Before Sunset

Earlier this year, I started a failed writing project.

On a walk during my lunch break, I stumbled into a book store and picked up one of those popular “get-to-know-people-intimately-by-asking-them-insanely-personal-questions” card games. At the time, I really had no interest in hosting people to play it — I love my apartment, but my heat is spotty at best during the winter months and, while they do love me, I didn’t think my friends would enjoy being interrogated in the cold. Still, the concept of picking a card and telling a story was appealing to me, so, every month, I wanted to choose a prompt at random and write whatever came to mind.

I did it twice — “Anxious Sun, Avoidant Moon, Secure Rising” and “Stick of Gum” — and then, during what Zach and I refer to as the Q2 Crash Out (save for four nights, I did an activity every! single! evening! for two-and-a-half straight months; this inevitably led to a montage of chaos, culminating in me sobbing on the MetroNorth at midnight out of pure exhaustion), I couldn’t find time for writing (this is upsetting because writing is the thing that makes me, me) and stopped.

I am no longer crashing out and have actually gotten pretty good at prioritization in my personal life, so — as we are approaching the last third of the year, I wanted to try this project again. With fresh eyes and spirit last Monday morning, I pulled a random card out of the deck before leaving to workout. I was… immediately annoyed. The card said “tell a story about a time that makes you cringe” — and I couldn’t think of anything that really made me cringe. I rarely get deeply embarrassed anymore, something I realized a few weeks ago when I slipped down a full set of subway stairs in the rain, landed splayed out like a starfish, and just… got up as if nothing had happened.

Still, I figured I could pull together some sort of cringey story based on that fall. (I had been coming from getting my septum pierced and, after it was done, noticed a lot of men were looking at me on the train. I thought it was because I looked hot with the new piercing – I later realized the fall had caused my tube top to shift and my entire nipple was out on the whole commute from East Williamsburg to Astoria). Writing a story around that had been my plan until I walked into my workout class, saw my ex-boyfriend in the room and… immediately cringed.

To clarify, this does happen occasionally. My ex works at my gym and, while I’ve been mindful to try to switch our schedules assuming he likely doesn’t love seeing me at his place of work, sometimes our paths cross. And, every time they do, I am humiliated – not because we dated, but because of how I acted… and how I ended it.

A handful of summers ago, I was upset over a boy. It was the “can’t-eat, can’t-sleep, call-Zach-while-crying-on-the-subway-and-leave-a-voicemail-insinuating-I-was-going-to-throw-myself-into-the ocean-with-the-sharks” type of devastation. (I was down bad). I had not felt this way about someone in a long, long time — from the moment we met, the two of us felt locked in, like something big was happening and, so when he began to pull away, I felt incredibly small.

Eventually, our communication fully fizzled out (read: he ghosted me) and I swore that the next person I dated was not going to be someone I felt I had to convince to be with me. I wanted to experience what it was like to be genuinely wanted. When my now-ex asked me out shortly following that break up, he told me on our first date that he was dating intentionally. Despite me not knowing what my intentions were, I felt like this was a good sign of what I had said I’d wanted and we began seeing each other regularly.

Our relationship was not long – two-ish months, if that – but it moved fast and in a way I hadn’t yet realized I wasn’t comfortable with. He told his family about me right away, referring to me as his girlfriend before we’d actually had that conversation and, even though I definitely thought it was too early, I didn’t say anything. (I, famously, once dated the same person on and off in secret for two years because we were co-workers and, when he asked if I wanted to be official a year-and-a-half in, I said, “Don’t you think it’s soon?!”). One night, he was coming over late and, knowing I would be asleep and that my building’s doorbells are decorative, not functional, I gave him a spare key. When we woke up in the morning, I forgot to ask for it back. A few days later, instead of giving me my key back, he handed me a key to his apartment. I should have told him I felt uncomfortable that things were moving too fast, but I again was silent, placing the key on my keychain with a smile plastered on my face while a panic arose in my throat.

And, that’s what I am humiliated about when I see him – that I was an adult woman and still couldn’t communicate my feelings. Again, he was lovely and, all things considered, a really excellent boyfriend. It’s on me that I never showed him any signs of the internal panic that was gripping at me every night. I once again couldn’t eat and couldn’t sleep, but for very different reasons. I now had what I had wanted, but I couldn’t figure out why it didn’t seem right.

This, of course, led to me finally breaking up with him in a way that must have seemed sudden and, of course, because I can’t do anything normally, in a way that made every person in my life groan when they heard what I had done. (TLDR: we met up for lunch and, with my head in my hands before he could even sit down, I said, “I can’t do this anymore.” When pressed for reasons, I didn’t say anything from the paragraphs above. I just kept repeating that same line over and over and then, (this is the bad part) handed him a gallon Ziplock bag full of Christmas ornaments I had taken from my own tree because we were supposed to decorate his tree later that evening and I felt bad that I was no longer going to be participating).

In “Before Sunrise,” my second-favorite movie and a movie I can only watch if I am Mentally Well, Ethan Hawke’s character tells Julie Delpy’s character a line that lives rent free in my brain. He says:

“You know what's the worst thing about somebody breaking up with you? It's when you remember how little you thought about the people you broke up with and you realize that is how little they're thinking of you. You know, you'd like to think you're both in all this pain but they're just like "Hey, I'm glad you're gone.”

