Come to me...

I have oft been told I have a Cinderella complex. Baldsug specifies it's actually a Fairy Godmother complex because I don't want to be Cinderella, I want to have a Fairy Godmother come and fix everything. I believe the psychological term is Rescue Fantasy. To this I reply, uh huh, and who doesn't have Calgon take me away moments that distract them while they take out the garbage and do all the dishes and go alone to the Christmas party.

Sure, to some extent that's true of me but to another I feel like waiting to land in the right situation isn't as crazy as it sounds. It's for sure not unprecedented in my life. I'm not great at meeting people, but once I've met them if there's a connection I'm really good at keeping people.

Let me take it from another angle. I've never bought a pet. I've paid for them in vet bills and ruined furniture and breakages of my heart but I've never bought one. They always just show up and seem to belong. My childhood cat, Blackie (shut it, I was 3), was found in the engine of my dad's van. As the story goes dad went out to the parking lot after school and soon found himself pursued by an elderly janitor yelling, "Don' start-a you cah, don' start-a you cah!" He had seen the cat crawl into the engine block and didn't want him to get ground up in the parts. It is unclear whether his concern was for the cat or the van but in any case my dad brought the cat home and there he stayed for 16 years. Even when my family was gone for a year he stayed. I've told you the story of PonyExpress' discovery of Miss Emily. The kittens that I have now are offspring of a cat that was rescued by my next door neighbor in my last apartment. She was a habitual pet rescuer and I had helped her on and off while I lived there but hadn't seriously thought about taking one of her projects on permanently. One day I remember thinking, maybe out loud but certainly alone in my apartment, that I felt ready to have a cat again. Less than 2 weeks later my neighbor told me about a cute cat she'd just rescued who, as the fifth feline to take up residence with her, officially pushed the occupancy of her small studio apartment over the edge of bearability. So, Charlotte. Charlotte was pregnant. Now I have 2 of her kittens, PonyExpress has 2 and my mom has 1 kitten and Charlotte. (She turned out to be more The Mad Carlotta and I couldn't live in fear of my life.) I've got a bunches of stories like that where the animals just come to me. Some people research and plan and compare and fly out to pick up dogs from special places. I know that the time will come when there will be room in my house for another dog (don't even want to think about it) but I know there's no point in doing anything but casually looking at all the cool dogs out there. When the time comes the dog will find me.

The same thing tends to happen to me with people. Suddenly I'll run into someone who has exactly what I'm looking for. Even if I've known a person for ages sometimes a casual conversation turns up why we're together.

Example: I thought once that I was cultivating a friendship with The Jeweler's Son back when we were working on the magazine together. We ate lunch together, we had great conversations, we learned a lot from each other. One night a group from work went out for drinks and he invited his ex, NordicChef. They'd had plans but he felt he ought to go out for the work celebration so she joined us. As it happened she sat down next to me and we started to chat. I don't remember talking to anyone else all night long. We were the last people left in our group at the end of the night. I knew her, something in her, before we'd ever met. We were meant to be friends and, if she ends up getting married in the middle of the desert (a stronger possibility than one might think) and wants me to be there, I'll be there, with bells on (or a burka or whatever I'm supposed to wear).

I haven't seen the Jeweler's Son in over 5 years.

Queen Bee was my next door neighbor when I was 5 months old. She moved away when I was 6 and again when she was 18 and then back again when we were in our 20s but she's always been mine. I thought PonyExpress hated me, we were college friends we sat on opposite sides of an incestuously close circle of people, but then suddenly in a weird drunken conversation it became clear we were closer than we'd ever planned to be. Our parents were friends but it was a Jr. High lunch table that cemented my friendship with ChemE. MKAEP and I slept with the same GUY for christ's sake and somehow it's only made our friendship more important. Actually ditto for Chili. Jesus, maybe I need to stop thinking about love and just clean up my act.

So why isn't it working (or working anymore) for love relationships, this magical conjuring of the right being in the right place at the right time? Why is this such a crazy idea if it's been working for me all this time in every other area of life? If I can't choose a pet why should I trust myself to pick a partner without a little nudge from the powers that be? Maybe the trick is to just say that I'm ready, like I did with Charlotte.

I'm ready.

I'm ready for love.