through. But how lucky am I!
So last night I explored it, I challenged it, i wanted to review whether I was still an overly romantic teen in my heart and head, and had dreamt the whole rhetoric.
I'm a facts kind of gal. There were far too many coincidences for me to assume I was just getting wet over fairytale and fantasising a period of my life when I needed some. As I say, this happened when I had felt the least needy in my life, ever. I didn't need to invent some trash novella to entertain myself. I was good, I was in a great place.
So I told myself last night, I'll do an experiment. I'll try to make contact and see. I opened my mind and reached out my hand for some essence of him. It hit me like being plugged in. I was reminded of the physical shaking that no other human being or other thing has ever made me feel. I asked for a sign from the universe. I didn't really specify what, I felt like asking to see him in person was quite a lot to ask. Some other nut I was reading about had asked to see two swans as her sign and her friend had posted a pic of two swans on Facebook. I thought that was pretty good but I didn't ask for anything, just a sign that the whole thing wasn't an acid trip. I shook in the darkness and called his name as though he were sleeping next to me and thought 'yep, if my calculations are correct, this should be enough to do it. Maybe he'll text me in a few days.'
Disclaimer: I am not obsessed, or in love. I know it sounds like it. I have a happy relationship. The way I feel about him is exactly how I felt about myself in that pinnacle evening. Like I'd found myself. Yeah I know it sounds awful. I've had full force honeymoon phases, different with each lover and this... it's like meeting yourself. It's amazing, it's easy and it's ridiculously fraught. Imagine, unless you're also a nut and know, actually meeting yourself in different casing. It's a massive headfuck lemme tell ya. You don't know how to handle it- if you met yourself would you go out with you? You'd probably feel so close that it's meant to be and then get all weirded out because it's like ground zero incest, and then fight fight fight, because none of it makes sense and how dare you turn up and fuck up everything I thought I understood. Life can never be the same, reality becomes a bending shape when you thought it was completely, solidly linear.
Today I drove to work, thinking about how exhausting knowing Joshua had been and how I didn't want to risk going through something so fucking intense like that ever again and put the whole thing out of my head. I worked, busily and almost forgot I was supposed to go out for dinner with colleagues. I tried on a couple of occasions to get out of it once home. I considered playing dumb, then I got a message asking what drink I wanted. Then I got a phone call. Then I was about to text and make excused when I received a picture of a drink on a table, waiting for me. So of course, I went. I did even think how I couldn't be bothered to fix my self up for s night out because I always go to that pub and never see Joshua, and even if I did, why would it matter what I looked like.
Well, you can tell yourself that shit but when you're there drinking that beer and you look out the window and he's there,you'll wish you'd thrown on a bit of mascara just to save face.
I asked for this. I got it. But only a sign. We did make eye contact and it was awkward. Twice I think, maybe three times. It was definitely there.
No one knew except us. The world carried on around us and if I'm correct neither of us knew what to do about it, so save for those connecting moments we carried on too. It was a bit like lying to each other really badly. Because of course we were going to notice each other. We just pretended we didn't.
I would have said hello, if there'd been an opportunity. The people and the conversation around me started to blur a bit. I noticed him looking at me out the corner of my eye. Like a mirror. The universe bending.
That was it. I asked to see him and after a year and half and countless evenings in that pub, I got what I asked for the very next day, when I was prepared to settle for less of a sign.
I got it.
And if course...It wasn't enough. It wasn't a sign I really wanted was it. I wanted real interactions. I must be clearer when I ask for things I guess! Who knows what we would have talked about. Small talk is for other people and we never really spoke when other people were around us. It was always private. His life, my life would be paused. Those worlds are irrelevant when you have your own.