12/06/2008

All in.

So here I am, sitting at a poker table, my favorite dress shirt soaked in red wine and water (excused and cleaned up in a manner that miraculously noone noticed), with another glass of blood-red shiraz swirling in my hand, an angry and stoic face staring into nowhere (my easiest poker face), taking and losing large ballsy bets, but all the while coming up ahead fairly substantially. It becomes very easy to ask myself...

What the f*** am I doing here? (Pardon my inner monologue, he's quite vulgar). I look around the table and see a friend struggling with being single but now with a girl he loves, multiple friends who are happy in thier take-what-they-can-get single lifestyle, friends happily married with just the two of them, and friends married, happy with children. All celebrating these victories over little pieces of plastic. Who the hell cares?

There are so many other things that I want to be happy about but am not there yet. I so desperately want a family, a person to wake up next to, to love and accept their faults, a child to love and nurture, and see the woman I love in their eyes. I am so damn jealous of the people I know that have found that that it hurts.

I wonder very quickly how it is that those people that have all this find joy in plastic chips, and all the while savor the sips of red wine while the night goes on, yearning for the moment when so many pieces of my life line up so that poker chips are enough for temporal happiness.

It's easy to struggle as well; as I've met plenty a person who "desperately wants a wife / husband" or who "so wishes they had a baby right now", but that's worlds away from what I'm looking for. I'm not looking for a wife, or a person to start a family with. Far from it.

I'm looking for the person that inspires that burst of life from me, and from that, spawns the love, the marriage, the family, the waking up next to her and being thankful that somehow my life experiences brought me here.

But I guess I'm not quite ther yet. In the meantime, I suppose my joys need to come in the forms of little plastic chips.

What's life without a little risk?

"I'm all in."

3 comments:

blondieangel said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
blondieangel said...

I hope you don’t mind. I stumbled upon this blog post when searching for another one, and had to comment. This is beautiful. I hope you have found her, or will soon.

It is easy to look at the ones around us and see their blessings. It can be hard when it makes us realize what we are without. It can be used to help give us goals, even goals that might not be reached. These wants give us something that we can hope for, to keep us motivated to put ourselves into possibly embarrassing, situations and trying when things blow up.

There can be some joy found in the take-what you-can-get but it is not always fulfilling in the long term. It takes a sense of maturity though to really analyze that life and realize it would not be as fulfilling to you as it is to others.

It also needs to be mentioned that there is a danger in idealizing finding the one. This can set up unrealistic expectations (of relationships and potential partners), and causes you to miss the great moments happening in front of you. It may not be a long lasting joy found in little plastic chips, but brief moments of happiness can be some of the best.

nozomiyume said...

Thank you so much for the kind words, Tracy. It was genuinely a surprise to see this in my inbox, but was a pleasure to relive the moment.

I haven't found her yet. Still searching but have found a better place to 'be' until I do. No longer living for the potential end result, but instead for the moments that happen everyday. Optimistic for the future, but not depending my happiness on it.

Again, thanks so much for the wonderful comment and bringing me back to this memory :)