No One Could Love You Better

It was Thursday night and I found myself once again at the local neighborhood bar. I liked this spot because I could easily walk from my apartment in the city and it was relatively quiet most nights. I took a long pull from the hookah pipe in front of me. Oh yeah, it was one of those places. I tried not to drink on the weeknights these days. My age was catching up to me, or maybe I just had a lower tolerance for my own bullshit. Too many mornings I'd made myself miserable forcing myself to work with a hangover and too little sleep. So sometimes I'd order a hookah, sometimes a cup of hot tea. Today I was indulging in both.

I swept my wavy brown hair to the side as I struggled to think what to write next. I looked down at my familiar journal spread out in front of me. Sometimes I would write short stories. Other times I'd be composing an essay for the local philosophical society. Lately, my project had been a strictly personal exploration; journalling in the original sense.

Why do I feel the way I do? I wasn't rich but I wasn't poor either. I liked my job, liked my friends, lived in a great city. So what was it, this stuck feeling? People always say you can't count on a relationship to make you happy. If you're not happy already, so they say, that new partner will just make the problem worse. I'm not sure I believed them. Those were the kind of platitudes happily partnered people gave out to their single friends they felt sorry for.

I tried not to feel too sorry for myself. I could come up with a multitude of stories about why I had never had a relationship last longer than a few months. I could think of some pretty depressing reasons why I'd only managed to find one or two dates in a year. Blame shitty dating apps, blame the relentless pressures of capitalism, blame any one of the dozens of ways the system fucks us over. Dating was supposed to be a numbers game and I wasn't hitting the numbers. Anything I could think of to improve myself in the eyes of others, I would do. But what if the others were the problem. Nobody else was putting in this much effort, and yet things were going so much better for them.

I shook myself out of the **** spiral. Not because I was unwilling to face those questions, but because I'd already stared into that abyss many times before with nothing to show for it. Been down that road, it leads nowhere. I needed a new angle. I needed a new kind of question entirely. These were the thoughts that were grinding away in my head as I stared at the blank sheet of notebook paper before me.

Another puff of sweet minty nicotine. I tried to blow circles with the vapor. A few coherent rings. I let my mind drift, searching in the sea of possibilities for any glimmer of hope.

I wasn't sure how much time had passed like this. The world was always dreamy in the hookah bar, but now I was noticing a new feeling. A buzz, a shimmer, a feeling of being underwater, a flickering deja-vu.

All of those sensations were forgotten almost immediately once I saw her. Across the room, a woman stood ordering at the bar. I might describe her as the woman of my dreams, but perhaps it would be better to say the woman ~from~ my dreams. Did I have dreams of her? Half remembered images and feelings danced through my mind; that telltale deja-vu was back stronger than ever. She emitted familiarity without context.

She had also ordered tea apparently. As she turned taking her drink from the bar, I got a better look at her. The first thing I noticed, even before she turned to face me, was her gorgeous ginger hair falling in gentle wavelets down her back. The second thing I noticed were her piercing green eyes. How could I see what color her eyes were from the other side of a dark room? She was looking right at me!

I tried desperately to look as though I was not staring. It was too late, she was walking over. I turned my head back in her direction to try to make out what her intensions with me were. I couldn't help but notice her proportions. She was maybe around 5'8", and her feminine curves drew just the right amount of attention without distracting from the rest of her form. Graceful is the word I would use; both in the shape of her body and the motions of her stride. I tried my best to look open and friendly, hoping she would forget about my earlier faux pah. She walked right up to my table on the right side of the bar with complete nonchalance, teacup in hand.

"Would you mind if I sit here?" She asked, pointing to the bench across from me in the booth. She wore a subtle, knowing smile on her face.

There was no lack of empty seating in the bar, so clearly this woman had some interest in me specifically. I was having a hard time believing I had stumbled into a woman this forward, in this city at any rate. I don't even know many men who would approach a stranger this way; I certainly wouldn't. And society doesn't exactly make it easy for women to take the lead, what with the centuries of patriarchy and toxic masculinity. There I go intellectualizing again. Sometimes it's easier to analyze everything in the abstract rather than face the moment that's right in front of you. And what a moment it was.

"Uh... Yeah, please" I responded, also motioning toward the empty seat across from me.

She smiled a grateful smile and I waited as she sat down before intruding myself. "Daniel" I said with my hand outstretched.

"It's very nice to meet you Daniel" she followed, taking my hand in hers. "You can call me... Artemis"

"Artemis like the goddess of the hunt?" I inquired.

"Mm, maybe I'm hunting you." She said with a sly grin.

I didn't know what to say to that. All I could do was stare back with an unbelieving look on my face.

"What are you writing?" She asked, now looking down at the blank pages in front of me.

I didn't really feel like confessing the grim details of my inner thought-life tonight. So I opted for a half-truth; or a full truth from perhaps another night.

"Just a bit of poetry" I replied vaguely.

"Oh how interesting. A love poem perhaps?"

She had me on the back foot again. "Sometimes. Though I'm a bit short on inspiration these days."

"Oh that's a shame." She pouted. "You know you don't really need a lover to be in love."

"How exactly does that work?" I squinted quizzically.

"Well in order to fall in love with another, you must first fall in love with life. Fall in love with the whole world. Fall in love with yourself."

"I do love myself." I retorted.

"Enough to write a love poem about it?" She countered.

She had me there. I didn't have a response to that.

"You come to the world with so many expectations. So many demands. Have you ever stopped to listen to what she has to say? If you love her, you will learn her."

This conversation was taking a strange turn. "Hey I'm glad to have your company... But you don't know me, we just met." I said.

"Don't I? I know that you had no intention of writing poetry tonight sweet boy. In fact, I see you haven't managed a single word tonight. What has you feeling so stuck?"

The way she said that... she was making me question my sanity. Again I was left speechless. But this time she had nothing more to say. She just waited with sweet, inquisitive eyes. Somehow I felt I owed her an answer, and somehow I knew it had to be the truth.

"If you must know... well it's as I already admitted to. I'm suffering from a shortage of love in my life."

"Yes I'm afraid that's true" she answered. "But I think it runs deeper than that. I think you're afraid. You're so afraid that you're grasping desperately at any sense of control you can find. Strategizing, analyzing, theorizing. Don't get me wrong, a mind like yours, it's a great gift. But with that much fear in your heart, your mind becomes your own worst enemy."

"That's... a bit **** don't you think? What could I possibly be so afraid of?" I asked sceptically.

"You tell me sweet boy. Tell me your greatest fear."