and then there were none

a little over a week ago, i decided that life sans a roommate wasn't all it was prepped up to be. never did anyone want to talk, laugh or cry- and the thought of having a slightly empty refrigerator never made dinner time exciting. therefore, i did what any normal, and might i add sane, single twenty-something girl would do to solve the solo situation. about twenty minutes later, i proudly owned five bright orange goldfish, all yet to be named. leaving petsmart with my individually charged 25 cents goldfish (thanks to the one cent reduction unexpectedly given at the register due to my petsperk card), i thought i had just made the best relationship decision possible. they would listen to me without tuning me out, and never would i have to listen to them. a one sided relationship- sounded perfect to me.

one by one, my planned failed. my dearest friends and relationship companions, decided living a life built around me wasn't necessarily their idea of paradise. granted- paradise consisting of swimming in a rectangle bowl with sharp black rocks at the bottom couldn't be joyous anyway. (maybe i should have used vodka instead of water allowing them to at least drink their sorrows away.) yet as the days were ripped off my calendar my buddies slowly drifted to the top. at first, i blamed my inability to keep a relationship on abandonment. had i really fed them or did i just walk away forgetting? when had i last purified their water? then around and around, i watched ex number one go down the drain.

all of this led me to think about my actual relationships in life. was it possible that we tend to make our relationships with other people based on the idea of making ourselves happy? are we in them to benefit just us or are we in them to benefit both persons involved? and if the relationship isn't working- do we work on it or simply abandon it?

i had a close friend one time that loved to make relationships based on his success. and for the longest time, i somehow managed to follow along, taking him places, buying him things, doing things with no importance to mine own. i thought i was happy, i realized one check too late that i had been picked in order to complete his one sided relationship. when he got tired of me, he simply abandoned me leaving me wondering what in the world had just happened. he was the owner, and i was the stupid goldfish.

so when i saw that buddy number one was no more, i decided to step up my involvement in the relationship and pay particular attention to their needs. had they been fed? check. was their water clean? semi-check. did i leave the light on for them? check, and i was even paying the electricity bill. surely, this relationship would work now-

it didn’t. two and three died the next day.

so i went back to my relationship analogy- is it possible that when a relationship isn't working, we simply spice it up a little bit with things we really aren't interested in doing at all? like the time you get in a fight with your girlfriend and she says "i hate when you wear that shirt. it's hideous and i don't know why you like it." you wouldn't even consider wearing it the next time you went out- would you? or your boyfriend calls you one night and he's like, "you know what- i just don't think you enjoy me nearly as much as i enjoy you." so you do what you think you're expected to do, and you immediately start flooding the conversation with over-produced love proclamations and actions that you hope will work. but is doing anything that you wouldn't naturally do mean that you care or love him or her more? in a relationship, should you really need to prove you care?

the next day, i was positive things were going to go well. my two remaining goldfish were swimming around and drinking water all day long. they looked healthy and however a goldfish is supposed to look when they are happy, they looked. i fed them, i leaned on my counter and watched them; i felt like even saying "hello" to them would make them want to live even longer.

four died.

at this point, im thinking anything that gets close to me dies and i fear for company to even walk in my haunted house. for heaven's sake, i can't even keep a one-sided relationship going and all these stupid things require is a little food and a lot of water.

no love, per say, needed.
that’s when i decided maybe love is exactly what this relationship needed.
"the most important thing in life is to love and be loved in return."
so without further ado, i expressed love in the only way how- by naming my lone ranger.
uno.

you see, i have this underlined policy that you don't name anything you don't want to get close to. it started with baby dolls back when in childhood, carried on to pets and even into material things (i.e. ben my computer). in my world, if it gets a special name, it’s just simply that. special.

so it was destiny, uno was going to live because he had moved over into the specialized name ranking. that night, i went out to dinner with three friends and one new one for some social interaction beyond my walls. i don't think i shut-up the entire evening and my smile couldn't be contained due to the excitement the evening with respectable friends endured. in that moment, i had someone to talk to- including someone who would tune me out when my stories bored, someone to laugh with and someone to listen to. all of which i then understood were life's commodities we often took for granted.

when we came home that evening, i watched out of the corner of my eye little uno start to dwindle. for a minute, i sat there and watched, wondering why my last love was going to die in company of my company. then we tried to revitalize him, taking him out of his environment and placing him in a smaller, cleaner one for the evening. he started to swim around in the small space and i truly believed he was going to survive. therefore, i continued to enjoy the evening with my friends.

this morning, uno too had left his paradise and my world. and like a bad fight, there was no explanation to his exit. but that’s ok, because the relationship was one-sided and they didn't want to commit.

all of this, leads me to my point. maybe if we can't find someone to commit to the person we are today, then they aren't going to like the person we are tomorrow. if we can't find someone who will take us for our bad shirts, our unsaid compliments, our imperfections in addition to our strengths, then maybe it's a relationship we shouldn't even begin to initiate. while i may be one willing to change, i don't think that we should allow ourselves to end up in something that doesn't benefit both of us, every minute of everyday. because like the ceo and president of cross advertising told me just the other day, "if you can't live your life everyday thinking this day was worth every minute of my time, then what's the point of waking up?"

and sometimes it may take the lesson in five cheap goldfish to obtain the value in four special friends.