On starting over… again
I’ve experienced many junctures in my mid twenties, more than I’d have projected for a span of four years. From age 24 to 28, my life has shifted monumentally every. Single. Year. It’s been an era defined by volatility, formative challenge, and exploration. And I wouldn’t trade it for stability, no matter how many times you offered.
- At 24, my college-boyfriend-turned-husband blindsided me with a divorce.
- At 25, I sold everything I owned and bought a one-way ticket to Uruguay, then spent many months traveling through South America and Europe.
- At 26, I signed a lease, sight unseen, and moved from a coliving space in London to the Upper West Side of New York City.
- At 27, I got engaged to a person I thought would be my companion forever.
- And last week, at 28, I walked away from that engagement, away from my home in New York, into an unknown future.
I can’t tell if the latest change has hit me yet.
Three weeks ago, I was completely gung-ho about getting married in September. I was all-in, deeply committed, resolute in a decision that seemed, to me, predestined three years prior. I loved a good person, a truly kind soul, and we shared enough values to build a life together. So that was that — obviously I was going to marry him.
Except I didn’t. At the eleventh hour, I realized that marrying a good man with whom I shared values wasn’t enough for me. Sharing values is a prerequisite, but it’s hardly the entire picture. Our souls need to connect, not merely exist in proximate realities that rarely clash. Existing peacefully might work for some, but I want more than that.
I want more than a logical life. I want to run into the fire.
So now I’m here: suddenly single in my hometown with no idea what’s next, and I’m feeling… pretty okay.
Is it okay to feel okay after walking away from a three-year relationship?
After removing the ring from my left hand, stuffing it in a box, and placing it in my underwear drawer next to bits of lace and stray socks where it won’t catch my eye?
Because I do. I still feel whole, I still feel optimistic and hopeful, and I still feel like me.
I’m very suspicious of that. When’s the other shoe going to drop? When am I going to break down into guttural sobs in public? That’s not to say I never feel sad; I have waves of emotion, of missing him, but they rarely stop me in my tracks.
More poignant is the sudden shock of adjusting to daily minutia without a constant companion. Moments where I have to remind myself, no, you shouldn’t text him that little aside, because that’s not your relationship anymore.
Or a realization that the future has now shifted slightly, oh right — I’ll be home for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, not in Ohio for one and Munich for the other. It’s reprogramming my routine, pivoting in a moment that I must remember to internalize and appreciate for myself instead of share with a partner. It’s sad, but not devastatingly so; I feel neither emptiness nor longing, fear nor panic. It’s not debilitating. It’s just different.
Which tells me that I had one foot in sea and one on shore for a while. I was too busy fighting for our relationship to succeed that I couldn’t see that it wouldn’t. I couldn’t see that the fierce independence of which I was smugly proud was evidence of diverging paths, not a strong and sustainable entanglement.
Last time I found myself newly single, I was completely and utterly shattered. My entire life, my entire psyche, was in tatters. Relative to that experience, I’m walking away unscathed this time around. And that feels somehow wrong. Like I’ve cheated the system.
Or did I go through the grieving process long ago, in the slow and subtle death of our relationship?
I suspect the latter. I’ve grieved already, and thus I’ve earned this position of clarity and strength.
I hope that’s what it is. I hope this isn’t a brief reprieve.
What’s next?
I don’t know.
I think I’ll make Durham my new home base. I’d like to rent something affordable downtown (an oxymoronic statement, to be sure) so that I can still travel often. I’m glad to be home, but still thirsty for global exploration, for the ability to jet off to Europe and spend a month working from an Airbnb.
I’m not sure what that looks like yet.
And that’s okay.
