The view from 18 hours away

In spite of being a compulsive extrovert, there have been times in my life when I've kept relatively enormous secrets.

For instance: I somehow managed to avoid telling anybody when, after four months of dating, Brad and I moved in together. The only people who knew it was happening were my parents, who helped me move, and my roommates, who couldn't help but notice that I was leaving. It was weeks later, with the last box finally unpacked in our new apartment, before I summoned the nerve to confess to friends what I'd done.

Weirdly enough, and despite my extrovert status, I didn't want to talk about it. I'd made the decision and I didn't want to dissect it, explain it, or justify it to anyone else. Most of all, I didn't want to have to answer the inevitable question that comes from starry-eyed girls whose jaws drop at the idea of somebody finding love in New York:

"So," they'd say, "Is he... The One?"

Because frankly, the answer is not the one they expect.
The answer is: No, he isn't.

He is, of course, the one for me -- the one who understands my irrational love of Die Hard With a Vengeance, and the one I prefer above all others to share a bottle of wine with, and the one I'm going to promise to love, comfort, honor and keep for as long as we both shall live when we stand up in front of our families tomorrow.

But The One, with a capital T.O.?
Nope. And not because there's something the matter with me, or him, or our relationship.

It's because I find it disheartening to believe that The One, that singular perfect person whose hand need only be placed in yours to set the whole world right forevermore, actually exists.

As far as I can see, we live in a world where each person is responsible for his own happiness. We all have the power to weigh options, make choices, strike the precarious balance between what the mind suggests and what the heart demands. And in that world, had I never joined the (abominably bad) corporate softball team where I met the man I'm about to marry, I have no doubt that we would have each found happiness with someone else. Not necessarily on the same schedule, and certainly not an identical happiness -- I can't imagine that any other man would possess Brad's amazing balance of pure integrity and aggressive cockiness, his ability to simultaneously inspire and infuriate me, or his unexpected sentimentality -- but happiness nonetheless.

Make no mistake: I know I've been lucky. And I know, too, that the ease of living with Brad somehow makes it more possible to be flippant about the possibility of living without him. (The security of it is fleeting and false, because there are times when he's late coming home, when morbid imagination takes over; it scratches the surface of a loss so deep and terrifying that my only choice is to stop thinking or be driven insane.)

But even so, there are other paths out there, and other people. This relationship is just the path that we decided to stumble down together, and the one we've decided to keep taking.

And in spite of the temptation to slap a True Love label on it, I think I like it better this way.

Because while it may be romantic to imagine that a single perfect person waits out there for each of us, one who has been pre-selected especially for you by an unknown third party, the alternative is even more compelling:

You meet someone. Not the one, just... someone. Neither of you is perfect. Maybe he's an asshole about washing the dishes, and maybe you sometimes argue too hard about politics, and maybe you don't fit together perfectly when you spoon each other because one of you has a fat ass and the other has bony ribs. But you love each other, and you make each other laugh, and you make each other think. And in full knowledge of all your imperfections, and in full awareness that life may sometimes be hard, and with eyes wide open and unclouded by the vision of an ideal someone-out-there waiting for you, you imagine your life with this person... and it looks pretty good. And then, because you would rather make your own destiny than leave it in the hands of fate, you choose it.

You choose.

Now that's fucking romantic.