Love Potion #9

I used to have a theory on love that I spread around to some sorority sisters in college. It was actually a theory I came up with in high school, I just didn’t have a title for it until college. I expertly called it the “One Day Theory.” I believed that it was possible to have that one person that you were meant to spend the rest of your life with but that you and that one person just couldn’t be together for whatever reason right now – you needed one day to make it happen. In between now and one day you would date other people and learn about yourself, experience life along the way but the whole time you’d know it was all for one day. That one day when you could be together and everything would finally be perfect. It was like a movie – you know the film I’m talking about - a couple separates for 5 or more years but when they get back together their time is right and one day happens. I had a one day person once. I know friends who had one days too. I didn’t realize until now how cliché we were sitting around our dorm rooms, drawing hearts in notebooks (okay, that didn’t really happen but just to illustrate a point), crying and laughing about stories from the past and how that one day person might fit into our futures.

As time went on our one days weren’t getting any closer, in fact, for some of us, our one days weren’t even a possibility anymore. We held on to the theory for each other thinking if we believed hard enough our romantic fairy tales would come true. In the meantime we fell in and out of love with other sweethearts, experienced happiness and held each other through heartbreak. As we worked through other relationships I began to take note of common themes, remarks we kept going back to – you have all heard them before – “The timing was off. I was ready but he/she wasn’t. In another time or place it might have worked out. He/she seemed perfect but it just wasn’t meant to be… right now.”

This led to the creation of a new theory; I call it the “Some Day Theory.” (It is completely based on no scientific evidence or practices but feel free to quote me on it – or question it, I’d love to talk about it.) Having a some day person leaves the possibilities open to anyone! You aren’t waiting and set for that one person to fit into the one special place you have set aside. The Some Day Theory is all about there being thousands of “right” people for you out in the world. You never know who is right for you, in fact, there are endless possibilities of who is right for you. Woah, takes some pressure off of having to find “the one,” doesn’t it? So there is no right person, there are lots of right people. The thing that sets it all up to last a lifetime is the right place and the right time mixed with this right person. To make it work it all has to be there. It gets even more complicated when you realize that it just can’t be my right time and my right place but the other person’s as well. In my last relationship I truly believed he was the right person and we were in the right time and as soon as I moved back home we would be in the right place. For whatever his reasons were – I wasn’t the right person (or he didn’t feel that he was the right person) and even if I felt like it was my time, it wasn’t his. And let's not even get started on place!

Looking at some of my attempts at dating since then, fitting pieces of relationships into the pattern of “right person, right time, right place” has helped me understand why my Prince Charming hasn’t swept me off my feet just yet. Leave it to me to turn something completely based on feeling and emotion into something logical and practical. This takes away all of the questioning “What could I have done differently? What could have I done better? What is wrong with me?” Nothing, absolutely nothing, it just wasn’t the right some day material for both parties involved.

On the end of this note, I also feel I need to add a teeny tiny shout out to myself and many wonderful friends for graduating JMU with Master’s degrees! Yay! I treated my graduation day slightly like a wedding day for the single smart independent woman that I am! I got my nails done, practiced hairstyles in my cap, picked out the perfect dress, and had many loved ones surrounding me. I am so proud of this degree and can’t wait to put it to use. I’m so amazingly happy doing exactly what I was designed to be doing and my some day will come… one day. J