How To Break Up When You’re Traveling Abroad

I leave her on a crowded train platform early on a Tuesday morning, tears brimming in her wide, blue eyes as she watches me go. The humidity of the day settles down like a wet blanket, oppressive, weighty. The weather a fetus inside the womb must experience every day for nine solid months.

Just five months, the relationship, beginning in China, ending in Thailand, with a ten-day visit from her to set me on my way and send her on hers. An ending and a beginning wrapped up tight in one little package.

I buy coffee and walk, my mind blank. I’m numb. I go to work. I drift through the day. I go home, go to the gym, go to sleep. It takes a few days for the shock to wear off and reality to set in. When it finally does, it is like a scalding hot frying pan to the face.

I wake up and colors are muted, like a television show in Technicolor. Drab and dull, an Instagram photo with the “misery” filter activated. I’m sad, yes, but I’m also angry. Angry with her for leaving. Angry with myself for letting her go. Most of all, I’m angry with others simply for being happy. I see couples holding hands, smiling. I hate them. I hate them so much. I hope they are run over by a train. Three times. And then maybe it could hit me, as well, if it’s feeling extra generous. There’s the feeling of coming home to an empty apartment, dark and silent, the curtains drawn. Lonely and desolate. There’s the realization that all those clichés about heartache are true. How your heart actually, physically hurts. This shouldn’t be surprising, but it is. It’s like watching a movie for the fiftieth time only to still be surprised by the ending, a different twist to the same plot with each viewing.

I should have seen it coming.

I knew our paths would diverge, of course I knew. It was a matter of timing, not of incompatibility, but timing is such an important factor — as much so as the balance of values and interests, or the ability to compromise, to fight and make up.

But for now, we need different things, and we go different ways.

We loved each other. We truly loved each other. I am sure of that. But there’s no solace in the past tense. There’s no solace anywhere at the moment. She is the only thing that can make it better, and she is gone. And I’m alone.
I meet my friend Claire for lunch. I’m not hungry, but I force the food down. It’s unappetizing. It’s just there, food sitting on a plate. I’d rather smash it into tiny bits with a hammer. But I take a forkful. I stuff it into my mouth. I chew. And I move on to the next bite.
On the restaurant’s sound system (and I swear I am not making this up), the following songs play:
Chris DeBurgh’s “Lady in Red.”
She had red hair.
It’s coincidence. Anyway, the song’s about her dress, not her hair. I think. But still, red, you know?
“My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion.
Christ Almighty.
“Right Here Waiting,” a ballad by Richard Marx.
Then Westlife’s “My Love,” a song about lost love.

It’s too much. Somehow, halfway through a bowl of carrot soup — which I didn’t even know existed until this moment, because who makes soup out of a carrot; it’s like making a chicken broth cake — I’ve become the subject of some sort of horrible cosmic practical joke.

I contemplate peeling off my face with a can opener.

