someone else.

Two people catch a glance at each other in opposite reflections in the bus windows. Those two people are a stranger and me. What if we met?

I’m learning that I don’t really know how to meet people “in the real world”. I talk to a lot of strangers, sure, but it never goes beyond mindless chatter: “What a beautiful day” or “That’s a good book” or “Excuse me, this is my stop”. As people streamed onto the bus this morning, I stared them all down, as usual. (I always imagine I have a very unhappy morning face on as I do this; probably why I don’t meet anyone.)

A very tall man sat down next to a very tall lady, who I’ve seen before, and I thought they would be a cute couple.

So many women get on the bus with big flashy diamonds on their left hands. The delicately hold their purses and their phones, careful not to let the ring touch anything. Even their lips seem delicate as they sit closed and quiet.

I’ve noticed that the tall woman doesn’t wear a ring. And she always reads the same kinds of fantasy novels that are always printed in the same size. Like how the large balding man that rides the 2 always reads books by the same author –Lee Child. He’s so young and wears cute round glasses, but also sports no ring. Back to the tall lady.

She is beautiful but not like the delicate women. She has a long face and wears little to no makeup. She has straight, blonde hair to her shoulders that isn’t perfect; it lays in small strands and sometimes a few hairs stick out of place. She looks alone. Like she just seems like she would be single, and I wonder if she has a boyfriend. And I hope that she does, the way I hope to one day. This all sounds offensive, but I mean it kindly.

In the meantime, in the waiting, I want to love her. I want to give her a hug and be her friend and tell her that she is beautiful because she is.

When one of the ladies at community first said “I love you” to me—in encouragement, in salutation—I froze. For someone to be standing in front of me and fully say, “I love you” –I forgot what it felt like, a friend to just say it like that and not in “luv u” or “love ya” but the whole thing: I love you.

I’m learning more and more that I have no idea what love looks like. I think back to the boyfriends I had in the past and honestly can’t say if I ever felt love or was in love. This sounds terrible because I know that I told them I loved them, but I just don’t know. I think I want the answer to be ‘no’ because if I did, I loved them terribly.

I know now that, if nothing else, love is a choice. I based past relationships off of fuzzy feelings, though I’m not sure where those came from. But when the fuzzy feelings quickly disappeared, shit got real and hard, and I kept at it because it seemed like the thing to do. But it was always over. Love isn’t a fuzzy feeling.

So how do you find someone when love is a choice? No longer relying on two people to feel fuzzy feelings but two people to choose each other. Someone must choose to love me.

As all of these strangers got on the bus, I wondered what it would be like to know one or two of them. To really know them. There are so many people in the world. I always only ever see the men within my known social groups. Then I tell myself that my next boyfriend must be someone I don’t know yet because there’s a whole world out there. It’s such a funny thing, like I’m always looking ahead and not looking directly in front of me. I don’t even know how to meet new people.

It’s all a very funny topic that I know very little on. My emotions flux on the topic of singleness. As of right now, I have no timeline, just a prayer and a hope, like in You’ve Got Mail when Meg Ryan dreamily gazes up when asked “What about you? Is there someone else?” and she says, “No, but there’s the dream of someone else.”

Oh yeah, I went there. And I’m sitting on it.