I have never had a ‘relationship’ in my life.
I know this to be true and now I tell the secret; the truth of my thoughts.

I say this because I discover that there are two lives I’ve been living.
‘What people think’ and ‘What Natasha thinks.’
And even these lives can be subdivided into ‘What Natasha thinks she knows’ and ‘What Natasha knows she thinks’ and ‘What Natasha thinks she knows about people’, ‘What Natasha knows she thinks about people’ et cetera.

Today the broad category of ‘What Natasha thinks’ declares that Natasha has never had a ‘boyfriend’, never ‘fallen in love’, never ‘met the right person’.

‘What Natasha thinks’ decided to come out of the closet with this thought because yesterday afternoon Natasha again told a lie on the phone to her friend when she said that she had a ‘boyfriend’. She repeated the impression of the lie to her cousin as well later that day when they were talking; deliberately implying that she had a ‘relationship’ with a certain person. She has been doing so for a while, actually, the same lie about a few certain people she has met in her life, and the lying has to stop.

No ‘relationship’ exists to her consciousness i.e. ‘What Natasha thinks’.
For when I say ‘lie’ I do not infer that it is untrue to the other lives Natasha lives e.g. ‘What people think’, which may also be a personality in the life of the certain person that ‘What Natasha thinks’ believes she lied about, and other lives around her.

‘What Natasha thinks’ has been generally skeptical about ‘What people think’ for a long time now, watching in quiet amusement as ‘What people think’ has done its best to define every aspect of Natasha’s life, placing things in little neat boxes supposedly identical to the categories of ‘everybody’, stuffing and squeezing as best it can, building nice little rows and piles.

Particularly about ‘relationships’.

Only, it’s been twenty three years now and ‘What Natasha thinks’ has had enough.

What is all this rubbish; ‘boyfriend’, ‘girlfriend’? ‘Going out’? ‘Seeing each other’?
Gosh, and ‘marriage’, the treacherous illusion that binds the people both in it and out of it in silent longing, confusion and anxiety; those outside wanting to get in, those in not quite sure what it is they’re doing except keeping the ones outside unsure about what it is.
For goodness sake!
I’ve lied about having ‘relationships’ just because everybody’s lying about it, at least to the understanding of ‘What Natasha thinks’, when frankly, I never believe these emotional soul binding links ever exist for me or anyone else.
And I’m not a bitter, dried up, cynical old woman. I think I’m quite young actually. And happy. And prone to fall in and out of lust, prone to grow fixated on certain other persons for a period of time, burn hours on the fuel of significant company, touch touch touch, talk talk talk, gaze into each others eyes and glow …
So there have been synchronicities, me generally feeling a certain emotional link to a certain person who perhaps was generally feeling a certain emotional link to me at the same time.
And I say perhaps because I know that I personally have been particularly deceptive about the nature of my attachment when I have had the ulterior motives of boredom, vulnerability, pressure to conform to some hoax relationship dangled in my face, or the manipulative plus of the nature of the experience attached to such an attachment at the time. Say I was standing atop the Eiffel Tower looking down at a spectacular view and this drop dead gorgeous guy draws me into his arms and kisses me deeply. Why not, then?
‘What Natasha thinks’ has also always been acutely aware of when these emotional links have not been mutual, when she or the other’s emotional link is unplugged. I watched a tennis match on television this afternoon, and later in my head was scoring the points in a text message exchange I had last night with another certain person in my life.

A to B ______ Call.
B to A ______ No Answer.
A to B ______ Text; Hey babe.
B to A ______ Text; Hey you.
A to B ______ Text; Miss you.
B to A ______ Text; Hey you.
A to B ______ No reply.
B to A ______ Text; Hey you.
A to B ______ Call.
B to A ______ No answer.

A; YOU LOSE!
B; YOU WIN!
???

Last week ‘What Natasha thinks’ was wondering whether the fact that Natasha’s ‘boyfriend’ brings her breakfast in bed was ‘romantic’ because ‘What people think’ thought it was ‘romantic’. Did her ‘boyfriend’ think it was ‘romantic’?
‘What Natasha thinks’ believed Natasha and her ‘boyfriend’ were basically just living out episodes of their lives that encountered and aligned with each other. Just living. No need for the drama of definitions and little boxes to chuck it into with the rest of ‘What people think’ says experience is.