“What if this was it?” I ask Claire. “What if there’s no one else?”
“Then it will work out,” she says.
“I don’t believe in fate.”
“It’s not fate,” says Claire. “That’s just how love works.”
“What if it’s not? What if she finds someone better?”
“There is no ‘better,’” she says. “There’s different, but that doesn’t mean ‘better.’ It’s not a contest. She loves you for you. I know she does. I saw you two together. She’s never going to meet someone and say ‘Oh, he’s so much better than Adam.’ She might think someone else is better for her, but that’s not nearly the same thing. And if she does find someone, then you know it’s time to really, fully move on.”
I imagine a stranger pulling her in for a first kiss — and worse, her wanting it — and I feel like I might vomit. I picture myself murdering that man. Slowly. Methodically. The thought of myself meeting someone new is equally horrifying. Right now, it doesn’t even seem attractive. People look the same, like walking, disfigured blobs of molten clay: men, women, supermodels, limbless beggars. Everyone is equally revolting.
I eat another spoonful of this ridiculous carrot soup.
I walk home; I unlock the door, greetings empty apartment. I open the curtains, and the darkness fades and sunbeams drift across the floor and creep up the walls. They hurt my eyes. The sun causes sunburns and melanoma. The sun never did anybody any good. Who ever thought the sun was a good idea? I hate photosynthesis. I hate solar power. I pull the curtains closed.
A knock on the door.
It’s Holley. I met Holley three weeks ago, so it is a good idea to pour my heart out to her. Definitely a good idea. It’s the beginning of another relationship abroad – platonic or not – a magnesium flash, burning hot and bright, intense from the start, right up until the end when it suddenly, bitterly, immediately burns out. You’ve found each other floating in a strange ocean and you cling, desperately, to one another until you drift apart. The kind of relationship between foreigners that usually begins, in certain countries at least, with something like, “Hello, we’re best friends now because we’re foreigners.”
You get used to that intimacy, that closeness, seeing each other every day, becoming the center of someone’s universe as you orbit around them yourself. You begin to take it for granted. You’re in a cocoon. A bubble. Then you hatch. You pop. You go back home, and it’s gone for good.
“I just can’t think of anything else,” I tell Holley. “It’s horrible.” I swallow around the lump in my throat.
“But you’re lucky,” she says. “You’re so lucky. You had this great relationship and it ended on good terms and it could still work out in the future.”
Yes, lucky, I think. It’s like I won cancer.
I am thankful for her, because otherwise I would very likely be confronting other foreigners who happen to be wandering Bangkok’s streets. “Listen, I’m having a really hard time these past few days, can I talk to you?” Like a woebegone Jehovah’s Witness. “Excuse me sir, do you have a moment to talk about my broken heart?”
There is a 12-hour time difference between Bangkok and Texas. I call my mother at three in the morning, her time. And she picks up. Wonderful, blessed mothers. She listens. She commiserates. Then she tells me this:
“Honey, there are so many things you are good at. You are so talented. I was just at a Taylor Swift concert with your niece, and my God, she’s such a performer, but I hear those songs, Adam, and you could write those songs.”
So there’s that, I guess. A relationship ends, but I’m on my way to pop stardom. This will happen right after I submit my application to play power forward-cum-astronaut for the NBA’s international space squad.
She tells me almost the same thing that Claire said during lunch.
“If it’s meant to be, it will work itself out.”
If it’s meant to be.
The phrase implies some sort of a predetermined path, which runs completely against the grade of my life’s philosophy, which, admittedly, at age twenty-six, is frail and meager, because I don’t know anything about anything. Except how to play Playstation games. I can really play Playstation games.
There’s some truth to it, though, “meant to be.” Love isn’t something you trap and keep locked up. It’s not a dog on a leash or a bunch of plants in a greenhouse, or fireflies in a bottle. Love is something that travels time zones and oceans. It’s not panicky or afraid. You don’t hold on to love for dear life in a desperate attempt to keep it stationary. Love is calm and comfortable and peaceful. It waits when it needs to wait. And that’s important to remember. Fate might not be real, but I’m very convinced that love is real. I know it is, because I’ve felt it. And love — or at least the people behind that love — makes things happen. Not fate.
But sometimes love escapes.
Or you lose it.
Or you let it go.
You give it up, on purpose, because it’s the right thing to do at that moment in time. It’s the whole “if you love someone, set them free” college of thought. Another cliché, probably thought up by the same guy who coined “heartache” and “lovesick” and “meant to be.” Hitler, I think it was.
And then there’s the saying that goes, “love is a drug.” It is. Love is a high, and every time you get high, there’s the inevitable comedown that follows. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s Law of Emotion.
So I push myself through work and weekends, telling myself it was the right thing. Not the easy thing. The right thing. Maybe. I hope. You just keep going, immune to laughter and smiles and happiness, a big dose of Novocain on the part of the brain that allows anything but hopelessness and despair and grief. And nothing will fix it, not drugs, not sex, not food. Nothing, no matter how hard you try, except time. And time drags by with a weighted tread. But time does go on, and so does the world, and she is not dead, and neither am I, even though it sometimes feels like it would be easier if one of us were.
Memories of us, together – once fresh, stinging, and ripe — will slowly fade away until the gap between us is no longer purely physical, and is no longer a gap at all, for that matter, having become — suddenly, seemingly overnight — a chasm. She’ll have her life in New York. I’ll live mine in. We’ll sleep when the other is awake, eat different foods, and meet different people. We’ll grow apart. Our joined memories will become old and worn and fondly, if not a little sadly, remembered, like an old letterman’s jacket or a baseball mitt kept in a box, high in the attic above the real house where new memories are actively being manufactured.
The world, my life, will come back into focus; will become high definition, full color, resuming its original appearance. Things always do. They continue to roll forward until that one day, in the near future, when this won’t hurt anymore. And that might be the most tragic part of it all.
The wound will scab over and slowly heal — until a new one is ready to take its place and the big cosmic joke of it all starts all over again.

