LNT: The family astrologer told me my love life will “always be complicated.”

Late Night Thoughts: The family astrologer told me my love life will “always be complicated.”

I wasn’t surprised hearing this because my standard for what I decide to pursue in a man is vastly different than what most may assume.

The high expectations of what I want from a man are steep, “As they should be” - as said by a previous lover who couldn’t meet them. Yet, my standards are “too high,” - as told by a close friend.

“I really, really like you.”

“You are extraordinary.”

“I am so in love with you.”

“I’ve never felt what I feel for someone with you.”

These are all sentences that have been said to my face at different points and phases in my life, but I cannot sit here and think about these men - why is it impossible for you to be who I know you can be? To give the type of love we both know you’re capable of? To face your shadows and become who you’re meant to become? Why can I see it, but you can’t? Or is it that you don’t want to see it? Or worse, you don’t want me to see it?

I can’t sit here but wonder if I’m the problem. Are my standards too high? Are my expectations too steep? Is my love life forever doomed, as the stars predicted?

I refuse to believe any of that.

I sit across from my mother and admire her beauty and resilience, knowing she has faced so much more life than I could have imagined. Knowing she had weathered storms, I could never endure. Knowing she has done everything in her power to protect me and my sister from the monsters of this world.

I share with her my worries about finding love. She shares with me the stories of her past. I listen but can’t help but think that, at my age, she had gotten married, borne her first child, moved her life across the world, and was on a pursuit to start a new life, all in the name of family. While the dreams I have for myself at 30 were already consumed by the demands of a second child for her at that age.

I sit across from her, In awe, and admire how much youth and optimism she has. “Be like me and live life by the moment,” she says. She’s not wrong. But she’s found her love. She’s had the chance to raise children. She knows what it means to live and create life.

I can’t sit across from her and think - will that ever be me?