Romantic love: The pinnacle of all that I cannot control that I wish I had in my life

When I was a junior and senior in college, I lived off campus in a one-bedroom apartment on the edge of downtown Poughkeepsie, NY. My apartment was the top floor of an old three-floor home that was converted into apartments. The woman who lived in the first floor apartment came up to me one day and said that she is a psychic and would like to do a reading for me. I would not have paid for a psychic reading at the time, but since she seemed eager and interested in doing it for free, I said I'd love for her to give me a reading, sure.

So one day my neighbor brought me through our common side entrance through her rear apartment door directly into her kitchen. She gave me dinner and afterwards she took out her Tarot card set and said that she gives readings through the Tarot cards. It didn't matter to me.

I don't remember exactly which cards that she pulled or what they all meant, but I do remember feeling non-impressed by her supposed psychic abilities. She didn't give me anything specific, but she said that I would one day find love, but it wouldn't be for a long time. She also said that people would always be comfortable at my house wherever I lived - something about that. Lastly, she gave me a small, bronze figurine of the Hindi God, Ganesh (or Ganesha), stating that he would be "the remover of obstacles".

Before I left, she walked me through her living room - or the room that I only assume would be her living room due to its size and central location at the front of the home. Before I even entered the room, it was apparent that she was a hoarder. We walked through a makeshift pathway through stacks of newspapers and full, large, black garbage bags of I-don't-know-what to the front door. I don't know if she was looking for something that led us to walk through this room or maybe she was just leading me to the front door, although we had entered through the back door. I cannot imagine that she wanted me to see her room - it was horrible. I'd never seen anything like that before and I did grow up in a fairly disordered home, but nothing like that.

It's clear that whether she had real psychic abilities or not, she was right when she said it would be a long time before I found love (I mean, there's always love but here it is clear we are talking about romantic love). I still haven't found it - at least not that true, long-lasting kind.

Instead of romantic love, I have come to experience longing, loneliness, spirituality, self-discovery, self-love, friendship love, familial love, etc. But nothing quite replaces romantic love and sexual affection. There is a dual aspect to romantic love - there is that deep connection with someone that feels like a symbiosis of the souls and there is a physical aspect that satisfies a biological drive. Maybe if they were not so intertwined, the lack of it would not feel so much like a lack of something fundamental. But that is how it is and how it feels and yes, it is of a higher order to learn to go without it and not to feel the fundamental loss. However, how many people can do that? It is hard.

So my old neighbor gave me Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, while she was the one who had real obstacles obstructing her living room - the room in which one is meant to live, right? And yet she gave me the remover of obstacles, as if the room in which I am meant to live is even more obstructed than hers. I have since then given that Ganesh figurine away to someone else, as well. It is not that I thought I had removed all of my obstacles, but more that I thought someone else may need it more than I did at the time. Anyway, I am the one who needs to remove my own obstacles - I know this now. Of course, to remove them I first need to know what they are.