How To Date Women When You’re An Invisible Femme

I like things with lace and sequins and bows and pearls. I am unapologetically guilty of wearing leggings as pants. Many days of the week I make use of a dreaded device commonly known as an eyelash curler.

I look like your average 20-something cisgendered woman…and I like to date women.

People rarely, if ever, assume I’m queer when they look at me. Even for other queer people, my queerness isn’t usually perceptible. It’s hard to detect through the projected aura of my French manicure.

I know I’m not the only queer woman in a frilly dress and five inch heels with pink lipgloss. There are plenty like me. And not of all of them have trouble finding a girl to date. But I’m sharing my story for the queer girls out there who do feel invisible. This is for the girls who want to date girls, but wonder “With boring hair like this, how will I ever get her to notice me?”
In the modern day queer world there isn’t a code. Last year, I read an article about finger flagging, the idea that lesbians paint their ring finger nail a different color to signify their preference for women. That is great in theory, if you are able to examine people’s hands without looking like a weirdo, but even if you accomplish that, the sparkly ring finger is now a popular style for every twelve year old and their moms. There is a lot of advice out there for combating femme invisibility with a triangle ring, or one feather earring, but what if that just isn’t your style? Without any reliable way to visually communicate that you like ladies, what is a femme, particularly a new femme, to do?

Throughout my life I’ve found people across the gender spectrum to be attractive, but my early dating life involved a lot of boys. I had it all figured out. I knew how to snag them and keep them wrapped around my finger.

And then a gorgeous chapstick lesbian with her short hair and her tie walked into the room. There she was! The one I’d been waiting for – the woman I found both mentally and physically exciting. I was totally ready to date my first girl.

Except I wasn’t. Take all of the butterflies and nausea of a normal crush and add on the “It’s so awkwardly obvious that I have no idea what the heck I’m doing!” factor. And because every time I ran into her I just so happened to be wearing a new dress from Forever 21, she wasn’t making any moves.
I tried my usual strategies, but for some reason my lingering hugs didn’t seem to make her weak at the knees and she didn’t even notice when I accidentally/on purpose brushed my ankle against hers. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. My milkshake had systematically brought several men to the yard, but she wasn’t having it.
There were two main factors standing between me and a lifetime of love with this girl. One was the fact that intimacy between girls and their friends is seen as normal. In high school, my best friend and I would hold hands and skip down the hallway together and nobody gave it a second thought. So when I thought I was turning up the charm, this girl thought I was just being friendly. Later on she told me that she had literally shrugged and thought to herself “I guess this is how straight girls make friends.” Sigh.

Soon after meeting her, I entrapped her in a conversation about the qualities I liked in a partner. I painted a romantic picture of my ideal date, thinking she would see herself there and desperately want to make it happen. When she told me that she was looking for someone that she could stay in bed with all day, I told her I was good at that. She couldn’t possibly misconstrue what I was getting at, right? Wrong.

The other major factor working against invisible femmes is that because your outward appearance doesn’t clearly shout, “Hey, look at me! Queer lady over here!” you have to find another way to send that message.
My insinuations got through, but I had confused the heck out of her! She remembers trying to decipher my “mixed messages” with her roommate, insisting that I was straight but unable to ignore my strategy of aggressive flirtation. She started to think that I was just flirting with her because I liked the attention. I didn’t know how to convince her otherwise so, being the stubborn woman that I am, I just kept doing what I was doing. Eventually she caught on to the fact that I actually wanted to date her, but because I never clearly said so, she assumed that I wasn’t brave enough to take the leap, and she wasn’t going to do it for me.
This is not to say that other queer women are utterly clueless when it comes to femmes. And they aren’t baseless in being careful about dating someone who is seemingly straight. Let’s acknowledge that messiness and save it for someone else’s article, because even knowing that doesn’t make it any easier.
You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just say something. How hard would it have been to take the reins and tell her that I thought she was really great and that I wanted to take her out some time? Sure, that seems obvious now, but at the time that seemed terrifying.
It also seemed like the only viable option. So, after months of crushing on this girl, I finally asked her to go out with me, wouldn’t take no for an answer, took her to a gay bar, and kissed her on the middle of the dance floor. And that was that. No amount of volunteering to help with her projects, subtly touching her shoulder, or even telling her that I wanted to lie in bed with all day was going to open the door for me.
You see, fellow invisible femmes, the world has been conditioned to see our barrettes and patterned tights as a sign that we totally want boys in our pants. Sure, you could cut off all of your hair or put on a plaid shirt, but as my mama always said, “Stop bugging me and just tell me what you want already!”
In the end, a combination of awkward persistence and blunt honesty worked for me. So rock that mini skirt, flaunt your fake lashes. Just be prepared to actually tell a girl that you want to take her home.

