To Be or Not to Be Dating Myself From Another Dimension? (We Totally Are Though) [F23/F23] [Sci-Fi] [Romance] [Cohabitation] [Vulnerability] [Reassurance] [Emotional Intimacy] Chapter 4

I couldn't stop thinking about it. I wasn't trying to ruin the moment or anything, but I had been wondering for more than a little while — not about the money, not about her being more successful than me because she focused 100% on one thing at a time to the exclusion of everything else, that made sense — no, what I really wanted to know was, "How are you like that?"

J could read it on my face. She paused the film. She looked at me and just let me think, let me formulate the words in the way that I needed to say them to properly ask what I wanted to ask.

"How do you focus like that? So intently on one thing — I just, I can't do that, or I haven't figured out exactly how to do that, and I'm always feeling torn in multiple directions at once, like I can't just make up my mind between wanting to pour myself into writing or find a relationship. That's not really a problem now, I mean, obviously we have each other. I don't have any interest in anyone else or anything, I mean, how could I? But at the same time, I can't even imagine it. I can't picture being so fully devoted to one thing, so certain, so interested, so in a state of oneness about a singular goal. I want that. I yearn for it. It looks calm and peaceful and relaxing. There's a kind of power to it, a stillness, a certainty that just doesn't happen when you're divided amongst different ideas or sets of ideas, and I just don't quite know how to not be that way. I admire that in you. I want to have it, for peace of mind if nothing else, but most of all for my writing."

J looked at me thoughtfully. She wasn't impatient, she was not in a hurry, and she felt an answer bubbling up inside of her immediately.

"I decide on one thing at a time. It might take me a week, or a day, or a few hours to properly think through everything, but once I do, I see it through completely and thoroughly from beginning to end." She smiled, leaned in, and kissed me gently, not in a rush to unpause the film. The feeling between us was, "We have all the time in the world."

I took a deep breath and didn't say anything. I just let that sink in, pondering my previous relationships. Some were great, and I had been toxic, needy, clingy, possessive, and that had really ended things. It felt like it was for the best — looking back on each and every one of those, none of them gave me the sense that they were really right for me. Some of that was definitely my own fault; not all of them were horrible companions, some meant well and wanted to make me just as happy as I wanted to make them, and it just came down to a matter of different styles of showing love or wanting different things. Choosing to be child-free and not wanting to adopt really played a role with some of the more nurturing failed relationships, because even if we couldn't have children together biologically, given the lack of a male donor and all, not wanting to adopt meant that for me the decision was final, and I had always felt that way — from the time I hit puberty, I never wanted to be a mother or care for another life outside of a romantic partner. I saw no problem with that, but it really limited the type of people I could date.

What J said made sense on a fundamental level, and it made me realize that a large part of my life and my time and my thoughts had been devoted just to finding someone and not really to my primary goals — which, even though I put in crazy hundred-hour weeks, it still wasn't as good as if I had put in even half the time without having that emotional baggage rocking the boat, so to speak. My own unwillingness to commit fully to work is what kept me from advancing further, doing better, or getting more clients.

I exhaled. I could breathe a little easier now. The life of looking for a partner near-endlessly and then self-sabotaging when I got someone that ultimately wasn't what I wanted them to be — namely, what J just naturally is and was and would always be — had ended.

That felt nice. It felt calming. It felt like a new chapter, a new book even. I felt poised with fresh possibilities and not really sure where to turn next or what to do, except that I wanted to just take it all in slowly and enjoy the process. Nothing needed to be rushed.

J knew what all of this felt like even better than I did. Despite being the same age, what we chose to do with that time was vastly different, and so for matters like this, it felt like the best thing to do was just to defer to her and see where things went. Part of me wondered if she had already written the things that I thought about, the things I found interesting and wanted to write for myself. I mean, some of them, there was obviously no way that she could have, in the same way, given the incredibly topical nature of some of them — things that had just happened, that unless where she was from also had a radically different timeline, there was just no way that she could have. I took some measure of comfort in that and decided not to ask her about some of the projects that had been bubbling up in my head for years, figuring that even if she had written what I wanted to write in a different language, the way that I had searched for things would have turned something up on some of my ideas.

