Love and Pokemon

My friend Mark started playing Pokemon again; I think Red--one of the originals. For everyone who missed the late 90s/early 2000s, it's a game where you start out by choosing one of three Pokemon: a Squirtle, a Charmander, or a Bulbasaur. Choose the wrong Pokemon, restart the Gameboy and play again. Ultimately, the goal is to catch all of the Pokemon and defeat all of the Masters with the best team that you can assemble. But it all falls back to that first Pokemon--even if you don't use your first choice in the final battle, you always start the game believing that you will. Most people, the naive people, always choose a Charmander. If you do it right, you end up with a Charizard. But most people don't wait around long enough for that, and even if they do, you don't know what to do with a Charizard. That's okay, too. Not everyone is meant for a Charizard and what it means to have a Charizard. You don't always have to end up with what you started with.
Pokemon is an experience that you have--you don't really think of it that way as a kid. Actually, you don't think of it that way pretty much anytime. People who say that Pokemon is an experience is the kind of person who cries at the end of The Breakfast Club and totally ruins Lost for you because they talk about how the plot was all about the relationships between everyday people. But Pokemon is an experience, particularly similar to dating. Think about it: it takes nothing to catch a Weedle.
We've all dated Weedles. Occasionally, you run across someone cool like a Growlithe or a Vulpix--fiery and interesting. You want to date a coffee barista? That's a Lapras. You know where to find one, and as zen and urbane as he or she may seem, nothing ever really changes with them. And God forbid you ever run into a Chancey because much like the game, you're completely unprepared. Chanceys come around when you're approximately 6 shots in at the bar and you're dancing alone in the corner to "We Can't Stop." You're fresh out of Masterballs, and then you spend the next five days thinking about how you totally missed your shot at a Chancey. But whether it be a Chancey or a Lapras or a Growlithe, it really doesn't matter what you have if it doesn't make sense to your game plan, your experience.
To keep from completely ruining everything you've come to love and appreciate about Pokemon, the whole notion that dating and life and Pokemon are essentially interchangeable is because all three things boil down to one thing: the anatomy of a noun. Back in first or second grade, we're taught that a noun is a person, place, or thing. The noun is essentially the most basic of the language building blocks, second to spelling the words themselves. Nouns have such a simple function that we practically forget just how important they are. Because what everything depends on, ultimately, is a person, a place, or a thing--sometimes all three.
Sitting outside of my college dorm a couple years ago, I was dealing with a break up. Like most people after a break up, you go over everything you could have done differently in your mind--each argument or cancelled plan. You think about all the things you had considered doing and that you hadn't. And then you consider all of the things you did do and whether or not you should have done them. Lather, rinse, repeat. Sometimes, you'll drive yourself crazy with the notion, and unlike the Gameboy, you can't go back and restart it. You're stuck with the Pokemon you started out with, and even though you've logged it back into the Pokedex, it doesn't mean that it's not still there.
But that's where my friend Nam found me--out perched up on the side steps of Carnegie Hall puffing on a Camel Crush or something equally disgusting. She had known what I was going through, understanding that I had chosen to move away for grad school instead of trying at whatever assimilation of a relationship that I had. She plopped down beside me and asked me for a cigarette and began to explain how everything in life works--or at least everything to do with making a relationship work. She talked about how a relationship is a special kind of noun: it requires all three noun components--the right person, the right place, and the right thing... most usually, time.

Deal. I'm going to go eat an entire pizza and
watch American Horror Story.

It's a great little litmus test, if you're being honest with yourself. People in their 20s are obsessed with being in relationships--almost as much as they are about going to brunch or being purposefully ironic. But at the end of the day, when people stop coming to your single's brunch, and your friends don't want to go ice skating with you because it might appear that y'all are gay (Side note: I still completely stand by the notion that two men can go ice skating and it's totally platonic, but whatever. Not here, Justin. Not here.), we aggressively turn our minds toward a relationship because a relationship will be the thing that will fix us. And in your 20s, if you think there's a way that will fix everything, you immediately jump at the offer. That's why so many people do P90X, let's be honest. (Side note 2: You're never going to find me doing P90X. I tried it once. That's stupid and it hurts.)
I'm not against relationships. I think they can be amazing, and ultimately, as disgusting as it sounds--life is so much more fulfilling when you have someone to share it with. But to go back to Nam's theory, it requires everything that a perfect noun entails: the right place, the right time, and most importantly the right person. The right place is usually the easiest. Unless you're just a really avid eHarmony user who searches miles and miles outside of your own city, the person you might want to date is most likely going to be around you. The place is only complicated if you've just gotten there or you're just about to leave. But overall, the place is easy.
The time kind of meshes with the place. It's all about being settled and how busy you are. Oftentimes, we underestimate just how important the time part is because we always think we're ready for the next step. Either we're bored or we're swamped or we're somewhere in between, and we convince ourselves that we're ready for whatever we might find. The eternally monogamous don't understand what the world would be like single, and the eternally single are just positive that it's time to take a turn for the more serious. But in reality, time is complicated because it's not a state that can be determined by how long you've been single or what you've done before. It's a matter of knowing when the clock inside of you is ticking at the exact right speed with the right person.
And the person is the worst part of all because it's almost entirely out of your control. Even when the clock is ticking steady in the right place, it has to be ticking in sync with the right person. And that's terrible and magical at the same time because waiting for it to work is a nightmare, but when it does, it's this thing that makes you believe in things like fate and luck. Because as frustrating as catching all of the Pokemon may seem, sometimes, you do have a Masterball when a Chancey appears. And you have room in your belt for another Pokemon, and when you throw it and watch the ball wiggle, and wiggle again, and wiggle again, sometimes it just closes and there it is--it happened. You caught it.

Lapras, the smug Pokemon equivalent to
a coffee shop barista.

So you might not end up with the first Pokemon you started with (the high school or college sweetheart) because that rarely ever happens for anyone. That's tricky, and God help you if you end up with a Venasaur, because that just means someone is hanging around and eating all your shit. In the end, all of the pieces have to match up because anything else is just forced, and you really should reconsider metaphorically restarting that Gameboy. Life is too short to go around pretending to love someone for the sake of saying you're in love. Take that time and go live. Catch a Lapras to catch a Lapras and then store it away. Go explore all the different areas that you want to explore. And in the midst of all the Pokemon references, take a little time to find yourself because even in the moments when it may seem like the right time and the right place and the right person, you have to be content with who you are, when the Gameboy is shut off and you're lying alone at night. If you can't live with who you are, no one else is going to be able to live with you either.
Nam didn't include anything about Pokemon, but I know she probably would have if she thought of it. Instead, she finished up by snuffing out the end of her cigarette on the concrete step and brought it all home by saying, "That's it. If it's not the right person, the right place, and the right time, then it's not right for you. And in the meantime, you just have to wait." Nam's not really one to tell you that it comes when you least expect it or that love is just around the corner. She's kind of brutal with the truth, and she's not one that will tell you how close you are to love. Because what if it's the wrong place? You're not going to catch a Starmie in Viridian Forest.
And you're not going to find love or a relationship until all the right pieces match up.