I wish I had a better way to explain myself to myself. It would have saved my mother a significant amount of money on awful therapists, who seemed to intentionally put lipstick on their teeth? I was generally told everything I was doing was wrong, so I just stopped doing and I became stagnant. I felt my light becoming dimmer every day, until recently that is.
March 16, 2020, is when it all started to change for me. It was my last day working in the service industry and my last day giving any f**ks about what people thought of me. It’s crazy to think all it took was a global pandemic for me to dump my sloth of a boyfriend and pursue my dreams.
I was in an awful emotionally abusive relationship for years because I never thought I could do any better, because he literally told me I couldn’t do any better. He continued to break me down, body shame me, tell me I’m a horrible person, and that everyone hates me almost every day. I started to believe it. Soon enough I found myself stuck in a depression so deep I honestly didn’t think I would ever come out of it. I searched for comfort at the bottom of a bottle and a bag of cocaine. Of course I never found it there. I was ready to say goodbye to this world because according to him all I did was create misery in it. When he finally left, my life restarted. In a way I was given a second chance to live the way I wanted to and be loved the way I knew I deserved to be, so I started dating women.
I downloaded all the apps, which I had never used before, I had no idea what I was doing. I set my preferences to women and began swiping, and swiping, and swiping until I found her. She was someone I was attracted to and had similar interests with, a rare find so I thought. She came on very strong and insisted on coming over the next day, I didn’t believe she actually would because of my ridiculous trust issues (thank you sloth), but my apartment buzzer rang right when she said she would be there. “What the f**k am I doing?” I literally said out loud as I stared at the buzzer debating to let her in or not. She was extremely good looking and smaller than me so I figured I could take her if I needed to, and I did, five or six times. I liked her. I couldn’t stop writing about her eyes. As expected, after a few weeks, things changed for the worse. She began talking about her past relationship constantly and it was clear there were much deeper feelings there than with me, so we parted ways not so amicably. I was angry because I opened up to her even though I didn’t want to, but she was really hot and we had insane sex. I’m pretty sure I lost all control and just let myself drown in her. I f**ked up, but it’s over and I moved on very quickly.
I soon realized that I had a very specific type of woman that I was interested in, and they were few and far between it seemed. It turns out that I found a connection and similar interests with another woman maybe not even a few days after my not so amicable parting of ways with the first. She lived nearby and due to the pandemic she was also not working, so we went out the same night we started talking. I felt nothing even close to what I felt the first time, but I didn’t care, I needed to get over her. So we get to talking and of course the lovely topic of ex partners comes up, so I tell her a bit about my last. I quickly came to understand how small the lesbian community is in Toronto and maybe even in all of Ontario because of course, she knew her and she doesn’t even live in the f**king city. We hung out once more after this, but it was extremely uncomfortable and that was obvious on both of our faces.
At this point after my “experiences” with online dating, I started researching “foster litter of kittens” while still at the table with my dates. Yes, an entire litter. I was coming to terms with my spinster fate, I love cats and they sell great vibrators on amazon. Why would I want someone else’s pubes in my drain anyway? I tried to convince myself that love isn’t worth it, repeating like a mantra, “love isn’t worth it! Love isn’t worth it!” But this didn’t and would never work. I am a hopeless romantic and will probably never stop looking for my person, but as long as there are no more sloths in my future I think I’ll be all right.
Fast forward a week and let me introduce to you the third girl, let’s refer to her as “the poet.” So some day of the week (quarantine ruined my concept of time) I was having a lonely spinstery evening. After polishing off a bottle of wine, and not thinking twice about opening another, the swiping commenced. As previously mentioned, I developed quite a type, so I generally only swiped right accidentally or when girls fit my “criteria.” I swiped right on someone I had no attraction to whatsoever, and I could try and blame the wine, but in reality I was probably just giving up and wanted to get laid. She was at work that evening, bartending, which was perfect because I was not nearly as drunk as I wanted to be. Around 11 p.m. I went to meet her outside, she was actually pretty cute. I had always wondered what it would be like to kiss someone with a lip ring. I found out relatively soon after that. We talked, we drank, we kissed, and I felt nothing. She left a couple of hours after. We texted a bit throughout the week but that came to a complete halt when she told me she thought I was looking for something “too serious.” Little did she know she was one of my accidental drunken right-swipes that I was horny enough to go with. I never responded to her texts and we never spoke again, but for some reason she continues to follow me and watch all of my stories on Instagram. Classic.
Goodbye shitty dating apps, I surrender to the single life. Since quarantine I have gotten to know a lot more people in my building and they are lovely humans, except one, you know who you are. I really didn’t have much going on during the day so I would often go sit on the stoop out front and smoke and soak … in the sun. That’s when I really started to notice her. I could tell she was a little shy and guarded so I always made a point to say hi first. I would try to make small talk but she always had her dog with her and would walk away. Good thing I enjoy a challenge. Maybe I should have just gotten a dog? Finally though, I asked if she wanted to have a drink sometime, she said yes, and in my mind I said F**K YES. Again she had her dog so she continued on her walk, she didn’t give me her number but she did tell me which unit she was in. I personally would have gone the other way around but I suppose my 5’2 stature and pink hair isn’t threatening. In true nerd fashion I decided to write her a note with my number and leave it outside her door. Apparently it was cute or something because when she got home from work she texted me. I was at the beach when I received it and no joke I got up and jumped around squealing like a teenage girl, what is wrong with me? I have not spoken to the friend I was with that day since, I don’t blame him. I already knew I liked her, I already knew I wanted to be the one who made her smile, and I really wanted to know what it was like to kiss her. After the first night we hung out we were pretty much inseparable. I was all right with it and I think she was too. We texted all day while we were apart so we felt like we were together. We started making dinner together every evening and sleeping next to each other every night. Everything about us was just damn cute.
It’s almost been a month since I left that note outside her door. She’s my girlfriend now and I’m hers. She listens to me when I’m ranting, she smiles at me when I’m angry, and respects me always. Thank you for making me feel beautiful and loved again. She noticed that I often said “thank you” and “I’m sorry” for things that I don’t need to say thank you or be sorry for. I explained to her that it was a rare occasion that my ex-partner would want to do things for/with me, such as installing an air conditioner, or picking up wine when I can’t get away from my desk. She makes every day just a little bit easier, and at this point, I can’t imagine dealing with another mental break down without her.