The Writers Voice
The World's
Favourite Literary Website
You Just Know
by
Tammi Langley
How do you know? How do you honestly, and truly know? Is it comparable to the sinfully wonderful feeling experienced after you finish the last bite of your double chocolate mousse pie? Is it the chill that trickles down your spine and lifts the tiny hairs on the back of your neck when he whispers in your ear? How do you know that he is the one?
Of all the answers that I have heard to this seemingly simple question, they all boil down to only one response. “You just know.” You just know what? You just know that he is the one who is dependable enough to keep the kitchen garbage-free? You just know that he is the one who is strong enough to open pickle jars with a simple flick of his wrist? How is it possible to ‘just know?’
I once asked a woman to explain to me how she ‘just knew.’ She defined her epiphanal moment as one when she pictured the two of them sitting on the back porch swing, sipping iced tea while holding hands and giggling at the tender age of eighty. She said that she knew that he was the one she wanted to grow old with.
“But how do you know that?” I asked.
“You just know,” she replied.
From the minute we are born, we assume a role. Our naked bodies are wrapped in a fuzzy pink blanket, and our bald heads are topped with a cute little pink cap. As toddlers, we are dressed in frilly pink dresses, and we learn to play with the happily married Ken and Barbie in our bedrooms, cornered by walls doused in pink paint. We grow up with fantasies of our perfect wedding, wearing a perfect gown, walking down the aisle in the perfect church holding a bouquet of perfect pink flowers. By high school, we already know who will be in our bridal party, and what songs will play during each crucial moment. After all, we are women! We are former girls! We have trained for this our whole lives! In order to complete our perfect picture, we must have the perfect man. So how do you know?
My best friend told me that ‘you just know’ when you can picture him as an old man, with a wrinkled face and a slight limp when he walks because of his bad hip, and you are still turned on. The image of him overweight, sitting in his favorite chair reading the newspaper, stopping suddenly to pick the sliver of bacon from between his teeth with his fingernail, is sexy. What? Come again? Are you serious?
I then pictured my current boyfriend as a seventy year old. He wore oversized glasses that slid to the end of his nose, which made his breathing quite thick and harsh. His few strands of thinning hair were grown long enough to stretch clear across to the other side of his head and cover his shiny bald spot. I could see him walking through the local hardware store admiring their newest shipment of power tools, scratching his butt in awe. Needless to say, I broke up with him two days later.
I was literally infatuated with finding the perfect man who fit neatly into my intense artistic powers. I painted hundreds of pictures in my mind of innocent young men as decrepit old geezers. I was no longer dating; I was auditioning. Each new man that I met was a fresh toy for my imagination. I imagined them older, fatter, and lazier. I imagined them wrinkly and gray, snoring loudly on the sofa with a toothpick hanging by a glimmer of drool from their gaping mouths. It wasn’t until I met ‘him’ that my ridiculous antics came to an abrupt halt.
My imagination had run wildly with him as well, as it had with my other contestants. The difference was not in what I had imagined, however, it was in what I refused to imagine. I quit picturing him sitting shirtless on a riding lawnmower holding a cold beer in one hand, and relaxing the other on his protruding belly. I began to see the real him, not my make believe image of him. After our sixth month together, I realized that I was the happiest I had ever been.
We had an uncommonly high attraction for one another, and we could hold a conversation for days without repeating a single idea. We challenged each other physically, mentally, and emotionally. Our elated levels of honesty and trust gave me a comfort that not even my pink childhood blankie could match.
Last week a friend of mine asked me, “So how do you know?” I almost rambled to her of our deep connections, and frantic lust. I nearly told her how my heart leaped beneath my shirt each time he entered the room. Instead, I only smiled. I had recently been inducted into the elite group of women who know the answer to this obviously uncomplicated question. “You just know,” I replied.
Critique this work
Click on the book to leave a comment about this work
