Falling in Love With My Life

Dear Baby Maybe,

I started this year with a goal.

I wanted to fall back in love with my life. I was coming out of 8 months of unemployment, taking a break from dating apps, and clearing my mind to focus on taking better care of myself. And I will say, professionally, I’ve bounced back. But personally … I got a little distracted.

See, it’s easy for me to pretend my career is my whole life. Because for so much of my adult life, it was. I used to work multiple survival jobs at a time to keep myself afloat on top of freelancing in theatre and as an educator. This isn’t a new thing for us. As a teenager you will find that you work on as many shows as you can on top of school, just to stay busy. But in the last couple of years, I’ve been given the opportunity to slow down and actually live my life in the moments between work. I now run my own consulting practice and largely control my own schedule. Although the idea of slowing down sounds nice, I don’t necessarily know how to do the living part of life anymore. I don’t know what to do in the slowing down. For someone who has been called self-centered so many times in my life, I’m realizing I don’t actually know how to focus on me.

All I’ve ever wanted…

Most people who don’t know me very well probably assume that I’ve always wanted to perform for a living. If you look at our yearbooks, even back to yours from elementary school, everyone was telling us “can’t wait to see you on Broadway one day.“ But the reality is, that wasn’t necessarily my goal. That’s not your dream. That was just the thing people expect us to want based on what they know us for and what we’re good at. But I can’t actually tell you anything that you always wanted to be growing up. You don’t have a dream job. We never really planned to have a future.

The only thing I have always wanted to be is loved.

Romantic love. Passionate, unconditional, shout it from the rooftops love. I have always been a sucker for rom coms, just about any romantic story line can tug at my heart strings. I have always wanted to be chosen, to be with someone, to be an us, part of someone’s we. But I’m starting to come to terms with the idea that it’s the one thing in life I might never have. Which I know is okay. I know that a romance does not complete you and several people that I love and respect stay single their whole lives through. A lot of people actually choose that. It just really bites when it’s something you actually want so bad. But perhaps that wanting is actually what’s keeping me from it. Perhaps the pining for someone to choose me and to choose to stay is actually sending them away.

I had taken a break from dating apps at the top of this year, but when I returned it was with a looser goal. I wasn’t trying to seriously date, I just figured I’d meet people and see how things go. And then I met Derek. Derek and I met on an app that is built for couples and singles to meet. It’s an app built for non-monogamy. It’s not the kind of app where you find the kind of thing I’m typically looking for. But some of my trans friends suggested I try it, citing their own successes that would encourage mine. And there was Derek, another fish out of water, on the app for the wrong reasons, looking for monogamy.

We instantly started talking every day. The talking phase lasted about a month before we actually met, and before our first date we were getting to know each other by sending video messages back and forth. When we finally met it was like that cliché was coming true, I found the thing that I wanted just as I stopped looking for it. Derek felt like a breath of fresh air. It had been about seven years since a guy stuck around for a month, let alone kept seeing me for more than that. But about three months in, Derek changed his mind. He didn’t actually want the relationship. He wanted to try non-monogamy. He wanted to slow down. He wanted to meet other people. And he knew that wasn’t what I wanted.

I was stunned. I was devastated. I was crying on my couch when I realized that I wasn’t crying over him. I was crying about how close I had gotten to what felt like the real thing. And ultimately, I was crying over the realization that it was never going to happen for me.

A week later I was back on the apps.

I was lining up dates to just meet people and have some fun. I had two guys lined up back to back, Friday and Saturday night, in an attempt to get Derek and disappointment out of my system. Both were guys I had talked to before, otherwise it would have taken me longer to get comfortable meeting up. Joe and I had talked about a year ago, but never ended up meeting. So when we matched again, he told me he didn’t want to miss the chance this time. I never met the other guy. Joe came home with me Friday night, and he didn’t leave until Sunday morning. We immediately launched into a dynamic and passionate romance, again it felt like all of the things I had been longing for were finally coming into place. That was, at least, for a few weeks. A month later, and I stopped hearing from him. Completely disappeared. Absolutely ghosted. No explanation, no closure, just gone.

I didn’t cry over Joe. I don’t think I ever really believed he would be around long.

