I.

I met my ex abroad in Australia six years ago. He was actually quite rude when I introduced myself to him at a rugby game. I found this to be intriguing, after hearing he was the nicest person on the planet (which, by the way, is still true). Eventually, we became friends, and stayed in touch when I returned home to the states after my five month excursion. A year later I returned Down Under for a six month job contract, and we reconnected and eventually started dating. He moved to America where we lived together, happily, and continued to date for three more years.

I was living a fairytale, but it wasn’t mine.

It was when I moved to New York City for a job I couldn’t turn down as a producer for a digital media agency that I began to realize it wasn’t going to work. After a year in New York it was clear that our paths were diverging. It wasn’t an epiphany, but a slow decline. In fact, it happened at such a slow pace it was nearly invisible. Gradually, we stopped communicating. We stopped sharing parts of ourselves. We started sleeping with our backs to one another. At one time, when we said, “I love you.” it meant, “I made you tea with two sugars.” It meant, “You don’t have to go through this alone.” It meant, “I’ll leave the light on.”

Over time it became so mechanic, it started to take on a new meaning. It simply meant, “See you later.”

II.
There are all kinds of love in this world, but never the same love twice.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

It wasn’t that I didn’t love him, because I did. I loved him in a way that I’ll never love another person. When somebody uproots their life to be with you, they become part of you, and you learn that it’s okay to never stop loving parts of some people, even if you know you have to let them go.

We spent three years traveling between three different countries, juggled visas, plane tickets, jobs, and apartment leases. We imagined a life in a country where gun laws were stricter, education was cheaper, and weather was warmer. With ending the relationship and closing that part of my life came a wave of self doubt. Did we try hard enough? Were we making a mistake? Was I going to be alone forever? Would I eventually acquire 500 house plants and become a crazy plant lady?

There was no weight lifted off my shoulders like they promise there will be. No “closure.” As friends around me starting having babies and weddings, I yearned for the only thing that could tear us apart. It was the only thing I wanted during the only time in my life that was truly and completely mine.

Turns out we just wanted different places. Different things.

He wanted Australia. I wanted a career.

Have I looked back? A thousand times. I’m a human being. It not only goes against everything I thought I wanted, but it goes against what society has told me I’ve wanted since I was five years old. I had my Prince Charming, there was nothing else that I could have possibly needed, except none of it felt like me. I’ve looked back, and each time that I do, I know that staying in New York was the right choice at the time. I was barely 25. I wasn’t ready for a marriage, or children, or a perfect home in a quiet town. That’s not to say I’ll never be ready for those things, and looking ahead to 27 looks a lot different than looking back at 25. I just knew that I’d deeply regret not taking this time for myself, and I’d like to think that there’s some strength and bravery in saying that out loud.

III.

There’s a lot of buzz about what it means to be a “strong woman.” As if being a woman is rooted in our capacity to fulfill specific roles. If you’re a “strong woman” people will ask you when you plan on settling down. If you’re a stay at home mom, people will assume you have no dreams of your own. The woman who dreams of getting married and having children because that’s what she wants for herself (and what I want for myself, by the way, someday) in my eyes is JUST as strong as the woman who moves to New York City to chase her dreams. There’s no right way to be a woman. There’s no field guide. At the end of the day, ignore what they tell you is right for you. Only you know that. All I can ask is that you look at the direction your toes are pointed in before you take a single step. Make sure you see yourself in your stride.

Choose you.

Because I didn’t choose a career over a love life, and I didn’t choose a city over a boyfriend. I simply chose me. Sobbing hunched over the bathroom sink watching my own mascara drip down the drain after he moved his half of our memories out of our one bedroom Brooklyn apartment, I chose me. Accepting that someday he may choose to love somebody else and I hope she’ll be everything he deserves, I chose me. Giving up a future life in a foreign country surrounded by friends and family I’ve come to love as my own, I chose me.

So now, at my dimly lit computer desk swallowed by the glow of my computer screen at 6 AM, balancing getting to my office on time with finishing this article for publication, I choose me.

Again, and again, and again.