I have lied because I’ve been afraid about being judged about the attachments I leave undefined, knowing it will immediately be placed into a box, knowing that ‘relationship’ is the most superior of definitions by ‘What people think’, and an attachment that I choose not to label as a ‘relationship’ will be assumed to be not as good as a ‘relationship’, and woe betide me if I’m getting a friend or cousin’s ‘relationship’ dangling in my face at the time.

And I say all this referring to my own inward struggle because ‘What people think’ is a part of me. I generally don’t give a damn what people think. ‘What people think’ is a part of myself I wrestle with. A part that I will call the orientation of my reasoning from experience and education in the world. A part I see so vividly in others because of my own turmoil. The reason why when my ‘boyfriend’ brings me breakfast in bed I’m scanning and hoping I don’t see his ‘What people think’ reaching out to embrace mine.

Am I crazy?

I do like my ‘boyfriend’. I miss him so much when we are apart; try to imagine what he’s doing at the moment. But he’s not my ‘soul mate’, not ‘What Natasha thinks’ defines as one, at least, and I don’t believe we have the emotional attachment relationships should, or are portrayed to entail.

‘What Natasha thinks’ is an extremely idealistic personality.

‘What Natasha thinks’ extending to the sub category ‘What Natasha thinks she knows about people’ just sees people all around Natasha lying to themselves and making do, having ‘boyfriends’ and ‘girlfriends’, getting ‘married’[!]. It sees right through their words and actions to the layer of ‘What people think’ that Natasha has discovered within herself.

‘What Natasha thinks she knows’ believes that boxes don’t exist, things that are just are, and the only important definition of human emotions and their links should be ‘happy’.

‘What Natasha knows she thinks about people’ is that if everything depended upon the box ‘happy’, there wouldn’t be that much reason for hoaxes, won’t be that many ‘boyfriends’, ‘girlfriends’, ‘married couples’, and perhaps quite a few genuine boyfriends, girlfriends and married couples.

‘What Natasha knows she thinks’ is that up to this moment, the happiness and comfort she has found within her own self has been unequalled, and only complemented, by the happiness she finds with her ‘boyfriends’. She finds definitions of relationships tiring because they have implied finding companionship, completeness and purposefulness that she already has alone.

In fact, relationships have halved her; induced her to feel lonely and incomplete, company always rivalry, often unwelcome change; cutting out parts of herself to make room for the new person. And then after the series of ping pong matches somebody wins and somebody loses, the players shake hands, and the invasion of Natasha’s life is over for the time being. She wins, she loses, the points even out as the years go by, she grows more and more complete in privacy, ‘What Natasha thinks’ more and more offended by intrusion when it comes, more and more irritated by what it leaves behind.

Can people get married feeling like this?! Then they make a game a long series of games that can only become a war, or worse, a drag.
Unless one person chooses to be incomplete; a role that grows impossible for me.

When I see ‘couples’, I see one party playing well and the other playing badly and the both of them knowing it, and every other ‘couple’ knowing it along with them. Over and over again. Maybe switching roles once in a while, falling out of routine, but for the most part one winning, one losing, streak.

‘What Natasha thinks’ doesn’t believe Natasha has ever had a ‘relationship’ because it has never merged with an identical personality in another. She has never been one half of a team because she has not yet found a certain other person that knows what she’s playing for, and is in fact what it is. Hence the assumption that these mergers [what true relationships should be about] are not existing. Not for me, anyway.

‘What Natasha thinks’ always knew and identified the certain other people in Natasha’s life for what they were; ‘What Natasha doesn’t think’.
My partner is, and will be, my innate twin. We will not complete each other, we will mirror each other. I am already complete.

And so I have never had a relationship in my life.
I’ve had plenty of good and bad games. I’ve had good and bad opponents [if they’re not for me they’re against me] I’ve recurrently called ‘boyfriends’ as I lied to myself and others.
That’s all they really were.
My opponents; the challengers of ‘What Natasha thinks’.
And it’s great to have that out of my system.

May 17, 2006.