Plum Pit
If humans were created in the image of plums, my pit would be love. Stick with me, I promise it will all make sense in the end.
As I see it, every person is created with a pit at their center that contains the truth of their being. From an evolutionary standpoint, the pit comes first, and then flesh and bone grow around it. This palm-sized pit at the center of your body determines who you are.
Many cultures believe our life purpose is predetermined by the powers of the universe. As someone who has been panicked over my life’s purpose, the concept that I am simply a vessel for a pit is a relief. I’m still figuring out to what extent I believe this ideology to be true, but here is what I know for a fact: I was created to love someone.
Coming of age in a time of overexposure to the lives of people around me through social media, I felt discontent with my life. While I spent hours studying, researching a thesis, and disassociating during lectures for two years in pursuit of a Master’s degree, my friends and family were traveling the world, finding life partners, and having children. I liked and commented on each post, happy for my peers, but when I stared at the blinking cursor on the empty page of yet another paper on Higher Education and Student Development, I felt existential dread. If my purpose in life was to be an academic, why was I so unhappy?
Days before I graduated, I sat across from a supervisor with red hot cheeks and tears rolling down my face. Our weekly meeting was replaced by my inconsolable sobbing about the emptiness I felt - how underachieved I was in comparison to those around me.
Let me also add, that before this meeting I had attempted to break off a situationship for the tenth time only to fall right back in, my best friends had just gotten engaged, and my cousins were creating their own families- not to mention I had yet to receive a job offer post-graduation and anticipated moving back into my childhood bedroom.
If life was a race, I had missed the gunshot signal to start running.
If you haven’t guessed it by now, my astrological sign is Pisces. I am not well versed in astrology, but when the unavoidable moment where a new friend group or set of coworkers gets on the topic of star signs, I have yet to be speculated as anything other than a Pisces. From what I gather through conversations and a brief Google search- Pisces are emotional (check), idealistic (check), Empathetic (check), Lost in their daydreaming (check), and natural healers. This is where I get on my soapbox for the remainder of this blog.
Remember my plum analogy?
Some people have pits harboring strength, intelligence, discipline, charity, extravagance, hatred, chaos, etc…Mine is love.
If you split my body down the center from widow’s peak to toe and push aside the flesh and bone that make up my physical carcass, you will find a hardened pit. Crack the pit on the edge of a ceramic bowl and a golden yolk will drop. Cook my core sunny side up and serve it on a platter with your breakfast. My purpose is to nourish and care for someone.
I once believed my purpose was academic success and intelligence. I curated a plan for myself that focused on achieving career goals to prove my worth. Although I was able to accomplish these expectations of myself and have immense pride in them, they were not my life’s purpose. I was not fulfilled - there would always be another ladder to climb, another degree to pursue, and in the end, I’d be left thirsty for purpose.
How do you describe a hopeless romantic? Someone who has an idealistic view of love and is more likely to fall in love. Hopeless romantics need love like fish need water.
Last winter, my grandfather and I fell into our repeated back and forth on my disinterest in having children of my own. After too many minutes spent bickering, my grandfather’s tone turned to anger at my ignorance of what was so glaringly obvious to him.
He shook his head and scoffed.“That’s just stupid. You have such a big heart, you can really love someone who needs it. Just wait.”
Where were you when you ran face-first into your life’s purpose spray-painted across a brick wall? I was on a lumpy grey couch in Woodhaven, Queens.
Revised statement: Crack my body open and an endless stream of thick shimmering liquid will pool your feet. Bask in it as long as you need- take your time.
I was created to love someone with my entire being.
First came my pit then my flesh and bones.
Growing up gravity seemed to rest on my chest; a statement more true today as I pace my Chelsea apartment hoping someone will understand my purpose is not foolish daydreaming of a Pisces. I dream about being in love. In early adolescence, I’d roleplay scenes of mundane acts of affection that I hoped would occur in my future adulthood. Two cups of coffee in my hands. Flowers wrapped in brown paper. An infectious laugh. Folded laundry and Valentine's Day reservations.
In high school and college, I was infatuated with being loved. Up to that point, I spent every waking hour imagining what it felt like to love someone; I wanted to know what it was to be loved. This led to my pursuit of quick and codependent relationships. I thought I knew love in these partners, but the loneliness I felt taught me a person born with my pit needed security in loving themselves. I will not lie and say this was an easy feat. This took a decade to understand. The universe will give you the same negative experience over and over until you learn the lesson. Thankfully, after one too many dips in the bath of unrequited “love,” I learned my lesson. I am made to love, and it is a privilege to be loved by me.
Pisces, idealistic emotional beings lost in their daydreaming.
I’ve built up love so highly in my life. I’ve read countless romance novels and written my own. I spent the summer of 2021 writing a romance novel that is a manifesto of reincarnated love. Human consciousness is created with energy borrowed from the Earth, and with this, love is electricity that surpasses a lifetime when the energy is reclaimed and recycled. How can this not be true? How can I live a quarter of my life with a heightened acknowledgment of love pressing on my chest and it not be true? It’s as if love is a phantom hiding itself from everyone, but me.
I will have achieved my purpose when I love someone - and I know this love will find me. There is nothing I’m more confident in than this fact. I do not worry about if the love exists, but the when it will occur and who it is with.
I trust whatever power, be it fate or cosmic alignment, has placed me in this life at this time knowing I will be the love someone needs. My job is to ensure I am secure and ready. I’ve taken the time to learn secure attachments and know the value in myself.
I’ve never been in love, but I have loved people before and continue to hold love for them though I no longer permit them access to me. The love you had for someone may never leave your body, and that is okay. I do not regret the relationships of lust I’ve had because I chose to love them. I felt fulfilled in caring for them- would I do it again? No, but I am grateful nonetheless. Love is a muscle to exercise and because of this, I understand what it means to give someone love and when to step away from those who aren’t ready to accept it.
My bottomless well of love is not limited to the romantic sort. In recent years, I have had the privilege of loving my friends. The words platonic soulmates roll over my tongue when describing a friend who sees me at my core. I wonder if she knows she has the same pit I do.
I am struck with astonishment at how I lived so long unaware of my purpose. It was always right there. The pit of my being has a gravitational pull and those who are fated for me will find their way to me. They are welcome to submerge their feet in the pool of my cracked core.
