This is a Love Story Not About a Boy

He is a symbol, a representation of me: the person I’m becoming.

His body is an outer shell — a vessel — encompassing a journey: an ongoing transformation I’ve been having with myself for nearly the past year. It could’ve been anyone but circumstances chose him. And so it is him.

I met Alex on the final night of a three-day trip to Valencia at the end of May. Our time together was brief, more an encounter. He was working that night: promoting the gig we’d come to see, sound checking and greeting guests. I was there with a friend. He would come and chat to us in between sets, embarrassed by his softly-accented English compared to our very Britishness. He was endearing and I felt a rare attraction to him. My friend scolded me and said, “You only want him because you can’t have him.” I’m still undecided on whether that’s true about me or not.

A kiss on the cheek in greeting and his hand on my waist as he leaned in to hear me over the music of the folk trio were the closest physical contact we shared. When we left, I walked past and brushed his arm — interrupting him talking to someone else — and whispered, “Bye” as my eyes lingered on him, willing them to say things I wasn’t sure I had words for. I wish we had more time. I wish I could get to know you. I wish you could have kissed me.

The next morning I woke up to the message: I loved meeting you. Sorry I had to rush. Hope we can see each other some time in the future. Goodnight and good flight. It made me smile and I carried it with me as I boarded my flight and flew back to cold blustering London.

Upon my return, we kept in brief contact, a few conversations but mostly a bit of chit chat here and there. A series of things happened and also didn’t happen that led me to consider flying back to Valencia to see Alex. When I actually booked the flights, I knew it wasn’t going to be for him, about him or about us. I was doing it for me.

And herein lies the Love Story: not about chasing a boy to Spain but with myself. Alex signifies the biggest, bravest, most daring thing I will have ever done in my life. It represents living on a whim, grabbing opportunities and gathering experiences. It is a promise to myself to always grow and expand as a person. It is proof that I am bolder and stronger in the aftermath of loss. In the face of loss, I continued to smile and laugh and built myself a new world to inhabit when the other was burned to the ground.

I am still young. I am still free. I am now unattached. In a little over a week, I will be back in Spain.

So take a deep breath.

Jump into the unknown.

Live.