How We Got Here
It is a sweet and beautiful thing to be introduced to a lover’s love. I hope you get to come close that feeling at least once in your life. It felt like a divine hug from the Universe/God/Allah. Other-worldly and spiritual. Rewind to last November: Someone I dated very briefly visited the city I live in and introduced me to his partner.
I had really liked this person at some point in my life. We met at a networking event the year before the pandemic. I would have been lying to myself if I said I could see a real future with him—we were just so different—he was more corporate (definitely the kind who would use the word “liquid” to refer to money), I was more hippie-dippie, but I liked him. He was someone whose company I enjoyed and whose thoughts and opinions I welcomed openly and even, warmly. I liked that one of our hang-outs consisted of a really long un-glamorous sweaty walk.
When we were chatting at the coffee shop he and his girlfriend/fiancee(?) turned to me and said something along the lines of “Taking inspiration from you and your digital nomad life, we are both consultants now and only working part-time.”
Hearing that though, was funny, like an old timey gag where someone slips on a banana or someone’s face gets pied, and then the sad trombone plays. In my body, it felt more like a punch in the gut plus sad trombone womp womp womp echoing in my head for a long time. Because at the time of their visit, I was not only working full-time for one company, I had also been working part-time for another. I was exhausted. I wasn’t in my usual headspace. And I did not feel inspiring.
What a wake up call to get! A former lover and his partner telling you that you somehow inspired them. The two reminded me how hard I had worked to shape my life before I had allowed anyone/anything to derail my vision. It led me to face the current truth that whatever life I was living, did not allow me to be ‘myself’. Whomever I preferred to be.I felt suffocated and stuck.
Less than a month later, I handed in my resignation.