How I learned to stop wasting my time

I sat on a well-worn velvet couch in my underwear, glancing around the dimly-lit, sparsely furnished room. I nursed an afterthought of a cocktail, made with the few items left in Anthony’s sparse fridge. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there, like I was somehow crashing his party of one.

“You saw that our ex-mayor went to jail, right?” he asked as he walked back into the room with his own drink, sitting down next to me but not close enough to touch.

I looked up, startled that he’d acknowledged me after several minutes of silence before responding, “Yeah, it was all over the news. I heard he got over half a million in bribes.”

“They gave him a ten-year sentence you know.“ He took a thoughtful sip of his drink. He wasn’t looking at me but staring back into the kitchen, the only source of light in the apartment, deep in thought.

I glanced at him. He was average-looking at best, and the fluorescent light coming from the kitchen wasn’t doing anything for him. Why is he talking about this, of all things? Surely this isn’t his standard for romantic conversation.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked to break the silence.

“What if,” he said, turning his gaze on me, “you were given ten million dollars for spending ten years in prison. You’ve done nothing wrong, so there’s no guilt. Would you make the trade?”

I thought for a few seconds before answering. “No, I don’t think I could do it,” I said, furrowing my brow. “Why, would you?”

“Yeah, I would definitely do it,” he said without hesitation.

“Why would you?” I asked in a tone that I knew dripped with judgment. “These are the best years of our lives. You might have ten million waiting for you at the end, but you’ll have horrific experiences that will dampen its enjoyment.”

“Why would you not?” he retorted. “It’s a relatively short time for a large payoff, and you would otherwise have to spend those years, not to mention the years afterward, working at a mediocre job and being similarly miserable.”

For me, his argument held little weight. In an instant, I responded, “Perhaps, but if faced with that choice, I would choose to spend my ten years in such as way that they were worth as much, or more, than $10 million.”

“Time can never be worth that much,” he chided. “At least with the money, you will have more control over how you spend your time.”

I paused, frustrated that I didn’t have a better response. I knew it was no use trying to argue with him, realizing that our answers were different because we approached the question with a different mindset.

To him, this was an equation, which made the decision easy. Time had a finite value and money had a finite value. Both could be easily quantified and traded. Just like that.

I thought the value of my time was infinite. I argued that if I lived a full life, there was no amount of money that could buy it away, for what do we have other than our time?

But even as I laid out this argument in my head, I was overcome with an uncomfortable sensation in the pit of my stomach that suggested I hadn’t fully convinced myself I was right.

After all, I was sitting in an uninspiring bachelor pad with an uninspiring person who had at best a fleeting interest in me, shivering in my half-dressed state, sipping on a mediocre drink. And I had chosen all of these experiences myself.

Of course I couldn’t believe in my own words, because I was not living them.

I glanced back at Anthony. While I had no particular aversion to him, I was not attracted to him either. The force that brought me to his side was more rooted in my own needs and insecurities than anything I saw in him.

“Let’s just agree to disagree then,” I said, taking another deliberately tiny sip of the cocktail and wincing. God, this drink is terrible. I set the mixture, unfinished, on the coffee table in front of me.

We sat in silence for a while. I couldn’t find a single word to say to him because the notion I’d been pushing repeatedly from my mind, that our fling was a dead end, kept me in a stranglehold. What made it so impossible to leave when I clearly didn’t want to stay?

That was easy enough to figure out. I had thrust myself into a brand new, imposing city far away from my family and friends. I found it difficult to form meaningful relationships, to settle into my job, to find harmony in my life.

Anthony’s attraction toward me was the only thing that brought me comfort, even if he avoided any situation that bore semblance to a date. Even if he rarely texted other than to make plans to meet. Even if the sex made me feel disengaged, as if I were floating above my body watching an unconvincing staged performance.

I felt I had to throw my anchor somewhere, and at that point even a rocky shore would do. I was afraid to say goodbye and forgo the validation, the small victory that his attraction brought me.

But at the same time, I had been building my own prison, wasting time on those who didn’t deserve it, robbing myself of millions worth in happiness. How long would I lock myself in?

The uncomfortable sensation in the pit of my stomach grew with this realization, or perhaps with the shitty liquor I’d consumed earlier. I said softly, “I’m not feeling well. I think I’d better go.”

He snapped out of his own thoughts, his face still turned toward the unforgiving fluorescent lights.

“Yes, you should probably head home,” he said, rising from his seat without looking at me. I felt an irrational disappointment in his dismissiveness. Though I didn’t want to stay, I didn’t want him to want me to leave.

I put on my clothes slowly and silently, contemplating him in my periphery once or twice before saying goodbye, closing the door to that apartment for what I knew would be the last time.

My footsteps on the stairwell echoed my loneliness, and even as I stared up at the lone lit second-floor window from the sidewalk, under the harsh glare of the streetlights, I felt regret wash over me.

Despite our lackluster romance, I valued our intellectual debates, even the one we’d had that evening. I’d let things go too far, too fast, yet again. Otherwise, he might have made a good friend.

I knew there were many things I had yet to learn about relationships, about what I valued in my life. I knew that my epiphany wouldn’t suddenly guarantee a life filled to its brim with love and joy, but it was a start.

After all, I still had time, and time was precious. As I walked away from his apartment building and our relationship, I could only hope he would do something more valuable with his.