Why we search for love during a crossroads in life

One of the topics of discussion at the dinner table this Christmas was about my mild hearing impairment and how I probably have ADHD. As the holiday season is the time for everyone to gather for feasting and napping on the couch with our phones on our faces, I told plenty of friends that this conversation was happening.

My diagnosed friend said he could see it. The No Fuckboi Zone in particular shared some experiences with their own anxieties and depressions. Thanks to the group text, this was the year the bond between us members of the group got stronger despite the distance growing longer. We’re easily accessible for silly conversation and pictures found on the internet; we’re in each other’s pockets and on each other’s screens. We noticed her absence when A’s phone was left at home and she went to the hospital. We felt its weight in our hands when our lives moved on through the stories we tell on social media. Her interaction was gone and it caused you to wonder if you’ve ever struggled with something so bad yourself.

She left during midterm season. It was another kick in the gut to the rowing team that just felt sad coming together without her. Having to change lineups to fill her seat. It placed so much added pressure on E than he already imposed on himself that the times I saw him were fleeting. It wasn’t until finals when I learned about his fling with a teammate with whom I’ve always seen there being chemistry. It wasn’t until New Year’s when he told me he’s falling for his ex again and that the teammate actually cheated on her now ex-boyfriend with him.

He reminds me of myself at the very beginning of this year. I was a junior and started noticing boys other than my boyfriend, who called me at 4 AM his time, 7 mine, on a Saturday in February weeping. He was recently stationed in San Diego, got in a car with dudes LA-bound, got dropped off in Oceanside and got a motel room. Called up a hooker who didn’t come for two hours. By then, he was remorseful enough to pay her and send her away like he was Hemingway. He cried through all of this and disclosing that he’d been paying for video chat sex since before I met him. I asked if he was okay, if he was in any danger, why he was traveling alone, and if he was making the kind of friends who would leave him alone at a bar on a night out. I wasn’t mad, upset, or even that surprised at anything besides the shocking difference between us that was made totally and unforgivingly glaring that day. I started having crushes on other guys and broke up with him in March in an LA hotel bed the night before we were supposed to go deep-sea fishing and to see the Clippers play, both experiences being my first. I took it back and broke up with him over Skype two weeks later. I wore shorts and a tiny jean jacket among a boatload of people in overalls and boots with fishing equipment they brought with them, and spent most of my time chatting with the chef and chugging coffee. The fish weren’t biting and I concluded that I’d probably enjoy fishing if it were summer and I was drunk.

The only difference between me and E is that, while he internalizes every real raw and personal moment, I [used to] kiss and tell everyone I know. I then used the perspectives of my friends to hash out the words spoken and analyze the interactions made between me and my latest boy obsession. Sometime around the same time A left school, I discussed dating objectively with R and he said that he found that it hurts a lot less to lose something you were excited for when you haven’t told anyone you were excited about it. I ate that slice of wisdom and translated it a few months later to mean that I needed to prioritize being productive to better myself rather than win over the hearts of my friends. I was suffocating them because I wanted to distract myself from being left to fear what lies beyond college.

Between school starting and stopping, moving in and out, working and taking time for yourself, you surround yourself with people of different demographics set in different environments.

Isn’t it crazy the emotions we go through when we experience transition in life? I had a fucking rollercoaster ride when season was over and I needed to fill my restored waking hours with something that either resembled indulgence or structure. It was my last semester, and I had overloaded the past 5 semesters consecutively. I was graduating early and chose indulgence more often than not as a way of rewarding myself for my hard work. Unfortunately, my attitude towards leisure was met by very few people, and I spent most of my time searching for interactions that would deplete any time I would otherwise spend alone. While almost everyone was living at 70 percent work and 30 percent play, I was operating at 10 percent work and 90 percent play and persistently texted a long list of numbers while already spending time with others to ensure a smooth transition between activities.

The beginning of the semester was easier because everyone started out at my ratio. In late August, I invited T to my apartment to smoke and we ended up listening to Chon while I layed in his lap and he stroked my hair. I asked him to meet me in the Grove one day in September and he couldn’t stop touching me in cute PDA ways in front of my friends. At that point, I didn’t think it cute because I didn’t really know him. We both had Fridays off, and spent them sleeping until 2 PM and cleaning the kitchen for 4 hours. I began to really know him, while simultaneously forgetting myself. One Wednesday morning, before he was leaving for the day to continue building a recording studio in a Philly basement, I pounded on his door and knocked on his window and drowsy T to sunbathe on a wing dam. It was 8 AM and I apologized because I was scared that he was going to be severely annoyed with me. He thanked me twice for waking him up because he slept through a few alarms. The frame to his glasses was broken and the lens would occasionally pop out. He didn’t come over that night until I was already half a wine bottle deep because I was upset that we were supposed to have a “T-squared day” that day. I pulled out the super glue that I picked up earlier that day, fixed the frame and got too drunk and high and fell asleep mid-sentence, he said.