How I Fell In Friend-Love With My Person

It was my boss’s birthday party, and the bar was dark and crowded. I was nervously picking at my co-worker’s plate of cheese and olives, and trying to make conversation. It was one of my very first opportunities getting to know them outside the office, and I was excited to socialize with them and their friends as we toasted to the big man’s good health and chattered amongst ourselves in the back room of the delightfully dingy, candlelit Berlin bar.

She sat at the opposite end of the table. Tall, blonde, and strikingly beautiful. Her bone structure was killing me, and though I try to keep such thoughts out of my head, I instantly conceded to my high school-ish insecurities, figuring that a woman that winsome would be flighty or mean. I’d had bad experiences with the pretty ones. So when my other boss, who sat beside her, introduced us, and announced that she would be attending the letter writing workshop I was hosting in a few days, I was tickled, nervous, excited, all at once. I sheepishly smiled and quickly ducked off to the restroom.

Only one other person signed up for my workshop, and I’ll admit I was a pinch nervous, as it was my first time instructing a group, however small. I wrote down a little speech to give about the lost art of letter writing, why it was so important to me, and why it deserved a sacred place in modern society. I even included some quotes by mostly famous dead people about the romance and beauty of hand penned correspondence.
Natalie — that was her name — smiled and listened, and took photos of me while I talked. She didn’t laugh. She wasn’t laughing at me. This was not what I expected. I didn’t mean to expect anything, but old habits die hard, and I was used to being met with sharp laughter and some cloying statement like, “Oh, how cute. You’re so into this, aren’t you?” In fact, we drank wine and crafted the night away, talking about a shared love of writing, travel, adventure, the joy of life itself, and what had led us to Berlin. I biked home in a buzzed state of girl crushing contentment, grinning and rosy cheeked the whole way.

There was an initial testing period that consisted of Natalie sending me links to artists and playlists I might like, and we retweeted, favorited, liked, tagged, and “Oh, girl! Me too!”-ed each other until it was clear this friendship was on like Donkey Kong.

But it’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment our friendship became “official.” There isn’t usually that one moment in time that a lightbulb or heart appears over a person’s head and they realize, “I love this person! I’m her Harry, she’s my Sally. That person is my person!”

Was it on Halloween, when instead of getting mad at me for having one too many at her private company party and hunkering down over a toilet at the karaoke bar until she had to carry the half dressed sun goddess out to a cab (which I proceeded to get us kicked out of), she brought me back to her flat, fed me bread, Tylenol, and water, and let me share her bed and wear her fluffy slippers?
Or was it when we went on our first trip together, sharing our mutually incurable wanderlust and melancholic vibes, poring over books and sitting together in silence, each penning equally deep thoughts in our journals, taking breaks to sullenly stare out the window as the Danish countryside stretched out before our eyes?
Was it the first time we argued? Me, upset and internalizing some random comment that she made (honestly, not even about me, and made after a day of traipsing all over town and not getting enough time alone), and refusing to talk about it, sulking and feeling miserable for over a week? Because when someone matters to you that much, you can’t go to sleep angry, or sad, or mad. You’ll be haunted until you patch things up. That’s how love works. That’s friendship.

I can’t say when it happened, but she became my person, and even better, I became hers. And it’s been a lot of work, it hasn’t been easy. We live in different cities and time zones now. She has a terrific job that makes her happy, and I’m scrounging around doing odd jobs to support my writing.

She’s a little more April Ludgate, I’m a lot more Leslie Knope. She reaches the top shelf for me, and I run to save us prime seats on the bus or train, so she can amble along at her own pace to meet me. She takes my picture, and I dance whimsically as she captures me the way she sees me. When I stayed with her parents and her mom discovered I was nearly five years younger than Natalie, she asked me, puzzled, “What on Earth are you two doing together? What an unlikely pair.”

