Someone asked me the other day, “What about your other half?”
What a weird phrase. “My other half,” as though I am an incomplete person without my wife. Was I just a partial human for the first 21 years of my life, until we started dating? When she’s at roller derby practice, or on a trip in another city, am I back to being unwhole?
If she’s so important to completing me, how did she end up with this Spencer-material I’m apparently missing? Did she inherit it at birth from her parents? Was it specifically tuned for 21-year-old Spencer, or did it mature and grow as I did?
Did I get auto-Horcruxed?
If people can have other halves, could some people have other thirds? Other quarters? Do you become less yourself the more people you love? Are asexuals and aromantics intrinsically more whole than the rest of us? Can the majority shareholders in Spencer outvote me?
Okay, I didn’t just land on this planet yesterday; obviously, I know it’s just an idiom. But it’s such a weird one. I’m not an incomplete person without my wife. She’s not part of me, and I’m not a part of her. We’re two independent, complete people who have chosen to build a life together, not because it was written in the stars or because we’re two halves of one soul, but simply because we want to.
That’s enough.