Dating in your early 20s during a time in a very dystopian world that feels like it's falling apart every other day makes me ponder often , the time that we have is precious. Grief very much changed my outlook on life itself it made me notice how I want to live much more purposefully and with intention. I realized through grief that every aspect of my life even dating was impacted because I no longer was seeking idle spaces, I wanted to feel the entirety of my emotions and no longer come from a place of avoidance and fear. It's strange to marry the two ideas of grief and dating but I found that grief greatly altered my life.
It was through grief I realized that I want to love with my entirety with my whole being but I still did not want to drown in anyone. After I started dating again it didn’t take long for me to feel like I was drowning in the people I was seeing whether that be in my own imagination or spending every day texting them.
Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by emotion that I feel lost. Lost because I shared parts of myself with strangers and while I enjoy meeting people I also feel like I was beginning to lose myself.
I had spent several nights going out to bars and restaurants and meeting people and there is that ever-imploding exciting rush when you meet someone new. There's nothing like that feeling of newness or familiarity as if you met someone before. I think it's why I believe in past lives so much because you can meet someone and you don’t have to translate your soul to and you know it's different, its special and you just can’t shake the feeling that this person is going to be significant in your life. That you two are going to be something special. Maybe that's fictitious and rooted in fantasy but there is the hopeless romantic in me that hasn’t experienced romantic love yet but still craves it and looks for it in every person that I meet. That spark, that undeniable feeling that you just met the love of your life and nothing will be the same. Or is it just pure infatuation or like Bell Hooks describes in her book All About Love it's just cathexis? We invest emotions into a connection that has lasted approximately 5 hours. The adrenaline and dopamine pumping through you is addictive in nature and are the kind of high that we search for and crave when we become enthralled by someone.
I recently met someone and they felt so new. They were exciting and exhilarating, no one I had ever met before. They made me feel alive and desired by the way they would look at me, and the way they would touch me would make me feel like I was the only person in a room full of strangers. That rush stays with you, that connection is a high that reminds me of a drug.
I think its the most beautiful part of when you first start seeing someone and its the most terrifying part because you ponder when the shoe is going to drop? You wonder what is the catch? What is there fatal flaw? And there always is one because that's just life, because were human.
Its so easy to project into the future because suddenly you realize you can’t replicate that feeling that you’ve felt with another, so you hold on for dear fucking life or you run because you know if you let them in you might suffer the greatest heartbreak of your life. Because after all, I think we all know a mile away if someone is going to impact our lives we just don’t know how.
I know nothing last forever, our mortality is timed and we don’t know how long we have but what we do know is that we have right now. I’ve gone on other dates since then and I’ve come to realize when your first getting to know someone I like to bask in the getting to know someone phase. I like to throw myself in experiencing a person because I don’t know. I don’t know how long it will last. One thing is for certain impermanence.
