A few days ago, I stumbled across a journal that I bought when I lived in Chicago in 2019. It’s leather-bound, has roses etched into the cover, and the first page reads, “this journal belongs to [I wrote in] a caterpillar.” I haven’t opened it in years. I probably should have kept it that way. But instead, I started reading. There were entries about Chicago, about P, about the strange little life that we were building together, and about the future I was so certain was coming that I had already begun mentally decorating it.

And just like that, I fell through the trapdoor, down the rabbit hole, and embarked on memory lane of the beautifully tragic relationship we had over the years. Back into a relationship that somehow stretched across more than a decade without ever following a straight line. Back into the endless question that accompanied every unfinished story: “What if?”

2008: BEFORE WE KNEW ANYTHING

I met P through my best friend in the summer before our senior year of high school. There were nights spent lying on her trampoline staring at the stars, doing absolutely nothing and somehow feeling like we were doing everything. And because this all was in the millennial Stone Age and AIM was a thing, P and I stayed up obscenely late talking about everything – our dreams, our families, our experiences, and everything else that hopelessly romantic and innocent teenagers can talk about when they believe that another human being has somehow discovered a secret entrance into their soul. Music became part of our language. When we were too insecure to say something directly, we sent songs and lyrics filled in with every hidden meaning. That would become a theme.

We remained “friends” through college. I was in downtown Chicago for a couple of years, he was in Milwaukee, and occasionally our paths crossed. One of the more memorable evenings we spent together was just before I moved to Colorado. I remember coming home so disappointed because I wanted nothing more than for him to kiss me for the sake of off all the years, and the possibility of it, and simply for goodbye. I later learned that he was dating someone at the time. Morally admirable? Absolutely. Information that might have been useful beforehand? Also yes. I think this was probably one of the first clues about us: we could talk all through the night about the meaning of life and still somehow avoid the information that actually mattered. It was then that I realized that our whatever-it-was-relationship lacked true honesty and transparency. But then I moved a thousand miles away and life continued. I looked forward to his regular “Happy Friday, Devil Girl” texts and I especially loved sharing more music. We became very good at living separate lives while keeping this tiny emotional door cracked open between them.

2013: FINALLY

Ah finally in the same place at the same time when I visited Chicago for some time. Both single and ready to mingle. A miracle, it seemed. Apart from many rounds of bending rules in Twister, that time was well spent strolling beaches and stuffing our faces with pizza and apple ciders, then eventually going on an actual date. When he dropped me off, he was so adorably nervous and he finally kissed me. I was on cloud nine. After years of almost, something had finally happened! I went back to Colorado convinced that the universe had finally gotten its act together.

Then actual life resumed. School kicked my butt. I got overwhelmed and did what I historically did when overwhelmed – I disappeared inward. He interpreted distance as rejection convincing himself that I’d met someone else. He tried to reach me by sending me cards and care packages, and instead of feeling loved by those gestures, I felt pressured by them and retreated further. The more he reached, the farther I pulled away. The farther I pulled away, the harder he reached. We didn’t know it then, but we were rehearsing a dance we would perform for years.

Then, one cold November night, his patience ran dry, and there he was. At my door. In Colorado. He drove from Chicago to simply see me and figure out what the heck was happening between us. This is the sort of grand romantic gesture movies have conditioned women to adore. Apparently I missed that seminar. I froze. I couldn’t have the conversation he had driven a thousand miles to have. I asked him to meet me the following day, only to learn the next day that he’d driven away, back to Chicago. And that was the last time we talked. 

2016: CLOSURE WITH TEQUILA

Three years later, out of the blue, P popped back into my head. Apparently my brain likes complications because he had a girlfriend at the time. But we were meant to be, right? So I reached out. No response. I tried again. No response. I thought I was so romantic when I wrote a letter to him but because I didn’t know his exact address, I constructed what can best be described as a Russian nesting doll of envelopes with forwarding addresses. Inside was a flash drive. On the flash drive? Justin Bieber’s “Sorry.” Psycho much? Hold tight, there’s more! But first – no response. Eventually, I flew to Chicago because apparently the logical response to someone’s silence is showing up at their door. I wanted in-person closure. What I got was tequila.