But when I think about how much I love her sometimes, my heart swells to twice its usual size, a lump emerges in my throat, my nostrils flare, and my eyes tear up. It’s not easy to explain, but that’s how I know someone belongs in my chaotic journey of a life.
In my life, people don’t usually stick. They are a revolving door of sparkly new characters. And at first, I was genuinely skeptical of her. She was my “type”— a strong, independent, leading woman character. Combined with my forces, sometimes a combustible pairing. Would she try to manipulate me? I’d been hurt by pretty puppeteers before, so these fears weren’t coming from out of left field.
But she didn’t give up on pursuing our friendship when I was wary, and where she too had walls, I didn’t relent in loving her and tearing them down. It was the first time I hadn’t thrown in the towel and instead decided to stick it out, because it was worth it. She’s worth it. 100 percent. Every time.
So whether we lay in darkness and silence listening to Nick Drake records and feeling morose because we’ve death and despair on the brain, or whether we ride trains and drink cheap beer in parks, laughing and looking down the bottle to make ships and shapes out of tumultuous waves of ale, the time is well spent.
And I thank my lucky little stars I have her, because I waited a long time for her. Most little girls go to sleep at night thinking about their future husband—please be handsome, please be kind, be strong, be rich. But I thought, God, please give me just a friend who is kooky and weird like me, someone I can talk to and share clothes with and giggle about boys with.
I began to lose hope because we always moved and changed schools, and they never wrote back. My forget me not anthem became so tired and desperate, I almost believed myself invisible, capable of mysticism beyond my reach. I learned the art of letting go, and letting go again. And to open up quickly like a flower, and just as quickly wilt and fade away, because nothing is permanent.
But it all led me to the nomad.

I Miss Passing Notes With You

I miss passing notes with you. I miss sitting down in French class, workbook perched at the end of my desk, pretending to be taking notes. I miss taking a clean sheet of loose-leaf (or, in a pinch, spiral notebook paper with little ripped pieces hanging off the edge) and starting to write. Dear X. Y Happened. I can’t wait until we get to do Z this weekend.

It didn’t matter what the note was about. What were we about, even? We were in high school. Any drama we had was inconsequential. Who didn’t get into AP Bio. Who we wanted to ask to Homecoming. What our moms were making us do this weekend. What we were going to wear to the football game on Friday.

And yet we continued to write them. Nearly every day, like clockwork. The intimate squares of paper that spelled out our lives. The painstakingly written confessions, questions, wonderings, and speculations. The declarations of friendship and loyalty.
I miss the anticipation after you told me you were writing me a super long note, but that it wouldn’t be finished until after AP European History. I miss the feel of a perfectly folded note in my hand. I miss hiding it under my papers during government class, reading it at intervals when I could get away with it. I miss how you would tease me about my handwriting, that I always forgot to cross my Xs and Ts. I miss the plans for that night, this weekend, for when we finally got to college, all contained in those handwritten notes.
I wish I still had them. I wish I hadn’t thrown them out, tossed them away so carelessly as I cleaned out my locker at the end of each semester. I wish I could go back and re-read them. To remember who you were. Who I was. What we worried about. Who we loved. What we hated more than anything. Where we thought we were going: this weekend, this summer, next year.
I wish I could go back to before we stopped writing them. Before all the real drama. Before we stopped talking on a daily basis. Before you stopped talking to me altogether in college. Before we realized we didn’t have anything in common, outside of where we grew up. Before I looked at your Facebook page and realized I didn’t know you any more, that we no longer shared mutual friends. Before I rejected your invitation to get drinks and catch up when I was home for Christmas.
Because the fact is, we don’t know each other any more. We no longer exist outside of those notes. For years, we shared our souls through ballpoint pens, lined paper, and folding patterns intricate enough to be considered origami. But now, we’re barely acquaintances.
I don’t even remember what your handwriting looks like anymore. I saw it every day for nearly four years. But four years later, I haven’t a clue. If you passed me a square of graffitied loose-leaf today, filled with everything you thought, felt, and wanted, I couldn’t identify the hand that wrote it. I wouldn’t be able to place the loopy Ys, the sloppily crossed Ts. I wouldn’t recognize you.
And maybe, you wouldn’t recognize me, too.