We made tacos for his roommates, two of which I had become friends with before they ever met T. They reminisced about when and how they met me, and the impressions that I made which started our friendships. Entering freshman year, I still didn’t give a shit about anything, and was placed in my classes while most of the freshman class chose or preferenced classes because I neglected my new college email account. I was stuck in a gender history class about women in American films. J said the moment he knew he liked my vibe was when I dragged my dorm neighbor’s folding lounge chair, a bag of Spicy Nacho Doritos and a soda and set up my theater swag in the back of the classroom on the last day, which was dedicated to watching Rocky and commenting on Adrian’s choices and limitations as a woman in the Seventies. R had a few funny stories and I remembered that we were partner attorneys for a Supreme Court simulation we did in Constitutional Law. We argued that provisions of Arizona S.B. 1070 violated the Due Process rights of a Mexican dude who was racially profiled and detained on his way to what is basically Arizona’s version of the YMCA but targeted to Latinos. The officer asked for his papers and when he wanted to know what the hell was going on, the officer said his tints were too dark. My professor was pushy about formatting and, in mimicking real Supreme Court briefs, I found and fell in love with Georgia font.

I started hanging out at that house 3–5 days a week and my role in that group changed over the course of the semester: hanging out with T to going out with R and J to becoming very close to P when things were decaying with T and P felt the need to draw better friends into her life after feeling abandoned by V who also lives in that house. I weaved myself in and around the six souls who live in the house next to the fire station. On Homecoming night, P and J hooked up. At 12 PM on Halloween, P wanted to know where the trick or treaters were. “They’re coming by later,” R said. “Right after they hit the bar at the bowling alley, stop at the liquor store, Zainy’s which has just about everything offensive, the halfway house, Phi Psi’s party house, the crack house across the street and the community meet ups that happen outside.”

P was having panic attacks all semester and didn’t tell anyone until she started having one the night during finals that we were going to coincidentally show up in the gym at the same time as J and T. She could lose her green card if the cops ever came to the house that was so dank that one of her friends said she could smell it when she pulled her car up in the driveway. I took care of her, but she stressed me out so much that I smoked in front of her both in the car and back in my room. I talked to T about it on the night of Thanksgiving and was the last to respond to the conversation. Everyone agreed to tone it down and P didn’t move out. I’m pretty sure I’m just equal parts friend to each person in that house today, although a tiny part of me doted on the idea of there being something with T again in the future for a very long time until I realized that I deserved more. And as I began to focus primarily on ways to learn and become more, my self-worth increased to the point where I am simply happy. My interests are my own; and I don’t have to settle for being anywhere where I, as a person, am not understood.

Indulgence comes at a cost, and what I learned in this period of unabashed indulgence is that it takes a week of uncertainty to match an hour of joy.

Uncertainty can take the form of feeling insecure in your relationships with others; it can send you reeling into one of those moods where you question if you’ll ever realize your passion or accomplish all you want from life. I’m no psychologist but maybe this is a sampling of anxiety that everyone tastes at some points in their lives.

This is why we search for companionship in times of transition and instability. Given a bit more free time and the volatility of sleeping in a different place and doing different things, we more open to connecting with others to communicate life changes and process the world revolving around ourselves. A friend once said the process was called hiber-dating, so why it seems like everyone is getting together in the fall and breaking up in the spring every year is because they are. (A stoned Google search beginning with the term brought me to this hilarious search result.) So we change with the seasons, and the change matures us. And, most importantly, we learn more about others and with whom we keep close to our hearts and invest time.

The cyclical nature of hiber-dating takes a toll on us. We demand independence and the presence of a partner threatens that. The tension between two people who don’t know what they want makes us insecure. The comfort is replaced by nervous energy or annoyance. We become independent again, only to attract a relationship some time after that, in a new season.

But we’ll learn how to better define ourselves, our expectations, our strengths and weaknesses through this process. Our periphery extends a bit further as the seasons change, and we’re able to process events in our lives more efficiently with experience. We become better judges of character and are able to more clearly identify what it is about the special people we keep around and how they influence and are reflective of who we are.

I’m excited for the new year because I am excited to love myself in the ways that I produce and explore my interests and passions. I’m thankful for the people I’ve brought in my life, and I look forward to the challenge of finding a connection with new ones.