I lost myself in someone once before. It was a somewhat caustic union, but perhaps one that was doomed long before the drowning and the battle of right and wrong ever began. Mostly because, in that particular partnership, if you dare to call it so, were two people who were broken and suffocating under the immense weight of their unspoken grief. Two people entirely adrift in the seismic waves of unexpressed emotion. Both desperately in search of a life raft to cling to for support.
It's terribly easy to get lost in somebody else, when you're not willing or able to acknowledge yourself. Which is why, I am thankful for that time to have come to pass. Yes, I may have drowned, but at some point, as I sunk to the murky depths of my own subconscious, I found salvation. Rescued and resuscitated. And in battling with those tides, I developed muscles and from those laps I was forced to swim against that brutal current, I grew lungs that now breath heavy and deep. Lungs that are full and always in support of my need to bellow my truths across noisy chaotic halls. Unafraid, unashamed and unapologetic. No, there is no doubt that I do not seek to find a raft in someone now. For why would I, when I have built one for myself.
Now I long to regale my stories to someone with an eager ear. One that can sympathise, empathise and generally have some ability to understand what it took to have them to share. I crave to find someone who too paces the floor boards at night, unable to sleep, for their thoughts are laced with sporadic flickers of genius, that excite them to such an extent, that they simply must find another soul to share them with and immediately. Not when the light re-emerges, but at that very precise moment of creative enlightenment. I crave that. I crave having someone to wake in the middle of the night. Someone who'll shake with excitement and understanding, as the words I so desperately need to share, tumble at great speed from my mouth into their sleepy ears.
Someone who's eyes light up as I describe the edge on which I so precariously stand and sees, out in the vast darkness, an exciting multitude of possibility, a grand adventure. Too many times have I fallen in love with those who could only see the emptiness, who's eyes could only sense the void. Full of fear and doubt. Comforted solely by their logical understanding. Held back by their closed and narrow minds. So blinded and conditioned by their upbringing and society's subtle yet detrimental influence.
How could I ever be expected to find partnership looking into the eyes of someone who, when looking back, could only see the colour of mine and not the pain that occasionally hid behind them. How could I give my heart to someone who could not understand that it often nearly erupted into an expletive mess, at just the thought of being broken. Of being left. Betrayed.
How often it had though and yet how fierce it had become. To have witnessed so many tragedies unfold and still managed not to turn to stone, but instead, to have grown softer still. To have learnt to be more forgiving, more understanding and even more eager to love.
It is perhaps a complex mystery and one that cannot be explained with words alone. No, for such a matter, the answers can only be felt and that is potentially the other great note of importance in such a search; to be able to share a grandiose level of understanding with someone that goes beyond any verbal or written communication. To connect with someone on a level so unavoidably complex, that you would simply have to experience it first hand, to even grasp a vague level of understanding of its existence. To be partnered. To connect.