I can’t remember how many shots I needed to have the courage to face him, but eventually we ended up bar-hopping together, assigning one topic of conversation to each bar like two emotionally constipated diplomats conducting peace negotiations under increasingly questionable blood-alcohol levels. Seems like it should have been a night to forget. Instead, it was a night I will always remember. I thought I got my foot back in the previously shut door. I thought this was going to be the beginning of us rebuilding what we’d let crumble three years earlier. But I didn’t hear from him for months again. Until of course, his then girlfriend broke up with him. Naturally, I was livid due to our history of feeling like each other’s last resort and that horrible question between us: Were we choosing each other or simply returning to each other whenever life rejected us somewhere else? Eventually one of us – probably myself – caved and sent a song to the other because we reconnected a few months later.

2018: MAYBE DEFINITELY

Without a doubt, one of the best years of my life. I started on a new professional and educational path. My body was in top shape. I was really invested into teaching group fitness. I’d traveled some and more was in store. I had thriving social connections. I had clarity. I had peace. I was experiencing life in the best way I knew. P and I were finally a unit. Long-distance but a unit nonetheless. After nearly a decade of orbiting one another, I thought we had finally landed. But like any relationship, we hit a few roadblocks that stretched and tested our devotion to one another and toward the end of the year, P gave me an ultimatum – move to Chicago so we could actually build a life together, or stop pretending this relationship could survive indefinitely between two states. I chose Chicago. I loved him enough to say goodbye to the place that shaped me and felt that this was a necessary step to break the cycle of [my] distant behavior, which made [him] feel insecure in our relationship, and was causing [him] to lose trust in [me] as a life partner. 

Before the move, we spent the most magical Christmas break in Europe. Barcelona first. Then Christmas with his family in Poland. The final stop was my hometown where we attended a New Year’s Eve wedding for one of my childhood friends. With the way 2018 was going and how romantic that trip was, I was convinced he was going to propose and we’d finally have our rom-com come to life in full capacity. Before the trip, I DIY’d Christmas ornaments for our parents with our photo inside. In my head, I already knew what the progression would be: this year’s ornament – us; next year’s – wedding photo; the year after that – baby, or at minimum an ultrasound.

Was I so madly in love? Was I a psycho? Both? Lady Gaga has a song “Stupid Love” and I don’t think love is stupid but it sure did make me do stupid things… Anyway… He did not propose. I presume I was such a ghost in his life for so long that he needed more time to believe that I was actually worthy or deserving of it. So I decided to prove it by moving to Chicago.

2019: PLAYING HOUSE

At last, we lived together. I finally felt like I had it all. We had it all. We had time. We had love. We had passion. We had dreams. We had each other. We had everything. Except a solid plan for how to tackle the rest of life. We got by one day at a time playing house and whenever anyone asked about our future, he’d say we’ll wing it (będziemy kombinować). I don’t think his parents were ever too fond of our arrangement. I was essentially a stay-at-home girlfriend and dog mom while still being academically and legally tied to Colorado.

I technically could not have lived or worked outside of Colorado and because I was no longer working, I only had health insurance sponsored by my fellow Colorado constituents, aka Medicaid, downright useless in Illinois. So one ordinary February Wednesday, we went to the downtown marriage court to officiate our civil union so I could get on his health insurance plan. And the journal entry reads: “Oh, how inadequate do I feel… feels like we’re going through with this out of desperation, not exactly what I imagined “marriage” to happen. But I love this fool and am so thankful for him and his open heart! He is the BEST! <3<3<3 Stay tuned…” That last part hurts a little now. Stay tuned. Because I did. I compiled a list of venues for the real wedding I assumed would eventually follow. I imagined the dress. The family. The next chapter. I even practiced my signature with his last name. That’s how obsessed I was with the idea of intertwining our lives.

The next entry described the whole experience in a dive bar of courts, aka a janky basement office with very tacky decorations, a very nosy receptionist, and enough absurdity to become one of those stories we assumed we’d laugh about when we were old #crisscrosshands. And just like that, we were pronounced “partners in life” but we also became partners in crime since we didn’t share our dirty little secret with almost anyone. Certainly not our families. They’d probably ripped us to pieces knowing that that’s how we got “married.” And for a little while after that, life was wonderfully ordinary. Weekends with his parents. Trips back to Colorado. Exploring Chicago. Traveling. Playing house. Imagining forever. Until the phone rang.

