Iman's Little Xel

My cousin Xel told me something recently that felt less like a comment and more like a clinical observation from a gentle nurse walking you into a padded room. Speaking from experience. 🫰🫰

She said to me, “You don’t believe there’s any man who could actually be right for you.”

She said it gently, which is how people speak when they are both loving and correct. That's how Xel always speaks.

Xel has been romantic since birth. The kind of person who has always believed in romantic love as a natural state. She loves easily. She assumes connection. Romance makes sense to her the way breathing does. She inspires me and I've spent much of my adulthood trying to find that part of myself. This far though, it has turned out that…

I just was not built like that.

As a child, I had no interest in dating. No crushes that consumed me. No fantasies about partnership. I was oriented toward my inner world, not toward intertwining myself in another person. I was in love with my acting, and my art, and my aspirations. When asked if I wanted a sibling, I said “no” for fear of having to share with it. I don't mind sharing in my day to day life, of course, I just struggle with the idea of sharing a life with someone else. How could they possible not get on my nerves? Right? So, I did not wish for romantic love. 

It wasn’t until adulthood that I realized how difficult life could be alone as a woman. Not emotionally. Logistically. Socially. Structurally.

Romance did not call to me. Reality did. I realized that I absolutely did not want to be financially responsible for myself and that I would need to share a life with a man if I didn't want to pay bills forever. Not just any man though, a man that knows that God put him on this planet to protect and provide. 

So, when Xel says I don’t believe there is a man for me, she is speaking from a lifelong faith in love that I simply do not share. She believes because she always has. I consider it because I had to.

Which may explain why I am so specific.

Who else would make sense for someone like me? This is what I've come up with:

Someone unconventionally employed and highly intelligent. A first generation American whose emotional calibration is permanently stuck in a 2013 Tumblr frequency. Someone whose internal soundtrack is like a teen who watched Skins(UK) too long.

Someone who wanders for no reason. Sits in cafés without a laptop. Observes instead of performs.

Someone with weird parents in a way that produces discernment but not ease. Someone mostly raised by their grandfather and therefore learned how to exist from a man who belonged to another era entirely.

I was raised by someone who believed in thoughtfulness, dignity, and follow-through. All morals lost on today’s young adults. 

So when Xel points out my disbelief, what she is really noticing is that I am not oriented toward love in the same instinctual way she is.

I am extremely self aware about this.

I know I am not willing to meet new people. Not emotionally. Not spiritually. Not logistically.

I am not open. I am not curious. I am not dabbling. I am not pretending to be in a season I am not in.

Part of this is because I had a dream from God that settled something in me. Quietly. Definitively. The kind of knowing that makes continued searching feel unnecessary. 

He told me in a dream that I have already met my husband. So, why would I trouble myself with dating new people?

I wouldn't, duuuuhhhh, because once you become aware that you already know your husband, meeting new men starts to feel less like possibility and more like distraction.

Men still appear. They sense something. They comment on my striking personality. My caring nature. They say I feel rare. Then I give them a big “oogady boogady” scare test. They run in fear. I believe my true prince will recognize the oogady boogady for what it is…I big wall I put up so they can't see that I'm actually just a sweet autistic princess that will stim on public if it's too loud. 

Everyone else saw him.

The ease. The recognition. The way nothing strained.

Everyone except me.

Because I was not looking and I've been squeezing my eyes shut ever since.

And that is the part Xel is responding to. Not my doubt. My refusal.

She believes love is abundant. I believe it is specific.

She believes in romance the way you believe in sunrise. I believe in it the way you believe in architecture.

Necessary. Weight bearing. Not decorative.

So no, Xel is not wrong.

I do struggle to imagine him.

Not because I think he does not exist.

But because I’m actually super emotionally unavailable and I've been blaming men for it instead of revealing myself as the kind of woman Future wrote “Wicked” about. 👹Actions first, emotional availability second. Xel hasn't gotten through to me yet, kiddo.