The One that Got Away

This romance started after I’d completed my third year at university. My memories of that time are hazy but the initial feelings of “summer” romance are familiar. He was smart, quiet and serious. He thought I was shallow and a bit of a bimbo with my high-pitched voice and giggly laughter. Despite our significant personality differences, we started to hang out anyway. I remember this one exhibition we went to. It was hosted in an old school building. It was uninteresting and there was cheap alcohol, so we had some fun. I had dragged a friend along because I wasn’t sure if he liked me and I was feeling quite shy around him by that point.

His previous relationship was three years long and had been with a French lady ten years his senior. His past intimidated me a little. How could this man hold the attraction and attention of a seasoned lover? I felt inexperienced and girly in comparison, but over time I started to find myself around him and he made his feelings clear to me. He was going back to France for another year of exchange so we kept things friendly rather than romantic and decided to wait and see where we’ll find each other after one long year (and my final year at university). We kept in touch, we missed each other. My life got busy and messy. Then I pushed him out of my mind and got involved in hopeless romantic entanglements.

He came back, and I shared with him all that had happened since we parted ways, I was always honest. I had graduated with some emotional scars and I was due to start a job when I was feeling depressed and completely lost. I avoided him, but would return to my sweet ways when I was with him. I always found solace in nature. We would picnic around reservoirs with wine, smoked salmon and a baguette from the nearby NTUC. He would listen to me patiently and kindly, as we shared stories of family troubles and identity struggles. But then, I’d disappear for weeks getting involved with whomever I pleased to ease the pain of all that emotional baggage I was carrying with me. I’d want to connect with him, fail, but I didn’t want to break his heart. I really really didn’t. So I would cowardly drag him along instead. I’d feel ashamed and confused about seeing other men. So I would go back to avoiding him. I could not stop digging myself deeper into this hole of emptiness.

Why did I feel so depressed, lost, empty and confused? Many other people have said it better than I can, but it just comes down to: Why am I here on this planet? To do my crazy dance? What does it all mean? What’s my crazy dance? I just wanted to be normal and not feel so many things all at once! Death was in the air and I needed to be there for my loved ones. I was completely consumed with sorrow. But I also couldn’t feel a damn thing. He tried to understand, he tried to be there, but I couldn’t let him no matter how hard I tried. He pushed to help, and I pushed back.

He eventually got fed up with how unreliable I was. I was hurting him too much with the lack of communication. He decided his life would be better off without the repeated attempts at making space for me. I wasn’t making any real effort to show up for him anyway. I know it was a difficult decision for him, and I remember walking around Orchard trying to delay the conversation (break-up) awaiting me. I was so low on courage at the time that I didn’t even express any sadness.

Looking back, it didn’t make too much of a difference if he was a part of my life or not. I was consumed with my own demons – and I was deep in the process of trying to understand my inner darkness. A few months later a mutual friend invited us both to a group dinner. It was a very isolating experience, sitting at the end of the table while everyone in the group except for the host ignored me. I felt the weight of my exclusion but it was a farewell for my friend so I remained quiet and kept my chin up through the drinks that followed the dinner.

While walking back to the train station, he found his way to me. I tried to make small talk and found that we still had a warm connection that reminded us of the good parts of our relationship. He took the train back with me and I started to share with him some of the things I had learnt about myself while he’d been gone from my life. He had been diagnosed bipolar a few years prior so he suggested I speak to a therapist. He’d been there before, he understood. I could also feel him slipping into that role he used to occupy in my life all those months ago, and I knew I had to stop this conversation. I was raising his hopes again and I knew this time (slightly better) that I was not ready for the open loving relationship that he deserved. But of course, I didn’t say any of this to him. I just swallowed it in and kept quiet.

He started contacting me again with renewed hope and this time I just ignored him. It was the best thing I could do at the time to protect him from any further heartbreak. His last communication to me (till this day) is expressing that he doesn’t wish to see me anymore. Not many people will understand how hard it is just let another person think that I’m a bad person, to fight the impulse to correct them or to play the part of the good girl. My first act of courage was to accept that I was an unkind person. By just letting him be, it was the first time I opened my heart big enough to acknowledge his reality.

The One with the Girlfriend

I liked him from the moment I said hi. He had that open demeanor that made it so easy to just be yourself around him. For a nineteen year old half-formed woman like me who was so used to pretending to be someone else (a smarter, more organized and type-A version of myself), it was liberating to be in his company. He had the ability to see the good in people, to focus on the best version of them. I nursed a crush on him for two long years. We’d sometimes study together, with flirtatious glances thrown in between. He’d ask me questions about the course, since I was just oh so gosh darn it smart. It was just so sexy to be with a manboy who was comfortable acknowledging his weaknesses, willing to be vulnerable and just be himself.

I knew he liked me, but I also knew he had a girlfriend whom he cared for and loved very much. I continued liking him and building my connection with him over study breaks, meals, whatever time we could spend with each other as friends. It was harmless. He went overseas for a year, we barely kept in touch and his presence in my mind faded with time.

I remember this year from my life as a haze. I had just discovered the TV show Mad Men, and I was captivated. It captured my existential dread perfectly. I was young with no goals in life and lots of energy. So I spent my time being deeply and profoundly sad about something (anything!) while still checking all the boxes by functioning as a student, daughter and friend. I had my first experience in an internship with a bank – and I had just discovered alcohol. Mad Men had done a very good job of glamorizing alcohol consumption and unhealthy romantic relationships. And these two items together, create a perfect storm.

It was chance then that he came back with his own existential funk and that was the fuel needed for our fire to burn. A drunken kiss is sometimes just a pointless drunken kiss, but not with him. This was two confused people who are passionate about life connecting over how unsure we felt about who we wanted our future selves to be. We both needed each other in some way – to understand ourselves better by being in each other’s patient company.

He would listen as I poured my heart out about all the things that didn’t make sense to me about how the world worked. Why did other people care so little? Why didn’t other people feel as sad as I did? How could they just accept such a substandard life? He would answer me in a good humoured and gentle way enumerating all the good things I had in my life. But what did we really have to look forward to? Jobs? Marriage? Kids? Mortgages? I had a revulsion to “normal”. I think he was figuring out his future life with his girlfriend in the same drift.

The guilt that accompanied this encounter was debilitating. I never thought I would end up wanting to have a man in my life that was already taken. He would say “I have a girlfriend…” and I would respond “I know”. In the midst of this excess emotion, I was clear in my mind that my relationship with him was for a season. I liked him so much and the feeling that we could help the other figure themselves out was so strong, but what good was a relationship built on someone else’s heartbreak and betrayal? I am sure there are ways to do this kindly, I know now that ending a relationship is not the most unkind act, it could be to prolong a relationship you’re no longer engaged in or care about. But I didn’t know that then and I chose to walk away and I never asked myself the “what if…” impossible to define question. It was a colourful, meaningful, sometimes painful season of my life.