THE UNTHINKABLE HAPPENED

We were vacationing in Virginia when my dad called: “Mom’s cancer has metastasized. She has maybe three weeks to live.” There are moments in life that don’t merely happen. They split time. There is everything before. There is everything after. And that’s what happened then. Once the immediate shock wore off, we drove from Virginia Beach to Richmond just to fly back to Chicago a few hours later and drive to Colorado on almost no sleep. Caring for my mom with stage 4 cancer is described in a different post, so I’ll spare the details, but it completely destroyed the version of me that belonged to the future I imagined. It destroyed virtually all of my relationships, and especially my relationship with P. 

We said many things to each other during that time, sometimes things we didn’t even mean, and often did the opposite, always ending up disappointed. He wanted to help but didn’t know how. I needed and wanted the help, but didn’t know in what capacity or how to ask for it. My every reaction to everything and everyone, especially P, was intensified because of my internal anguish. I was so angry all of the time with everything “resting” on my shoulders that I made him feel like he didn’t belong in the family. But it felt like my whole world fell apart and I was busy keeping it together and the people in it with glue and tape all the while he claimed I pushed him away because [he] took care of [his] girlfriend’s mother at home while she worked with her father running their house cleaning business, she kept pushing [him] away, she and [him] barely spoke to one another, and [he] ended up getting dumped and losing [his] job all at once.

STAR-CROSSED LOVERS

My mom eventually died. My dad a couple of years later. And somewhere in there, the future I had imagined with P also died. None of it makes sense. It simply feels incredibly unfair. Time passes but the sting doesn’t get any duller. It disappears for a little while, just to come back with vengeance, just like that cancer did. Because almost 5 years later, here I am deliberating whether the choices I made back then were right. At the end of the day, we all strive to do our best though, right? Or maybe I am just so clouded by grief and guilt to talk myself into believing that he really was the victim in all of this mess. What I have left of that time is now over-analyzing the past and creating countless what-if scenarios in my imagination only to get too attached to false beliefs. 

The more I over-analyze though, the easier it becomes to believe that P and I were never meant to be anything beyond star-crossed lovers. We chased the idea and the drama of us for so long. We wanted The Notebook kind of love story, only to learn that we were always destined for the Titanic. Our relationship always operated on extremes of euphoria and isolation and we never found the middle ground. We are both strong thinkers and even stronger feelers, and when we were out of alignment, we let our biggest insecurities become thieves of our thoughts and disrupt the actual truth. Though who knows what the actual truth ever was. P was often a walking contradiction and it was challenging to discern which part about him was real and which part was just a mere fantasy.

Sometimes I think that we tried to build and gain footing on a foundation flawed with deep cracks. Once the storm rolled in, that foundation wasn’t strong enough to withstand it. We had the desire. We had the passion. We had an extraordinary ability to find our way back to each other. What we didn’t have was the right kind of love. The patient kind. The kind kind. The kind that doesn’t keep score. The kind that allows two people to be unapologetically honest and vulnerable with each other free of any judgment. We didn’t create a safe space where we could be stripped of pretenses to unravel all the brokenness and unleash our innermost thoughts, pain, past, and trauma without the fear of rejection. We loved each other, but we didn’t know how to make love feel safe.

For a long time, I believed I needed P to lead us through it. I needed him to lose the ambiguity and be clear and decisive, especially when I couldn’t be. I wanted him to tell me where we were going, and when and how we’d get there. I had spent so much of my life being strong. When I finally couldn’t be, I wanted him to be stronger. Maybe that wasn’t entirely fair. Maybe it was. I’m no longer sure every question needs a verdict. When my mom relapsed, my dad told me she would have wanted to see me in a white dress. I told P. We decided the timing wasn’t right. But I don’t think there was ever going to be a right time for us. We got to cheat but could never rewrite the stars. We connected so deeply through music only to become a fleeting love song in the end. Beautiful while it played. Evanescent nonetheless.