Did you ever try to answer imaginary questions? Those questions you’ve only asked yourself. The ones that fly around in your head, but that no one will ever ask you for real? For instance: what’s the most important thing you’ve learned from your previous relationship? Or what’s your silliest childhood memory? The worst thing somebody has ever done to you. The personal feelings you have with this or that song, book, movie…

I ask myself a lot of these questions all the time. I find it helps me structuring my thoughts and reflecting on my opinions and choices. I love to think about what the actual answers are and what I’d say if someone would ask me.

One of most precious questions I’ve ever asked myself concerns my boyfriend. Mostly because I’m still amazed by the answer. There are several possible ways to construct the specific sentence, but it goes a bit like this: what’s the most special thing about Matt? I doubt if anyone will ever bother asking, but today I need the answer to be known.

You see, all my life I’ve only known two kinds of people. The first group is by far the largest. These people lead normal lives, have normal experiences and take normal risks. And all of them somewhere down that line have encountered one or more of the dark spots of life. They’ve touched, or even came to dwell on, the darkness life can bring. The second type of people are the ones that live a life without taking any risks and therefore have been spared from the dark thus far. A neat, logic and complete way to categorize the population, such had been my opinion.

Then along came Matt. I remember trying to make up my mind about which category he was in a long time before we got together. It took only a few questions to have it pretty clear Matt has had his share in the sex, drugs and rock-‘n-roll segments of life. And when I told him some tiny bits about my personal encounters with the dark I asked him:
“How about you? What’s your dark thing you have to bear?”
“Uhm, well, nothing really…”
“Nothing?!”
“No, so far everything went pretty well…”
“But that is impossible!”
“I’m sorry, but it’s true…”

It is mind-blowing, astounding and incredible. He has so far lived life as a tightrope walking joker. Never losing himself in anything, still neither refraining from taking a sip of everything that came across his path. How come you flow through every experience unharmed, even laughing along the way? How come a monkey can swim so well? It’s intriguing and infuriating at the same time. Intriguing because it all seems so surreal. Infuriating because I’ve seen so many be hurt by the same things that seem to have no negative effect on Matt.

I’m sure this has something to do with the awkward fact I somehow intuitively feel that Matt ‘knows something’. Something I don’t know yet. I haven’t figured out why exactly. Maybe he’s just an older soul or has some guardian angel protecting his steps. But I’m positively sure he knows something I need to learn during this life. The funny and complex thing is that he doesn’t know what he knows himself. Just like he’ll never really grasp the essence of the good fortune he is given.

Angel, do you realise how lucky you are? That you were born a Sunday’s child? You’ve been frolicking on the doorsteps of the gates to hell, and have survived every move. You must be a very special person to have had the luck and stability to have never even been touched by a spark of hell’s fire while you were so close to the edge so many times. Do you realise that that is exactly the reason I sometimes get a bit upset about your past? Because you’ve simply danced through so many of the same things that have hurt, scarred or even killed the ones I love?

I know I sometimes get fed up by the precarious fields you’ve tiptoed on. I know that when you read this you will once again tell me that I’m exaggerating and that it wasn’t half as spectacular as I may make it seem. Despite it all, I’ve got to let you know, because it’s the one true way to answer that question about you:

You’re the only one I’ve ever met who’s made me feel humbled in his presence.

Column published by Cecile on Monday, November 26th, 2007.

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