In the 1938 novel The Conspiracy, Paul Nizan writes: “I was twenty once, and I won’t let anyone say those are the best years of my life.” This sentence always made me feel less lonely. My twenties weren’t the best time either. I spent them thinking they should be extraordinary, exciting and romantic, and I couldn’t make it happen. That decade felt somewhat heavy when it should have been carefree.
I was paralysed by opportunities I wasn’t taking, but how could I take risks in a world already so chaotic? Then I moved to New York… ha! But before, I was scared of not becoming somebody and had no clue which somebody to be. Instead of being me, I got trapped in false identities of my own making.
I thought that every decision would be monumental and fateful, engraved in stone forever. Like I was terrified to buy a house and settle somewhere. I thought I should succeed before I had even started on my journey. I believed this with such conviction that it suffocated me. Any direction I went would be misguided, I felt like I was standing on the platform with everyone around me boarding their trains. And more thoughts such as I didn’t have the right instruction manual, I wasn’t born in the right place at the right time, I didn’t have what it takes to make it, my choices would corner me forever like a marriage I could never get out of.
Since my early childhood, I was told that a couple was always a man and a woman and that they should be together forever. Marriage and fidelity included. My grandparents set the tone: married at twenty and until “death did them part”. For life, then, for better and for worse. Many friends parents’ arguing opened a new chapter in my understanding of the construct until they stopped fighting and the tension at home was replaced by relief and divorce. So I ended up with a shaky view of it all: should I believe in love, and, more important, is it even possible?
And what about good old monogamy? One person there with me through every stage of life, evolving at my side? A comforting theory, but in practice not so simple.
In retrospect, my love life hasn’t exactly been a straight line. It wasn’t what I expected or anyone predicted. It wasn’t always fun, but I have experimented, hesitated and made mistakes to better understand myself. Through the good and the bad, I did things my way.
There were the transitory companions, and partners I loved passionately while knowing I could never live with them. I raised other people’s kids until I met someone with whom I had my own. These partners all watched me grow, encouraged me, and loved me in their way. And I realised that time, longevity, the commitments it entails isn’t everything. These different kinds of love were a spectrum, never the same twice, but never wholly unique either. While the official definition of a relationship once comforted me, my experience has shown me that I contradict myself and am constantly changing.
As if for guidance, I start observing my friends’ relationships more closely and how they get by (alone, as a couple, or sometimes more). In addition to traditional relationships, I see new arrangements hatching. For example, a couple might be together but living apart. Better to have two studios than one big apartment, and a relationship that lasts. I also inquire into their experience with solitude and routine, with daily life. Some openly admit not needing sex anymore. Others affirm their lack of desire to have children: they are happy with the balance in their single life or their relationship, and the responsibility of caring for someone else threatens that harmony. As for fidelity, many tell me that they believe in it and they adhere to it (that reassures me), but also that there is value in keeping some of that intimacy a mystery. And that it is possible and even common to love someone, to fall out of love, and then to fall back in love with them again. Others have their particular way of cheating boredom: for some, it is cheating, for others, it is fighting temptation. Out of all that, I hold on to the advice of the wise Ruth Bader Ginsberg, “it helps sometimes to be a little deaf”, since, in the end, most of my partner’s imperfections are unimportant…. or not worth splitting up over.
At this stage in life, as new romantic opportunities present themselves, I realise some things have changed over the years. I used to want the thrill of love above all else, even if that meant suffering, exhaustion, frustration. It wasn’t just the love of being in love but also probably an attempt to conform to preconceived – and not always accurate – notions of what I thought a love story should be.
Never mind the changes in society and others but what has changed in me? My heart, just like when I was twenty, still want to beat wildly. But I have learned to take people as they come, whereas previously I might have been put off by their flaws, dismissing them summarily if they weren’t exactly what I wanted. I no longer demand perfection because I have learned that we are all fallible.
I had so many fears back then that today I am not afraid. I know that if I don’t reach for it, no one will give it to me. Sometimes all I need is to permit myself. I know that I will never regret my misadventures. And that sometimes failures are successes in disguise. I know that I can take the wrong path and it’s okay. That I must be grateful for what we have. I know to take life one day at a time. That life is what I make of every day. I know not to cry over lost loves. I know how to love and be loved. I know that sometimes I have to shake things up to avoid repeating the same mistakes. And that smiling is one of life’s greatest weapons. I know that something better is always on its way. And that there’s always a light after the storm. I know not to force it if stuck but choose another path instead. Nothing is forever.