Between the feeling of betrayal from Derek and the absolute disrespect Joe showed, I realized that something had to change. I couldn’t keep letting this happen, and in reality I started to question if I even wanted the big romance anymore. Did I still want a relationship? Or was I falling into old habits when these guys showed me a little attention? One thing I knew for sure, it felt like they were more interested in the idea of a relationship than they were interested in me. And I was too easily losing sight of what I was supposed to be pursuing.

Halfway into the year, after these two whirlwind romances, I realized I had not been falling back in love with my life at all. I hadn’t even thought about that in months. I was focusing on men again, not on myself. I was hoping that a man would kickstart my life for me, make my life exciting again, and help me feel the joy that I was missing. But if those men are temporary, then that joy is temporary. And I want a sustainable joy. I want a love that I don’t know how to explain. I want to fall back in love with my life, and have my life love me right back. So here I am, starting over again, and trying to understand what I actually want.

There’s this Kelly Clarkson lyric that I’ve always loved, but never really understood.

“Doesn’t mean I’m lonely when I’m alone.”

- Stronger, Kelly Clarkson

The problem is, I am lonely when I’m alone. I don’t really know how to not be. It’s on my mind all the time. When the seasons change, when I see couples holding hands, when I am offered a plus one to an event, when I’m choosing what to have for dinner, when I’m looking at a skyline or an ocean or a brick wall, wherever. Since I was you, I have always wanted someone there with me. And I don’t know how to shake that.

But I’m going to try.

You don’t know much about dating, but you are consuming a lot of media that gives you a lot of the expectations and hopes I’m talking about. Obviously things are different for me, you think you’re going to be a man dating women, but I’m a woman dating men. There’s a whole world of discovery between you and me, but I’ve been watching shows and movies from your time recently, and realizing that the world of dating I was exposed to in media doesn’t exist anymore. Not because it was Hollywood, but the expectations have changed.

I think if you watch Sex and the City and identify with Carrie Bradshaw, you should fundamentally rethink your relationship to dating. So, since watching the series for the first time this year, that’s what I’ve been doing. But there’s one thing she might have the right idea on. I’m watching this show, and remembering that the standard was that after a first date, you don’t call the person for three days. That’s what you’re seeing on TV and in movies, but today that would probably be considered ghosting. Hell, Joe spent three days with me as our first date! But I’ve been thinking about my issues with dating and wondering if taking things slower would actually be helpful. After realizing how most people start barreling through the motions of a relationship instead of actually getting to know someone at the pace that makes sense for them, I can’t help but wonder if the pace of dating in the 90s actually made more sense. Nowadays if you don’t get a text three hours after a date you might start panicking. So I want to start trying to take things slow. I’m leaning into leaning out.

When Derek told me he wasn’t interested in a relationship, he talked about timing. He said he didn’t want the type of thing where you talk all the time, every day. And the more I thought about it, the less realistic that dynamic feels. So since I’m now trying to do the slower thing, since I’m shifting my expectations of dating, I decided to send him a text. I KNOW, he’s your ex for a reason and you’re not supposed to, blah blah blah. But the reality is, I wasn’t looking to rekindle. I was looking to readjust. We got along, we had great chemistry. We stopped seeing each other because we wanted different things. But after I reassessed what I want, I realized it might actually be compatible with what Derek wants.

He was surprised to hear from me. He was even more surprised to find me asking to make out. (We’ve never been one for subtlety.) So Derek and I started texting again, intermittently this time. About two weeks later, we found a time to catch up. And we picked right back up where we left off. We moved at our own pace, not at the speed of expectation. We’re both still talking to and seeing other people, but eventually we got back on the path of talking just about every day. And if that ebbs and flows, I think that’s okay. I think I’d actually prefer it that way.

So much of my adult life has been about taking what you’re learning and experiencing through growing up, and then figuring out what we really want. And when I strip away all of the expectations and standards I’ve internalized over the years, Derek is what I actually want. It’s not what I always thought I would want, but it’s what works for us. I have a sweet guy who thinks the world of me and treats me the way I deserve to be treated. And I still get to have and live my own life, which is increasingly important to me as I get older. I’m still able to focus on me, and I’m not expecting him to make my life more interesting or worth living. I’m able to do that for myself, and also be with him.

As I navigate dating more than one person, I was talking with another guy who asked me how I was still single. I always hated that question, but even more so now. So the next time I saw Derek, I asked him.

“Am I single?”

“Do you want to be?”

And that’s how we got our first boyfriend since High School.

Your Future,

Mae