The first time my heart was injured by love, I was 16. The last time it happened I was 27. In the years in between, it’s been cracked and dented and shot at and nearly demolished and ripped apart by ugly hands. It still works though, or so I’m finding out.
Don’t get it twisted - I believe all the research I read. I know about the 4B movement, I’ve underlined entire pages in my physical copy of I Hate Men by Pauline Harmange, my TikTok algorithm is doused with angry women telling me what the rules of modern dating are, and my closest friends are reporting back that they’ve been to hell and back at the hands of yet another villain who we must now paste permanently into our burn books. I think all my friends are brilliant women and you should consider yourself so lucky to be talking to them. I know I do.
Personally, I’ve spent years with my whole life padlocked away behind a fortress, refusing to even engage with someone new. I’ve decided, over and over, I’m never doing the song and dance of love again. It hurts too much. It takes up time. It never ends well, and it always ends. I’ve imagined and conceded to a reality where I don’t marry and instead live on a farm alone in a small town in Switzerland with two dogs and several books to my name.
Liars and cheaters and time wasters and psychopaths, they’ve all sat across from me in dimly lit bars and beds around the world. Men never understand me. I want to run away from them. I want to live on a different planet where only women can live. I am angry with them. I think they all need therapy. I’ve read whole books teaching me about the pay gap, about the data biases involved in a world designed to cater to them, about soul crushing divorces and the scary, unimaginable violence they commit. I think my life would be so much more convenient if they weren’t prowling the streets. I feel uncomfortable in elevators full of them. I don’t like that I have to practice, on a daily basis, being louder than them to just be heard.
For a while I decided I was too smart for it all. I got so peeved with the idea of men in any platonic or romantic sense, I stopped talking to or engaging with them. I thought - this is just horrible and I despise everything associated with romance. I should go get another degree and learn to really like being alone and not waste any time with dating. I vowed and stuck to celibacy. I did get another degree. I unlocked a new level of self love that I’ve never had before. I built a full, good, enjoyable life.
Unfortunately for everyone involved I am a heterosexual woman and a poet and a hopeless romantic and a delusional optimistic neurotic fool so I find it hard to avoid men entirely. I’ll keep colliding with them whether I like it or not, in all the ways I shouldn’t. I’ll find myself seated across from them again and again, at war with my mouth and eyelashes.
I see the future now - I’ll place some bad bets on some bad people. I’ll find out things I wish I’d never known. My intuition will be right but I won’t trust it in time. I’ll need the entire Taylor Swift discography all over again. And yet, I still find myself returning to the pursuit of love like a drug addict on the loose from rehab, chasing the same, obstinate high. I can’t help it.
That is how I love. With my mouth open, talking about every detail. Loud and reluctant, overthinking every move, stumbling along in the blind. Sorry not sorry, This year, I’ve decided to open my heart up to its desires without shame, because it deserves to feel monstrously desired in return. I’m dipping my toes in again knowing nobody will ever break it fully. It’s unbreakable. I’ve taught myself how to mend, quickly and gracefully. You can land a good punch or two, you can inflict real hurt, sure, but you can’t take me down. You’ll die trying. Like a spring, I am annoying and determined to bounce back.
It’s Swiftian, perhaps, of me to continue to desire love. Or it’s just idiotic (sorry Taylor). Still, I find my resolve is one of my best and worst and most incurable traits. I lunge at the possibility of love with both hands. I meet lots of interesting, beautiful strangers. Sometimes they can’t see my magic, and I’m totally fine with that. I’m not for everyone. As soon as they greet me on the street, I wield my charm and power. I kiss back if the moment arrives. I stay if I’m wanted and if I want to, otherwise I make a clean and precise cut in communication and disappear. I drink dozens of free espresso martinis (great Hinge prompt if you want to use it, by the way) and find new bars I love in all the city’s neighborhoods and receive compliments with grace and call my Mom from the Uber home to tell her how it went and then send tipsy voice notes to my friends as I climb into bed with my skincare done. I think it’s a different kind of fun, dating. These days, I participate often and play well.
And God, it'‘ll really be fine if I fall flat on my face. I’ll get up. Early stages are low stakes, anyway. I’ll write poems and recover. After my heart takes a beating, I’m actually convinced my skin gets clearer and something else in my life works out as a reward, the Universe’s way of saying - good swerve, here’s a gold star.
I’ll exercise my belief and unwavering optimism until I find some idiot who looks at me and gets it. He’ll be and know he’s lucky. And hell, if I never meet him, I’ll have lived my own life knowing I got to document experiences that were special and personal to me, and maybe somewhat relatable to you, reading this.
Still, my first reaction to being asked on a second date is always nervous, genuine surprise. I still think, you want to pick my brain again, pay money to have me sit across from you again? I want to ask why. Not from low self esteem, but from curiosity. Not from wanting to change or curate who I am, but from the desire to return the favor to another human being.
I guess it’s better than sitting in my apartment alone, pulling at the strings of the past with my fingers and rolling my eyes at why the doorbell hasn’t rung, some tall and endearing man delivered in Amazon packaging to my front door willing to give me exactly what I want. It’s braver and more exciting to experiment and experience, to put on a good outfit, to show up, be young, have hilarious stories to tell everyone.
It’s fun to participate, despite what the outcome might be.
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P.S. - I read this incredible, hilarious, gorgeous think piece by Heather Havrilevsky on her substack, Ask Polly, and have thought about it once a week since. Writing this reminded me of it again. And this little punch packer of a poem by Yena Sharma Purmasir also roams through the hallways of my mind like a friendly ghost. That’s all, see you next week!