Hey you.

I can already guess what you look like… You’re tall, dark and handsome, with a twinkle either in your eyes or the corner of your smile that subtly says you’re not as innocent as you look. You probably have broad shoulders, and hopefully prefer spending time outside to sitting inside. That one’s not a deal-breaker, but the last two suitors have been one of each… and I definitely felt more myself with the adventurer than with the couch potato, or as he liked to put it, “movie buff”. I have a few things to tell you, future partner, both for my own good, and for yours, because we are never going to be happy if we don’t address this. Answer me honestly. Do you see the glass half-empty, or half-full? Is your base mood rooted in light, or darkness? If you answered honestly, future partner, and you found you have admitted to yourself that you probably see the glass a little under half-way, please walk away. Please. Because if I love you, I’m not going to leave you, as whether or not we are functional and making each other happy, it doesn’t make any sense to me at all not to be with the one I love. You probably know by now that my base mood is a bit like a bird; humming and tweeting and flitting around happily most of the time, interspersed with brief hysterical fits of elation; like the bipolar, without the depression. Do you disagree? Then that means, future partner, that you are the darkness to my light, and you are bringing me down. Like a chameleon, I adapt to my surroundings. I can sleep on the floor, or in the back of a car. I can happily convert to an entirely new cuisine and routine within days. I change my style as often as I change my underwear. Continuously converting, adjusting. So if your base mood is sombre, mine will become sombre too. If and when you are sad, you know I will try my hardest to make you happy, but if you insist upon remaining in your self-indulgent dark headspace, I will inevitably join you. And I don’t want to, not with the Big Love. I want my Big Love to be happy, and if you really care about me, you will want me to be happy too, right? Think about our time together so far, future partner. Have you seen me cry? No? Then maybe I don’t care that much. Or maybe you are That wonderful, and lovely, and happy, and don’t make me doubt myself every two minutes. If so, thank you for being you. Please keep being you forever, and I’ll keep being me, and we can be happy, wherever in the world we choose to be… In the winter in our homestead up in the hills, with our five bright wild children running through the orchard in their gumboots between the geese and the piglets and the chickens and the dogs, and collecting eggs and planting flowers and climbing trees and picking oranges and baking muffins and building bonfires and playing music, always music, from every decade, the soundtrack for the private movie that is our life always playing, while we plant, create, build, love, forgetting about everyone outside our little family on the hill… …Tangent. Excuse my brain, I fell deep into that one. Anyway. My girlfriends would say that I’m pretty resilient, and that they never see me cry, except in love for them, when they are exiting and entering the country, as they do. What they know is that the only thing that can make me cry is love, and I know that they worry, because so far, as you probably know, my dear, I have had somewhat self-destructive taste in men, before you. Maybe including you. But I don’t want a sad, tearful love. I deserve a bright love. So if you’re a glass-half-empty kinda guy, you’re going to have to do it, ASAP. You’re going to have to cut the cord, because you know I won’t. I’m too stubborn and romantic and idealistic, and I would try forever and a day to bring out the light in you, future partner, and maybe I can, to an extent. But if you have that negative base mindset, if you can’t see past the problem to the solution… Well, I don’t want to waste another two, ten years, because I can’t change you, not truly. I don’t want someone to be the yin to my yang. I want another yang, dammit! I want us to be so happy that we eventually die simultaneously of heart attacks, in our beach house (yes we’re having a farm house and a beach house, you know this) age ninety-nine, in the midst of a hysterical fit of laughter. Yang, yang. So please don’t drag this out if you’re a Negative Nelly, even if you love me, and I love you… But be honest when you do end it, because you know that if you make up a reason, I’ll inevitably try to find a way to fix it. Just say this is for my own good. Say it will all be okay. Say that I’ll thank you someday. Because I will. Maybe I’ll even write you a thankyou letter, old school, from my writing desk in my farmhouse on the hill, and lick the seal, and put a stamp on the envelope, and give it to my trusty mail-eagle… My future future partner might want to thank you too.

Love, your Jac.