Day 28

Day 28 – Happy Valentine's Single Awareness Day!

It’s not very progressive to question why we’re still single – we rarely say it out loud in case it undermines our independence. But we’re secretly wondering… right?

Eight years ago, I left my partner of two and a half years. By that point my unhappiness and anxiety had tippled over into drink and so began the early days of my alcoholism.

I was on an important work trip, a history-making moment for the company. I was exhausted but it was an incredible experience. From that moment on, everything changed for the company and my perspective shifted dramatically. When I returned home, I knew I had to leave my partner if I wanted to nurture my future and career.

After a drunken confessional with a colleague, I stumbled home and went full-on-Blue-Jasmine: “I-I just can’t do this anymore,” I spluttered.

He was unsurprised but devastated all the same. I felt awful but inside, I breathed a sigh of sweet relief. It was for the best. I’d found the courage – however liquified – to put myself first. At least I’d have my career to focus on whilst we navigated the break-up/having to live together…

A few days later, I was fired. The company reassessed following the success of the trip and needed only the best team. Years later, I’d come to find it was my drinking and the affected behaviour that led to my firing. It brought me closure, but I’d known there and then, sitting in the meeting room, my manager saying: “the one person we don’t need right now, is you.”

I was unsurprised but devastated all the same.

From then on, my drinking took a turn for the worst and would penetrate every personal/professional move I’d make in the coming eight years as a response to what I now understand to be trauma. Of that firing, the moment I took a wrong turn, plunging off a cliff, and of the past mistakes/trauma pooling at the bottom. It was as if falling so far wasn’t enough, I'd hit rock bottom only to find a manhole had opened up beneath me.

I have been single ever since.

What I want to talk about today is the moments leading up to this point, ones I made some sense of, lying in bed wondering: why me, why now?

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8 Years... 8 Lessons...

1. It’s fair to say, I approach the world of romance with high expectations. I had been out of the closet for much of my teens, and to my family since I was eighteen. I went all the way up to university without a partner. That’s a lot of years daydreaming about the perfect relationship, imagining how it would feel to share my innermost self with another person. The reality came as something of a shock, forcing me to grapple with a challenging question: If I want to be in a relationship, will I have to compromise on my ideals?

2. With my active imagination and zero experience, I had preconceived standards that developed into a vision of my partner – a vision that was based on a fictional ideal, a person I once knew, or simply the stories I told myself about how love “should” look. I compared that person with the ideal soul mate I envisioned. Unsurprisingly, such comparisons tended to weed out more than a few potential partners and for real, flesh-and-blood person to live up to a cherished dream.

3. In the early days of my relationship, I was given an ultimatum. They were ready to settle (at 20?!) and I had never even been on a date before. For them, it was all or nothing. And I didn’t want to walk away because I genuinely liked them and wanted to see where it would lead. They continued to have reservations and it took a long time for them to let that go. I blamed myself and thus tried even harder to prove myself. It was my fault I was single all those years while they were having relationships.

4. I quickly reveal just how much passion thrums beneath my quiet exterior. I’m devoted and loyal, nevertheless I respect independence, aiming to accept a partner as they are. I was always dreaming up ways to improve myself and the world around me. The last thing I wanted is for my partner to feel unhappy or stuck. Yet, I had no experience, so they had the freedom – and power - to design our relationship. I contributed what I had, but the architecture was fashioned by them. We lived in their relationship, in their world.

5. I was hard to love. A difficult, high maintenance person. An imposition to be tolerated. Cornered into a position of inferiority that had me dependent on their affection. I either didn’t deserve to be happy, or this was “happiness”, and I was just too selfish/naïve/inexperienced to appreciate it. To avoid triggering a conflict, I avoided talking openly about what was bothering me. I mentally fixated on the problem and tried to solve it on my own. I focused on making my partner happy, to the detriment of my own priorities and sense of self.

6. I denied myself the process of grieving, not necessarily for the relationship, but for the procession of shit that took place at that time. Leaving my partner, losing my job, our tenancy coming to an end. The drink clouded my judgement, it made me look at life through a darkened, noxious lens and interpret everything and everyone as something other than what they were. I felt guilty because I made these events happen. I fucked up, I walked away. It was something I did.

7. These were hard lessons to learn about myself. I wasn’t perfect, and they had their flaws, some of which projected and morphed into parts of me I don’t like. This is why it’s difficult to reflect. At the very heart of it, we were just two kids who moved too fast. We were ambitious, broke, jobless, trying to survive. This could have been easier to do together, bring us closer, but it drove us apart, for survival forced us to shed the skin we’d grown in, and in the end, we were very different creatures.

8. There's a theory that suggests we take the blueprint of our last relationship and create the same dynamic because we want a second chance, to right our wrongs, to stop time, to change the narrative. I'm terrified of falling in love, of trusting in someone, believing that they could love me back. I’m bias toward harmony, but that means nothing if it means sacrificing my standards. Without growth, there’s only entropy. So, I’ll bring that sense of self-improvement into a relationship for the benefit of both of us.

What Now?

For a long time after that first relationship, I’ve harboured resentment that has stirred up feelings of control and manipulation. For years, I have listened to people who care for me theorise that I may have been in an abusive relationship. This terrified me, confused me. I unearthed a deep distrust and shame in myself that has made it almost impossible to move on and grow. For years, I was a high functioning alcoholic - drink heavily influenced the ways in which I viewed my past, how I described my experiences and how it allowed me to cherry pick the details of my suffering....

Today, I let those feelings go. Armed with the renewed sense of hope and self-awareness, I’m closing that chapter with the burning intention to unstick myself and move forward. Still scared, still single, still dreaming Richard Madden will rescue me from all of this. Still a true and compassionate seeker, always learning, always moving forward.