Seventeen lives: I never pressed play again
I never quite know how specific to be when someone asks me about my first relationship. I usually say high school, without mentioning that I was about 10 when we met and 13 or 14 when we started dating. At 16, I felt like I was in a full-fledged serious adult relationship. His parents also met really young, briefly broke up, then got married and lived a pretty traditional life. Something about being told, “You’ll be just like us!” sent a cold shiver down my spine. No, absolutely not. That was not the life I was going to live.
After we broke up, I was so used to sharing my life with someone at such a young age that it didn’t take long before I found myself seeing someone else throughout my senior year of high school. Not a match. Quite toxic, actually. A good distraction from the stress of finishing school, though. So I stuck it out until I moved abroad.
And suddenly, there he was. A Latin American from Ecuador. He was funny, witty and so smart. Being young, infatuated and naive is a dangerous combination. Having someone promise you the world and not deliver, and then move away, is painful.
But life carried on.
As it turns out, things that were foreign to me made me curious enough to explore them. In places, things and people. He was French. French. I didn’t like French much in school and never understood how so many people were infatuated with a French accent. I disliked it. Thankfully for me, there was no French accent.
Then the sobering reality hit: we were not a good match. Not at all. Thankfully, I was moving to a new country around that time — a welcome fresh start. But moving alone doesn’t always solve the issue.
So the only option left is distraction. A night out with friends. A bar in a new city. Everything is exciting again. You get another drink.
Barely at the bar, a guy offers to buy you a drink. Why not? You say yes, have a quick chat and exchange numbers. The next morning, you wake up to a text from him. You text back a couple of times, but he seems quite persistent and you’ve really only just got here. New city, new life. You don’t want to repeat old mistakes. So very unlike you, you delete the number and move on.
A few weeks later, you’re at another club, someone shouts, “Hey!” You ignore it. Again, “Hey!” This time you look up, someone waving from behind the DJ desk. You look at him and shout, “I know you!” No idea what the name is. Then you realise: oops, this is the guy whose number I deleted.
He walks over and asks why you never texted back. You make up some story about a broken phone and losing all your numbers. He gets your number again. You go home thinking, how is it possible to run into someone twice within two weeks in this huge city?
And then it starts. Texts back and forth, him always wanting to meet up. Once in a blue moon, you agree. But then something more important comes up and you find an excuse. Time and time and time again. He never stops persisting, but not in an annoying way. In a charming way, so you think, aw, that’s actually so nice.
This was me. And my 12-year on-and-off situationship — before that word even existed in the dictionary.
He called me every day throughout summer, made sure I woke up for my night shifts at my summer job, talked to me about life and joked around on the phone for hours. I’d never had such deep conversations with a guy before. So when he asked about past heartbreaks or people disappointing me, I told him about a guy I’d met in Bali who had hidden the fact that he had a wife and kids.
Then there was silence on the other end of the phone.
“Hey. I need to tell you something… I have a son.”
It was about 2 a.m. I thought he was joking. When he told me the story, it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. There was something about him I liked, but he was 10 years older than me and I was still so young. It was so nice having someone there for me, but I couldn’t imagine actually dating him.
As the universe wanted it, he was in New York that same summer I was there for my internship. We met up. It felt a bit odd. He kissed me at a bar. I didn’t like it. I decided to ignore him for the rest of the summer. I wanted a summer in the city with my new friends. After all, I was living the Devil Wears Prada life.
After I returned to London in late summer, he told me he’d met someone in Canada after his New York trip. Third heartbreak. And I wasn’t even with him.
Years passed. We spoke on and off. I met someone else. But something felt different after that. I closed up like never before. Looking back, I don’t think I ever opened up in quite the same way again.
That summer, I met someone and fell into what I assumed would be a short-lived romance. It felt easy and different. He felt mature and I felt safe with him. The fact that he was going through a divorce didn’t bother me at first. It was a summer fling, after all. Another man with another kid, I thought. I could never do this long-term.
I missed the window of when the goodbye should have happened.
What started as a summer fling drifted into an odd, mostly platonic companionship that continued far beyond the summer. Somewhere along the way, wanting to be there turned into feeling like I should be there.
Then there was something that felt easy. Almost weightless. He was funny, nice, extroverted. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to commit. So I didn’t. I let it run. Until he felt he had chased a loose goose for too long and decided this wasn’t for him. I couldn’t even blame him. And I shouldn’t have. But rejection was a new feeling to me. One that revealed a toxic side of myself I had never met before. I was horrified by who I saw in the mirror during that time. I promised myself I would never let myself become that version of me again.
I kept that promise.
I had spent years in or between relationships. I’d learned about 17 lives’ worth of lessons. I felt like I had seen it all. And I realised I didn’t even know myself without being with someone else. I had spent my adolescence and adulthood so far sharing my life with someone. So I paused.
And I never pressed play again.
All of the energy I had unknowingly spent on relationships, all the time I had spent thinking about somebody else, freed itself back up. My creativity skyrocketed. I went back to fashion and art. I spent hours making things.
Weeks turned into months, months into a year, and before I realised it, I hadn’t exchanged a text message or call with a man in almost two years. I do not recall a single moment of missing it. Missing something. Missing someone by my side. I was genuinely so at peace with myself. I invested time in my passions. Spent more time with family, deepening bonds with friends near and far. I enjoyed listening to their stories, helping them out of situations and giving them advice. I was glad none of it was about me. I never once thought, gosh, I wish this was me.
Maybe it was because I didn’t even know who I was without being with someone.
I was just me. Getting to know myself again. As an adult. Alone.
And I was enjoying it.
Many people don’t even enter their first relationship until ten years after I had been in mine. That is mind-boggling to me. Sometimes I laugh and think, maybe I’m just taking that time now.
Yes, of course, nothing else in my life stopped. But that part did.
For now, at least.