"Maybe I shall meet him Sunday,
Maybe Monday, maybe not.
Still I'm sure to meet him one day;
Maybe Tuesday will be my good news day...
And so all else above, I'm waiting for the man I love."

- "The Man I Love"

On these lyrics, Ira Gershwin and I both seem to agree. But the lyricist and lesser-known Gershwin brother was slightly more positive in his search for undying love than I ever could be; the right woman might not come along, he posited, but if she did, she would undoubtedly be his.

I, on the other hand, have no time to entertain such naive fantasies.

So, for the man I love, I have a few precautions: I will assume nothing of you, my dear... no mutual tender notion of fledgling affection, even. The paranoia and frustrated skepticism of a millennial won't do me much good in my quest for love, I know, but it is nonetheless an integral piece of my way of being, another dragon with whom you'll have to plead. My imagination is a rapid one, probing tirelessly like a calf looking for milk from its mother; but it is conditioned to disappointment, absolute in its mistrusting instinct. I will look to you, tragically reading too much or too little, reclusive yet eager for your attentions all at once. I don't expect you, the man I love, to share in my romantic sensibilities, but rather to allow me to live in perpetual solitude, to let me learn to become obsessed with the martyrdom of the spurned.

I suppose it could be said that I was fortunate to be raised by an era of social sentiment that dictates independence, allows women to be headstrong and free of cloying, wifely needs. I am glad, now, struggling with my own stubborn lack of overblown emotional tendencies, that I was never made to feel as though I needed a partner to survive, to complete myself, intellectually or psychologically. But I still venerate such a union, and nosy little me is always worried that she'll be missing out on something spectacular. It's not fair that I've imbued myself with this sentiment, I suppose, and I've countered it in the most efficient way possible, burying it under a bevy of ifs and buts that will never be silenced. I feel guilty, I suppose, for dreaming about romance, and shun the stereotypes that come with this dream. Making myself "undesirably" intelligent, caustic and noncommittal has been my life choice, one that quickly became necessary for the sustenance of my well-being and outward image.

To the man I love: I want nothing more than to know you right away, to seek you out with Ira Gershwin's stupid, blissful confidence. But please know that I will never do this; me, who is skeptical and proud. What price must I pay for my unyielding reserve? That is yet to be known, and you will be the first to find it out. Please, my dear, underneath my carefully formed indifference I am candid, raw, and womanly, left over from an era in which people still had faith in romance. Call me backwards, call me oppressed. But I'll be sitting here, as long as I have breath in my body, biding my time and indulging my own pursuits, ultimately waiting for one person alone: the man I love.