I Miss You

Hi everyone this is Amy.  I am reposting this from my friend Gillian's blog (a loyal fatlete reader).  It was so accurate and true I thought I had to bring it to all my single fatletes.  It brought tears to my eyes and made me think about my "someday" and what "could" have been, or even what "should" be.  

Link to Gill's Blog "Hard G"
http://hardgee-gillianbee.blogspot.com/2012/09/saudade.html?spref=fb.

Hope everyone is doing well.  Remember to add me to facebook (Amy Crabtree Cobine), so that I can add you to my coach's page and check out my Beachbody site.  www.beachbodycoach.com/amycobine

Saudade

“The grass is always greener on the other side,” said my sister, trying to convince me that being single had its merits. Or maybe she didn’t use that particular cliché, exactly. Creative license. But the meaning was the same. The grass is greener on the other side. The grass is greener where you water it. And so on. She wasn’t wrong. Her intentions were good. I remained unconvinced.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate my solitude. It’s just fantastic that I can spend all weekend in my pajamas if I wish. I can eat cereal for dinner. I can spend all my disposable income on nail polish and ridiculous t-shirts. I can watch all the cheesy chick flicks I want, and cry into my cornflakes, and no one will mock me. I can go out, or not. I can let the dog sleep in my bed. I never have to shave my legs. I can leave boxes of tampons laying around the house with wild abandon. My house, my rules.

And then there’s the rest of the time.

I miss you. I wake up in the morning and my first conscious thought is missing you. You are missing from everything. You are the negative space constantly beside me. The void where you should be sucks the light from everything. I miss you. I see couples caught in the gravitational pull of each other and I miss you. I watch them communicate without words, the little touches, the significant eye contact, and I miss you. I don’t look for them, but they appear in front of me. I hear them laughing at the jokes that are only funny to them, and I wonder what our jokes would be, and I miss you. I see boys and girls on blankets in the grass, oblivious to everything but each other. I ache and I miss you. I walk Gracie alone, and miss you. I want to tell someone about my day and I miss you. I want to sit in silence with another human being, just breathing the same air and I miss you.

The lack of you is my constant companion. I feel you not there. You are a ghost. I hear a song, just a few lyrics, and you are there but not and I miss you. At night, in dreams, you are more there than anywhere, but I never see you. I know it’s you, I know your presence. But I never see your face. I miss your face. How can I miss what I don’t know? You can’t possibly exist, this you I imagine. But there is a you-sized hole in my life. Have we met, I wonder? Would I know you if I saw you? You are so real in my head. And that’s all I have, really. The idea of you.

There’s a Portuguese word for this feeling. Saudade. There isn’t a single equivalent word in the English language. It takes paragraphs of words to describe this single word: saudade. It describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone. It’s longing and yearning. It’s incompleteness. It is me, missing you. Saudade. I love the word. I would ink it into my skin if I weren’t afraid of the pain. 

It bothers me, though, the thought that I am somehow not a whole person without you. I don’t want to be dependent on anyone. I don’t want my happiness to be wrapped up entirely in another person. I don’t want to be rescued. A little help now and then wouldn’t hurt, however. And that’s what I miss. A partner, a compliment, a helper, a friend. You.

Possibly—likely—I have idealized you. I hold up the you silhouette to everybody I meet, and it never matches. How could it? Will anyone ever fit? No relationship is perfect, my sister tells me again. No man is perfect. You are not perfect. You will fight and be angry at some point. She’s trying to talk me off this ledge of longing and yearning and incompleteness. I know. But. I still miss you, this impossible, unobtainable you who is out there somewhere.

Will you find me?

I miss you.