I continued thinking about it as J pulled in closer, cuddling against me, letting herself be a little cuddle pillow as I mentally reasoned my way through everything.

I had all but obsessed for weeks prior to this about writing essays and short-form content and being able to get my ideas more and more thoroughly together into one cohesive work. Specifically, I thought back to wanting to write this great financial series that was meant to function like a sort of "Supersize Me" journey through finance, just because I felt lost, I felt ignorant, I felt like I could be doing better in a million different ways but lacking in any one direction or decision or clear path to follow. I figured that maybe writing would give me the structure to realize what it was that I truly wanted out of the idea. I couldn't quite answer that, aside from saying to myself that I wanted to be able to understand how things worked, to make more money, and to make a really practically useful educational change in myself on the topic, but I couldn't commit or decide where to start, so I just didn't — it just stayed locked in there, and it came up whenever anything even tangentially related to the idea came up, like some sort of horrific intellectual disability or series of intrusive thoughts that I should be doing more and more for myself, and instead I was stagnating, and I had spent years like that, just emotionally vacillating with people that never challenged me or encouraged me to do what it was I really, deeply, from the bottom of my heart, wanted to.

For what may have been the first time in my life, I felt seen and listened to and genuinely heard, even if I wasn't really saying anything to her. I knew that J knew exactly what I was going through, and just having her there, having her with me, knowing that she had already gone through this and come out clean on the other side and managed to survive and make a more than comfortable life for herself, meant that I would be able to do the same thing for myself.

It might not be in the same way, and it might not be on the same topics or with the same language, but I knew for a fact that she had done it. Everything I wanted and yearned and wished for, she had either already done, or it had been made irrelevant, because now we have each other. The finality of it felt nice.

I had never been fond of finality before, or of endings, or of next chapters, or of moving on, but having someone that is in all ways essentially the idealized version of myself felt liberating and comforting and just all-around nice. But it raised another question.

J felt nice as a little cuddle buddy pillow, but I still couldn't help but wonder. "What exactly is it that I do for you?" I said out loud suddenly, with just too much silence filling the room.

I waited for her response, half relieved and even more nervous at seemingly asking her loaded question after loaded question, and not knowing what she was going to say was absolutely nerve-wracking. And yet I noticed whenever I asked her anything like this, J was happy to oblige me — not necessarily in a comforting, nurturing way, but it made her just as happy to answer questions as it made me to be comforted by her through the answers.

J took a moment, clearly thinking much harder about what and how to answer this than she had a question related to writing or business.

"Everything that you wonder about me, I wonder about you, in a kind of reverse. In the same way that you wonder how I can focus on one thing, I wonder how you focus on multiple things shallowly — not negatively, not in a bad way, but it was surely an anxiety thing, like an extension of the fear of death but taken to some new and different place, where it just affects every single facet of every moment of the life that you lived before we met. It makes me want to nurture you and take care of you and help you through it and feel bad for you, and at the same time it makes me acknowledge that I don't fully know how. But one thing I know for certain, more than any other, is that I am not going anywhere. I am not going to leave you. I will not abandon you. I will not get bored of you. I will not run out on you, and unless you tell me to go, unless you tell me that you don't want us to keep trying to be together, I will always be here for you and with you, wanting to grow and learn and become better together. That's not going to ever end unless you want it to, and even though you always have that choice and that option, I know that it's something you'll never choose, and I promise you I will never take advantage of that."

I exhaled a breath that I didn't realize until that moment I had been holding. She didn't have to say any of that to me — she could have chosen to respond in a dozen different ways that weren't encouraging or romantic or affectionate, but she chose the one that would do the most for me, the one that would make me feel the best, and it left me feeling better.

I leaned in and kissed her.

"It's not the choices that we made that make a difference. It's the choices that we choose to make together. It's about deciding each and every day to keep growing together that really makes a difference in what our lives become," I all but whispered, staring at her lips.