Numbers

I spent sixteen to twenty eight in an odd state of cynicism. Or perhaps all cynicism is odd, since it is rooted in disappointment; from yearning for something that, if acquired, would turn cynic into poet.

From eight until the middle of sixteen romance was the only truth that mattered. So when it got a chance to reveal itself I allowed it as naturally as a wolf to the moon. Water to fish. Love was home, he was the one and together, the two of us would get there. It wasn't a dream or a fantasy. It was fact. There was no clearer math. It didn't even matter that he was short. That his teeth stuck out in clusters. That his heart was divided into multiples of which I was just a fraction. I'm often ashamed when I realise the math still doesn't add up. I believed it was possible to be everything to someone to whom I was only one thing.

Eventually, I tore up my poems and turned my back on romance. Love at first sight was an idea, again with the numbers.
But one is not singular, and so "The One" is a lie. There are infinite numbers between zero and one, Hazel Grace would tell you. So I chose a different path. I took a break from love to find life, and I found my second lesson: bite off more than you can chew, if you wish, just don't let anyone see you choke.

I never freely used the word love again. To be fair, I'd hardly used it even when I'd thought it. Cynicism birthed an updated truth; a caveat to the romance clause that decreed that love was the only number, that it lasted forever, that there could never be another. Everytime my heart broke, I was safe in the knowledge that it was certainly not love, and therefore it was certainly not a break. My heart was intact and I would do well to get over it and move on. There's nothing so unfortunate as to watch an egg roll unaided, by virtue of the winds or the rather more cruel fates, and tumble to the ground unaided. It wasn't my heart, it wasn't my heart, it wasn't my heart. I vowed that it would never happen again.

It happened again. And again. And again. I am still confused.

Am I not me, strong, fortified against weakness by the knowledge of strength? How could I fail when I knew all the answers? Why would I? Was I setting myself up to fail? Was all that knowledge the biggest tricksies every played? But why would I sabotage myself?

And then, right when I thought everything I knew was nothing at all, I found the love.

It's a funny thing. It's a funny thing to admit that you love someone. It's a funny thing to find out yourself that you loved them - from them themselves. It was the oddest thing I had ever experienced, to hear him tell me how he thought I felt, and to hear myself falter in response. Later, when I logged off, I didn't feel anything at all. There was an emptiness where my feelings should have been. It quickly filled up with tears.

"What did you think would happen?"

"I hoped you’d be the one."

But there are many ones. Many bits of one. They all have names, now that I stopped being so scared to let them go. And these many bits took up fractions of my one, the only real one that isn't a lie: the me that I am.
The ones I wanted to love, the one I loved, the one that loved me and the others in-between had hollowed me out in unnoticeable places and wedged themselves into my whole, and then they'd sauntered off into their sunsets, emptiness piercing through me in holes I hadn't ever known to stopper. All exposed. All revealing themselves to me now, war torn survivor smiling for the cameras. Cheese.

I wonder, if I'd been less eager to fight. Less angry. Less guarded. Less fortified. Might I not also have been less breakable. Might I not also have been more one.

***

Flour. An autobiography.

The words Flower and Flour are similar. And even though flour is made from flower - in a way - the two are mostly unrelated. Growing up, both were in abundance in our home. My mum could say, "Pass me the fl---r on the kitchen table," and leave me in a state of unnerving confusion. And while I don't have any recollection of that actually happening, it is not unlikely that such an incidence would have transpired.

When my mother taught me to say 'flour', she made sure I'd never again mix it up with her other great love, the flower. It's quite simple, really; the one without the 'w' did not have a double u in its pronunciation. Meaning that, "Pass me the flaaar," was clearly distinguishable from, "Pass me the flower." (I suppose the 'w' had no need of italics, but the point is now, perhaps, clearer.)

Thus I spent my life, according Flour a certain sort of lofty lilt. It is impossible to split a single sound into two rising syllables without also raising one's head upward. This typically gives the appearance of sticking one's nose in the air - or, literally, being stuck up.

I bore the burden of my superior articulation with some pride, I'll admit. Perhaps of the humble brag sort. I'd ask my friends if they knew where I could find gluten-free flaaar and wonder if they could spot how distinguished my pronunciation was, all the while modestly hoping I hadn't embarrassed them with such brazen demonstration of my learnedness.

It was with this burden of modesty that I so politely asked the woman at the local store where I could find the flaaar.
"The what?"
I took a breath and slowly broke the five-letter mono-syllable down as patiently as I could.
"Flaaar."
She blinked.
"Flaaar. Flaaaaar. Flaar."
Nothing.
"For baking."
"OH!" She exclaimed with equal parts clarity and exasperation. "FloWer." And she briskly walked me toward an aisle.
Visions of gluten free rose petals filled my anxious mind as I speed-walked after her, but then she stopped, pointed, and carried on with her busyness and in front of me were powder white bags of flaaar.

