Why Everyone Should Have a Mr. Darcy By Holly Searle

If life has taught me one very important lesson, it is that you should never go shopping for food when you're hungry. And I mean ravenous. Not just a bit peckish, but absolutely and unremittingly famished.

This is such a bad move especially if you haven't eaten for a while, as you manically race around the supermarket carelessly chucking everything that takes your fancy into the basket that is uncomfortably cradled in the nook of your arm.

That looks nice, your half starved self tells yourself, as the once light and easy to lift basket granularly becomes increasingly heavier and heavier until your sane mind and the lack of blood flow in your arm due to the weight of the basket (that is depleting all of your remaining strength by the second), begins to steers you towards the nearest checkout.

You plunk the basket down and start to unload the items on to the conveyor belt. After each beep of the scanner, you pack each item rapidly. You pay the bill, and stagger away with your food swag, happy in the knowledge that pretty soon, your demanding appetitive will soon be satisfied.

Of course, in reality the mind panic, due to the lack of food that you are yet to consumed, has lied to you as well as your stomach. As it is only so big, and it can't possibly digest all of this wide eyed, hunger fuelled supermarket dash booty.

But you didn't know that when you purchased it all did you?

In a word.

No.

Finding your Mr. Darcy is a bit like this.

Let me explain.

For the longest time, I raced around life's supermarkets looking for something to fill a void. And no matter how hard I looked, or how much I purchased, I could never find what I was looking for to satisfy the emotional hunger that I felt

In the end, I gave up, as no matter how hard I shopped, or how much I spent emotionally, that thing I was looking for, just wasn't in stock.

I couldn't ask for it, as it had no name.

It, I came to conclude had alluded me, and I grew bored of my relentless pursuit of whatever it was and decided that either I was out of sync with the universe, or it just didn't exist.

So I left it behind and decided to step outside to feel the sunshine on my face, and came to the realisation that those who look for something, rarely find it.

Enjoy your life I told myself. Fill your boots with what you know, rather than what you do not. And so I did.

It was like a Spring-clean diet for my soul.

I changed my outlook and started to concentrate on other matters that my life was craving. Soon I no longer lusted after whatever it was.

Then one day, a curious thing happened, I woke up one morning with all the characteristics of the pragmatically head strong Elizabeth Bennet.

I quite liked this new me. I had become a polished version of the girl I had always been, with all the added maturity and wisdom of the woman I had become.

It was like coming home. I had at last arrived at a destination where I felt completely and utterly at ease with myself.

I felt an immense sense of pride as I had achieved this by myself.

I realised that I had choices and that this had afforded me a greater sense of liberation that was empowering.

And then you appeared.

Just like Darcy you presented yourself in an unfathomable presence in my newly created daily routine. This threw me off balance, as I had no idea what to make of it, or indeed what to do about it.

There you were, this incomprehensible enigmatic incalculable indecipherable and baffling individual. At first I just filed you in the back of my mind palace, until I could employ some form of Sherlock ingenuity to enable me to put all of the jigsaw pieces together to form a more logical picture.

I procrastinated for the longest time until it became quite unbearable, as it constantly niggled away at me.

Sometimes it grew tiresome. At other times it just left me. But mostly it refused to be ignored until I had addressed it.

Eventually after placing myself in a similar situation to relinquish myself of it altogether, I began to realise that I was unable to rid myself of it and that I had to deal with it once and for all. And that, my friend, took ever ounce of bravery I had.

And I suppose just like the uneven footsteps I manage when I left leg is playing up, I decided to be courageous and asked you a question and you answered yes. And that, just like the uneven sway of my uncertainty was how we began.

All stories have a beginning, and ours began there with that one word. A careful placing of one step in front of another, followed by more.

It has completed a circle, one that is increasing rather than decreasing.

I still have my own personal insecurities, but just like Elizabeth Bennet, I am learning to deal with them.

And having a Darcy in my life has provided me with a name for what it was. And that it is you.