How to Know If You Click with Someone (Gravity)
A while back I asked a friend of mine, “How will I know if I really click with someone? Maybe I’m broken and won’t know even if it’s right in front of me.”
She replied with what felt like a cop-out answer: “You’ll know.” I rolled my eyes, feeling like she was saying something as simplistic as, “When someone makes a phone call, the phone will ring.” Meanwhile what I was asking is, “What if the battery is dead?”
Or as if she was saying, “When there’s a fire, the smoke alarm will go off,” but what I wanted to know is, “What if I sleep through it?”
“You'll know,” she said.
You see, dating is hard when you’re the type of person for whom making connections comes easy. After enough dates, it all feels the same, and I started second guessing myself. It’s like comparing degrees of eh. And it’s not that they’re eh, it’s a great conversation, but, it’s just two people, in the same place, at the same time.
Like two blocks of wood, sitting near each other on the same table. In an hour’s time, they realize they share plenty in common, but there’s nothing magnetic between them. I started comparing different types of wood, wondering which I liked best. I guess I prefer walnut: it’s got a nice coloring pattern to it.
“You’ll know,” she said, and I started to wonder if this is what she was talking about. But then I stumbled across someone who changed the whole game. One hour in, and there was something weird going on. There was this...pull. She woke up something in me. A spark. A fire. A new energy to bring into the world, even the small, insignificant parts.
My heart started to beat really fast. This thing would happen where I’d get so excited, I’d lose my appetite. Everything just felt natural. Easy.
It’s like those phenomena you can’t really understand or explain, like the Big Bang, or those weird times when you call someone and find out they were literally just thinking about you.
It’s like floating freely in space, and suddenly, something is pulling you into the moon’s orbit, without your permission. It’s like gravity. You don’t fight it; you know better.
Gravity is when all of a sudden, 5 hours together doesn’t feel like enough time. Gravity is when you don’t care that it’s already past midnight because there’s still so much more to say, so much more to know.
Gravity is when it doesn’t seem practical that you live hours away from each other, but you still can’t wait to meet up, even if it’s just halfway. Because the halves are super important.
Gravity is when it’s Monday, and Thursday feels unbearably far away.
Gravity is when you research all those moon and star signs, even though you’ve never believed in any of it.
Gravity is when you replay their messages, just to hear their voice, and you replay yours, too, because you’re not used to hearing yourself sound so giddy.
Gravity lights you up when it’s their name that pops up on your phone, and somehow, anyone else who calls just doesn’t feel the same anymore. Now, instead of it taking energy to keep the conversation going, it takes a conscious effort to stay away.
Gravity makes you leave the phone in the car, because you start to lose any self control to not ask every silly question right when it comes to mind:
Like what they listen to
What they watch
What they read
What kind of damn cheese they eat
And what kind of milk they drink, because there’s just so many options these days.
Don’t ask me why, but somehow knowing that she prefers almond milk was mission critical information.
It’s funny because it’s some of the same superficial questions any date asks, and you get asked enough that it becomes exhausting. But something about this time felt different. Because now, you're not looking for something to start a conversation around. You’re asking because you just need to know this about them. Gravity.
I said to my friend, “Remember when I was asking you if maybe I was just broken?”
She said, “Yeah.”
“You were right,” I said. “I’m not broken. I feel it, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.”
Then fast forward: the day comes when it’s the end of it, well, the end for now, I guess.
All of a sudden, it’s like a black hole ate up everything and gave gravity a run for its money.
There’s that silence afterwards, that blank, empty space.
There’s that first day in weeks, where you don’t talk to each other.
And now there’s a different feeling.
Like a little broken feeling. That feeling that makes you cry sitting in your parked car for an hour, because you can’t muster up the energy to get out and walk upstairs.
You try to not judge yourself for it, because God forbid, you be like the silly girl in the Hallmark movies that we all roll our eyes at. Because this can’t be that: you only just met. A month ago, you didn’t know they existed. And after all, you don’t even know if it would've actually gone anywhere.
Maybe it’s just me, but I always want to know how the story will end, and I want to know before I take a single step in any direction. As if knowing will protect me from something. And maybe it will? But only from the experience of being human, and all the feelings that come with it.
My friend says something to make me feel better:
"Love and attraction are renewable resources,” she says. “You don’t have to budget them."
I white-knuckle it as my new mantra.
Looking back, there’s not much evidence left of this gravitational shift. There’s no footprints of hers here on my side of the planet, none of mine there on hers. It could be like nothing ever happened. But yet, it put out these ripples in the universe.
If nothing else, I learned that I’ll know. I realize I can trust myself. I can be scared, and I can be brave, too. And I double down on my belief that even when it hurts, it’s better to feel everything, than to feel nothing at all. Especially something I didn't know I was capable of feeling. The sharpness of it just means I’m alive. And that is a beautiful thing.
In the day to day, life still looks pretty much the same: I go to the same gym, I go to the same coffee shop, and I order the same iced chai. Only, when the barista asks what kind of milk I want in it — whole, almond, or oat milk — I pause for a second. A smile forms under my mask, where no one knows it but me.
And then for no good reason at all, I answer with, “I’ll try the almond.”