Kryptonite

There are people you will come across in your life that'll make it damn near impossible to forget or let them go. There's this chemistry that you have where eventually, when you do try to move from them (for whatever reason), they become your weak spot. So if life worked like it does in Mafia movies...and you got locked in a room with two big guys staring you down with the boss' skivvy blowing smoke into your face...and you get this "I got nothing to lose" look because well, you figure life's been shit anyway and has never given you a break...and then the damn skivvy mentions that they know where your Kryptonite is and they know what s/he's been up to...? Look, everything you thought you knew about yourself and where you stand, would fall like a house of cards. Everything.

Kryptonite is terrible. Don't believe me? Ask Superman. The strongest man on make-believe earth is crippled by the mere presence of Kryptonite. In the real world, we've experienced Kryptonite in the form of: "is there anyone who believes that this man and this woman should not wed? Speak now or forever hold your peace." And then someone just walks in and you see that "oh fuck!" look on the bride's face because her Kryptonite, the man she thought she was over but had never left her mind over the years, is finally ready to want to build a life with her. She'd been happy all this time, don't even try to doubt that...but that wasn't the kind of happiness - the Kryptonite happiness - that feels as plain and simple as there is only one way for a jig-saw puzzle to be put together...the kind of happiness that feels effortless and without weight. The kind you'd probabaly need to go to rehab for if you really wanted to get it out of your system.

The situation is tricky. Where you can't even run in any which direction because everything you go through, you want it to be with said Kryptonite. It could take decades for ya'll to meet again and it will feel like just yesterday that y'all were last together. All those feelings enshroud you and whatever it is you thought you were focusing on in your life, becomes but a blur because the one thing that was able to flip your world upside down, waltzed back into a life you were content with living for however long forever was promised by God.

There. Is. No. Cure. For. Kryptonite.

Forever and Ever

We cannot go through life with the notion that just because our parents failed, then we’re genetically disposed to that very failure. I refuse to believe this about marriage.

I don’t believe in divorce. I’ve said this for as long as I can remember and each time I say it, I truly believe that one cannot stand before a priest and make a promise to God and go back on it some years later just because the going got elephant-skin tough while your skin wrinkled. I also believe that we are inclined to sway in the direction of that which is familiar to us because it’s a safer route. The unknown when coupled with self-doubt is too daunting a task for the average lost soul to want to wander into. So of course we're more likely to surrender our futures to a past that's more familiar.
 

Personally, I have only two examples of happy marriages. Two. I have lived for 30 years and can only yield two relationships that still fuel the spark of belief within me, of a beautiful institute that I want to one day be a part of. There could’ve been none and I’d probably still believe that two insane human beings can decide to build a life together, supporting each other, and still remain individuals. It’s so important to me that I remain my own person outside of the union. I want someone crazy enough to want to sit with me on a stoep when we’re in our 70s and 80s and still have conversations about music; politics; our annoyingly precious grandkids and our ungrateful children before we go and see which sex positions we could attempt without having to call for help to get out of them.

A lot gets in the way of achieving these happily ever afters and I’m not sure that a death threat to my beau will be sufficient to keep him from straying and betraying me. I’m not entirely sure that the same threat can keep ME from straying and betraying him either but I’d like to think that we can try to dumb down the noise enough to always hear our hearts as they beat for each other.

I cannot go through any more of this life not believing that I can have a happily ever after. I deserve it. I hope I’m with the man who believes this too.