Chapters & Puzzle Pieces

About a year ago I closed the book on Chapter 4. I walked out on a three year relationship without shedding a single tear. We were high school sweethearts that had been dead for a while and grew further and further apart every day we were together. By the time it was over it seemed like the world at large was shocked and I was the one who walked away completely heartless. I started the story head over heels and the deeper I got the less and less I had left of myself, my real self. Commitment is the only thing I was after for a long while and then I ran from it. Even now it’s the only thing I want most, yet it’s hard for me to get a grip on. The problem seems to be that I find myself making exceptions to my own rules. I squeeze each of them into the curved edges of the puzzle and try to make them fit. I begin to write our story only to realize it doesn't belong with the ending. They aren't the piece to my puzzle. They just simply aren't the one.
I’ve dealt with a long line of relationships. Those that were immature, long distance, abusive, multiethnic, short and sweet, long and hard and even those based purely on adulterated fun. I’ve dated the jocks, the nerds, the gangsters and artists. I’ve been the cheater and have been cheated on. I’ve had to chose between two. I've fallen in and out of love and back in again and each time my main goal –like so many others- is finding the perfect fit, the Mr. Right. Does this even exist for everyone? Or is it a figment of our imaginations? Our false hope that we hold on to? The person we try to hold out for? We’re constantly searching for this soul mate so our lives can be filled with perfection and bliss- like the movies, we want it to be a complete Hollywood ending, a Taylor Swift love story. Being Indian it seems we've even set a time & age limit for "love."
Deep down we know exactly what we want. We build up our perfect idea of "the one" and we hunt for someone who fits the description. Time and time again, through trial & error, we are let down. We all uniformly want to achieve happiness but have different ways of getting there and different beliefs of what will make us happy. We all have expectations of who we want in our lives or who we want to share our lives with. We don't want cheaters or liars or those who defy our trust. We want unconditional love, passion, and truth. We want someone who is on the same page and whose willing to travel through the book together beside us, page by page, chapter by chapter until the end. Sometimes a person lands on the page and to fill the void within us we build them up to be the perfect one we hope they can become. Pages down the line they aren't the people we had built them up to be and they bail to find their own happy ending, in their own stories, because they are writers too.
So we just shut that book, burn it & start over, begin a new page. The search continues...
Sometimes it just so happens that you don't have to go looking. It comes to you when you least expect it. It lands on your plate. A white slip of paper with miniscule etchings that you cherish forever.
It's nothing remotely close to perfect but it's only just begun. I'm not trying to squeeze anyone into my jigsaw anymore, I'll let him fit into it on his own. I don't keep my hopes up because I don't want to be let down in case the puzzle piece belongs in some else's book. I don't know what will come of this & I don't want to make it out to be something that it's not.
What I do know I'm too afraid to even say out loud.
All I can really reveal is that I like having you here.
So hopefully you don't go away too soon
& I can scribble you a few more lines...

Absence makes the heart grow fonder...-W. Shakespeare