Maybe I should marry the stranger in the bus

I don’t know what it is when you go to another country by yourself, but you always seem to attract very interesting people. I sat down at a café, having a lovely and overpriced breakfast. I was very happy in my solitude, googling how Tel Aviv is the friendliest city for LGBT+ people, when a guy decided to sit at my table and offered me a book. If my face screams “sit with me and read a fairytale at the sound of bossa nova” that’s a label I gladly embrace. A Hebrew book. He was probably in his 20s. From South Africa. Quite handsome, if we might add. I told him I couldn’t read Hebrew, and he deciphered the plot for me.

Right at that moment, I went back to a quote from How I Met Your Mother: “if you have chemistry, you only need one more thing: timing. And timing’s a bitch.” I did fall in love right there. But not the type of falling in love one would watch in a romcom. If we’re being honest, falling in love is just chemicals in the brain: noradrenaline, dopamine and phenylethylamine. Racing heart, sweaty palms, butterflies in our tummies. Not so different from an anxiety attack, if you ask me. No. Not that type of falling in love. The calm and comforting feeling-good chemical one can exchange in the simplest interaction with a stranger. The only type of connection I crave.

I have been reading Big Magic for over a week now, and I’m obsessed. I want it to end because I want to know all the juice Elizabeth Gilbert has for us, but I also really don’t want it to end. That was my plan anyway for the 5 hours bus ride from Tel Aviv to Eilat. Until this Israeli guy decided to sit next to me. I thought he was just going to sit there, but he started chatting. I’m always scared of starting conversations when I know there’s no escape if things get awkward, or you just want to do your own thing. And 5 hours is a long time to be awkward or sit in silence. 

He had deep blue eyes, tanned skin, and radiant energy. “Where are you from?”, he asked. I answered. He asked one or two more things, which I can’t recall, and suddenly: “What is your biggest desire?”. I laughed. He didn’t react. “We’re going deep already, I like it”, I answered. “There is no time for any other type of conversation”. At that moment, I knew we connected. The rest of the trip went smoothly. I was happy to have met him. Sad when he left a station before me. And then it hit me: I fell in love for the second time that day. And again and again, I go back to Freud’s quote “on ne se confie jamais mieux qu'à un inconnu”.

The triangle of relationships: vulnerability, consistency, time. Back home, I’m scared of the concept of interconnectedness. That results in me not being able to connect at such a deep level. Furthermore, you happily go from calendar block to calendar block, and the passage of time shifts to milliseconds. Telling my crush I like them? Never. Just imagine the consequences of that in your circles. Telling a stranger all my childhood trauma, inviting them to go on a day trip with you, maybe even sleeping in the same bed? 100%. 

So maybe I should marry the next stranger I meet in the bus. Or maybe I should think of everyone I meet as a stranger, the same way I try to have traveller’s eyes in the place I call home. It’s novelty. If I give a piece of my puzzle in every encounter each day, maybe one day I will fully understand myself. Or maybe not. At least I will stop living in the paradox of love: from infatuation to despair. At least I will learn what real love is all about. Love takes a lot of forms and shapes. I’m glad to have realized that early enough, because I don’t know what life without love is. Then, I probably won’t have to marry the stranger in the bus. I can marry a stranger back home.