The Chosen One

 I have been spending quite a bit of 2020 reflecting back on past relationships, especially ones where I was in situations with people who up until today still perplex me, still confuse me, still frustrate me, when thinking about to the time I spent with them. Sometimes there is anger in these reflections, especially when I recall some who entered into a relationship with me, not being honest about what they wanted or who they were, even if I had tried my best to be honest with them. 

Someday I might want to write a book or something, since so many of them were interesting in their own, ridiculous ways. 

I was recalling today one past relationship, that sometimes I smirkingly refer to as "the chosen one." She strongly felt that she had a great destiny. That she was smart and strong and that she was gonna change this island. She was gonna save the Chamoru people. She was drawn to me because of my activism and wanting to talk about revolutionary change, about what the Chamoru people, the island needed. I enjoyed these conversations and I enjoyed seeing someone a bit younger than me, inspired to want to make a difference. Although her feelings about having a destiny and her sometimes self-aggrandizing posturing, did make me feel strange. 

It got even stranger, when we were together and I would get what appeared to be drunken messages from her mother, telling me that her daughter was going to change this island and do great things. She would sometimes message me thanking me for helping her daughter find her destiny, achieve the great things she was going to do. Sometimes she would message crazy texts about how I was holding her daughter back and that she I needed to get out of her way, since nothing and no one could hold her back. From these texts I learned more about sort of where this girl's lofty ideas about greatness came from. It was something her mother had constantly put into her mind, but the problem was that her daughter didn't at least at that point, seem to have any idea about to find or realize this greatness. 

This was immediately apparent once the two of us were together together. She was interested to know things, to learn about things, but she didn't want to do anything. When I asked her if she wanted to participate in anything I was working on, whether podcasts, protests, social media mobilizing, she would say no. She was destined to do important things, but it wouldn't be her thing if it was my thing. It would be truly from her if she was helping me. Hearing different versions of that never really felt right or seemed rationale, but she kept asserting it. Eventually I began to just offer to help her with whatever she wanted to work on. She would say, that she couldn't get help, she needed to find out on her own what the great things she was gonna do, were going to be. 

I did enjoy talking to her about things, answering her questions. But sometimes when there would be a topic she would want to know more about, I would giver her a book or an article and tell her to read it for more information. She would say no, that she had to figure out her path for herself. After a few months of this, I couldn't help but laugh at her when she would say these sorts of things. Because in all the time that I had known her, she never even did anything close to affecting the world around her, her island or her community. She mainly just scrolled through social media each day, lying around, not wanting to actually do much else. 

When things ended between us, I wasn't angry or particularly sad. I was happy for her and told her that I wouldn't stand in the way of her saving our people and changing our island. I was half joking, but she seemed to think I was serious. Thinking back, I really worried about her mental health, but when I tried to bring it up to her mother, she get enraged and saying I was trying to bring her daughter down. So I immediately dropped it and decided to let the chosen one choose her destiny on her own, uninhibited by me in any way. 

Every once in a while I check on her social media to see if she has changed the island yet or saved our people. See alot of posts about make up and wishing people happy birthdays, but nothing resembling salvation yet. 

When waiting for the chosen one, I remind myself snickering, one must learn to be patient of course.