Could it be?

All the way home I rolled the words around in my head, tasting them for deception. No; it couldn't be. I refused to insult almost thirty years of ingrained teaching by consulting something so disreputable as a dictionary. I mean, if lol could be considered a word.
The phonemes visited me in my dreams. A tribal council with the phonetic symbols holding up spears as they chanted, "Fla-aar! Fla-aar!" Or was it, "Flower!"? I woke up in a cold sweat and reached for my audio dictionary.

***

Life does not prepare you for the moments that will alter the course of your future. 

They say everything changes when you learn to drive, or when you graduate, or when you fall in love - but those things don't take everything you have ever known to be true, hold them up to the scrutiny of everything everyone else has ever known to be true, and watch it all crumble in the light of the Free Dictionary. You grow up, innocent, naive, trusting; with ideas in your head made out of mere words, and you believe those words to be true. But you can never trust the words.

Blindsided.

I wasn't prepared. When I dragged myself out of bed this morning afternoon and headed toward my kitchen I didn't know what the day would bring. As I pulled on my Bambi loungewear pyjamas, turning them deliberately inside-out, I was not thinking to myself, "Today you will come face to face with unspeakable beauty." Of course not; my mirror reflected only my matted hair, crusty sleep eyes and unbrushed teeth. I should have checked my horoscope.

Rat-tat-tat!!

Elbow-deep in soap suds I was when I heard a loud knock on my door. Loud, impatient knuckle beats that startled me so much I didn't stop to rinse the stewy suds off my hands before running to answer.

"Who is it?"

"Delivery!"

Ugh. Perfect timing. I'll just rinse my hands and send the pesky delivery guy on his way. (And also, yay for delivery!!)

I yelled, "Give me a minute!" whilst rolling my eyes and physically ugh-ing in my throat and I flung open the door to what I have since eloquently described as THE CUTEST DELIVERY GUY IN THE WORLD.

The immediate challenge was proximity. Pre-cleaned oral orifices aren't suitable for close spaces and so I found myself stepping back, when all I wanted to do was shimmy up close - if only to double-check that my eyes weren't deceiving me. He bent over to separate his packages and I took a breath to steady myself, thinking, "He's probably not that hot. He just took you by surprise." And then he stood back up and. Well. The velocity of his beauty threw me so, I had to take another step back.

My garrr.

My next thought was, "I need evidential proof of this. No one will believe me." I could hardly believe it myself. But by then he was fiddling with his POS signing thing (sp) and I was busy thinking, "Oh boy oh boy oh boy I'll get to maybe brush fingers with him as he hands me the thingy!" when he said, "Oh you don't have to sign anything, actually."

Oh.

"Okay."

And in that one moment where nothing transactional was happening - no fiddling, no package handling, no question-asking I looked up again, right into his eyes, and held.

Wow. Still ridiculously attractive.

"Have a good day." He said.

You too, hot stuff; you too.

There's a moral to every story and here's what I learned today:
• Women that walk around their homes with fully made-up faces are wise beyond compare.
• When in doubt, brush your teeth.
• Luck favours the prepared.

I never experred it.

Botched.

The first batch of pancakes I made were... edible. Pour enough sugar into a batch of anything and you can pretty much push it down.

Mary was right.

But with the chemical taste of baking soda burning a horrid hole in my mouth, I was determined - nay, I vowed - to make a better tasting batch. 

The second batch of pancakes I made were horrid. They tasted like the struggle and sweat of my cotton-picking ancestors. I couldn't logically process what could have gone so wrong that several spoonfuls of sugar made no difference to the medicine.

I spent an entire evening wallowing in defeat. I was useless in the kitchen. My mother's stern voice came to me like a portent of doom; of what use was I to a husband now? I wailed (inwardly). Thankfully, there was no potential husband within any distance of me so, hope renewed, I brushed the flour off my shoulders and straightened my dignity. And then I turned to the unwavering arms of Google and whipped myself the fluffiest batch of pancakes I had ever seen.

Between the first batch and the scrumptious fluff-fest above were at least seven days. One week, (at least) three batches, one round of self-pity and not at any point did it occur to me to ask for help from an actual person. Even my turning to google was as a last resort, after allowing myself to fail repeatedly. And here's where the lesson(s) revealed it(them)self(ves):

• Many times we are so afraid of sharing our shortcomings that we do not allow ourselves to receive help. Many people have the same frustrations as we do, and in holding so much in we miss out on the opportunity to share, learn, and encourage each other.
• Asking for help is not a sign of weakness but an opportunity for growth.
• Even when we should have all the answers, we often don't. That is not a crime; neither is it a shortcoming, seeing as all we have to do is ask for help for everything to be solved.

There is, indeed, much strength in our apparent weaknesses. There are also several batches of baking in the bin that prove it's easier blogged than lived, but identifying the lessons means maybe fewer botched batches in-between. For the future.