I thought about this a lot when my ex reached out a month after I’d given him the ornaments, asking if I had had enough space and was ready to try again. I was not – I had already started dating someone from a previous job (a different one than the man mentioned before (I know)) and actually had not thought seriously about our relationship since he’d walked back out of that cafe door, Ziplock bag in hand.

I thought about that scene again – and maybe this is why I am so embarrassed whenever I see him – after I got broken up with this year. I was now on the other side of the break up. I was Ethan Hawke instead of Ethan Hawke’s ex-girlfriend and I. Did. Not. Like. It. Recently, I was reading through my journals from that time (mid Q2 Crash Out) and I found a line where I wrote, “I am angry that he is posting on Instagram while I am crying about him in therapy.” Reading that made me sad for the April version of myself, but also sad for my boyfriend from years before. I was not thoughtful in the weeks after I left him and I am humiliated and humbled by that now.

Ironically, the first person from this story – the boy that made me not eat, not sleep, made Zach come all the way to Bed-Stuy to wellness check me (he lives on the Upper East Side! he took five trains!) – has become one of my closest friends. Almost a year after we’d broken up (read, again: he ghosted me), we met up to clear the air and somehow, that devolved into him now being the person I text when I fall down the subway stairs, the person I call when I need dating advice, the person who snapped the cover art for this story while we were spending a spontaneous Saturday together.

Some of the most comfortable hours of my summer have been spent in his presence. By fully removing the romantic element between us, it’s led to a different type of intimacy – a platonic friendship that I cherish deeply. We knew when we met that our connection was big. It’s been fascinating to take that energy and transform it into the type of relationship that doesn’t run the risk of an expiration date.

A few weekends ago, the two of us were in the backyard of a cocktail bar, having the type of vulnerable conversations you can only have with someone with whom you feel incredibly safe. I expressed something about a previous relationship that had been on my mind and only later did I realize it was the thesis statement of a scene in “Before Sunset,” my first-favorite movie and a movie I can only watch if I am Very Mentally Well. Toward the end of the film, Julie Delpy’s character is telling Ethan Hawke’s character about how their one romantic night, years before, ruined her experience of love. She says:

“In a way, I put all my romanticism into that one night, and I was never able to feel all this again… It made me feel cold, like if love wasn't for me! Reality and love are almost contradictory for me. It's funny. Every single one of my ex’s, they're now married! Men go out with me, we break up, and then they get married! And later they call me to thank me for teaching them what love is…”

I talk about this concept a lot in therapy – I am a good dater and I enjoy meeting new people, but I can count on one hand the amount of men who have given me moments that made me feel like that. When those relationships end and I am thrown back into the dating pool with people I’m not fully connecting with (does the Q2 Crash Out make more sense now?) while they, inevitably, start dating someone else seriously, I can feel incredibly alone. I am no longer crying in therapy about my old partner posting on Instagram (we instead need to do a deep dive into why I am scared, at the age of 33, to tell my parents I pierced my septum earlier this month and yes, dropping this as a line in my newsletter they subscribe to is how they will be finding out), but I would be lying if I said that my feelings wouldn’t be hurt to learn we broke up because he wanted something serious… just not something serious with me.

And, to go back to the point of this story, the prompt that started it all, I couldn’t even be upset if that was the case – I myself did that years ago to my ex, which is why seeing him now makes me cringe.

Recently, I was at the gym, fighting for my life on the treadmill wearing my 16-pound weighted vest when someone I used to see who works there (not my ex this story is about, another person who works there (I know, my therapist and I see the patterns, too!!!)) approached me because he wanted to tell me he had a girlfriend now. I genuinely was happy for him – our relationship had always been casual and, while it had been hot last summer to be picked up by someone who was 260 pounds to my 130, he was not one of the handful of men who’d made me feel like that. (Also, he once asked if he could use my bathroom and then proceeded to do so with the door open). As I struggled to catch my breath while asking questions about her, the timeline of his relationship became more apparent… I was likely the last person this man had been with before meeting his now live-in girlfriend. It made me think of the next line Julie Delpy’s character says in my favorite monologue. She says:

“Why didn't they ask me to marry them? I would've said no, but at least they could have asked!”

I am aware there is a third film, “Before Midnight,” that, if I watched it, would likely become my third-favorite movie. I have yet to do so. Finishing the trilogy is something I would have to be Extremely Mentally Well for, and I don’t think my therapist will give me that type of full clearance until I stop writing blog posts about past relationships (or dating people who work at Equinox). Still, the fact that I am writing again, that I actually broke out of the Q2 Crash Out, feels good. While writing this, I flipped through my journal from that time again and found a different line, a more positive note to end with. I said:

“There was a line I read in a book the other night that said, ‘I am not here because of you, I am here by way of you’ and I loved the way it made me feel. I am doing it — this, life, me. I made myself into this person who I want to be proud of and, while I had relationships along the way that nudged me into this path, none of them did the actual work or made the choices. I did. Maybe people I date who I wanted to be with seriously find other people — maybe that’s okay. At the end of it all, I’m comfortable with myself.”